How was the concept born? The concept for OneVoice was born out of an urge. I have great faith in that feeling of being moved toward something, and that is what I felt when I first encountered Samite. Samite is a Ugandan musician living in New York, and when I first heard his music I was spellbound. I also discovered that he made occasional trips back to East Africa to play music for children in refugee camps and orphanages and I lit up like a light bulb. At that time, I didn’t know how or when, but I knew with absolute certainty that this was what I wanted to do and how I wanted to put music to use in the world. Flash forward two years and I was sitting in a cubicle at Sirius XM Radio where I am the music director on the children’s channel. My boss asked what I wanted to create in the coming year (yes, he’s a good boss!) and I mentioned Samite and his work. My boss slammed the table and said, “that’s it! we should send you to Africa!”. We needed to come up with a more complete concept, and what came to me almost right away, was the beauty of connecting children from around the world through the language they so intuitively understand–music. Three weeks later, I was in Uganda, sharing music with the children at the Brain Tree Primary School.

How were you introduced to music and what impact has it made in your life?

I can’t remember a time when music was not in my life. My 92-year-old grandmother likes to tell a story about when I was 18 months old and would take out all the pots and pans from her kitchen cabinets and bang away. I’ve asked her why she didn’t just move the pots and pans to a higher cabinet where I couldn’t reach them. She shrugged and said, “you were making music”. That freedom to create without expectations is easily lost as we get older, and is therefore at the core of OneVoice. We want to remind children of their innate power and creativity. Anyway, when I was 7, I asked my parents for a guitar and it’s been my companion ever since. Soon after I started writing songs and even formed a band in elementary school. Most of our songs were called “Girl” or some variation thereof. We rocked the talent show like no one before or since.

How do you chose and find your sister schools?

For our first project, we found the Brain Tree School in Uganda through Samite. He had visited there before, and when I told him I was planning on a trip to Uganda, he insisted that I go there. They already had a sister school in Bryn Mawr, PA. The Shipley School had been pen pals with Brain Tree and had raised some money for them as well, helping them to build a library, among other things. So, I thought that a beautiful way to deepen that relationship would be through music. As for our upcoming project in 2011, things will work a little differently. We came into contact with the Shepherds Jr. School in Arusha, Tanzania though another non-profit called Epic Change, which will be partnering with us this Fall. We will be visiting and sharing music with them in September, but instead of connecting them with just one school in the U.S., our intention is to connect them with many. We will launch a project-specific website to contain all the music and videos from Tanzania, and then invite schools from all over the U.S. and beyond to contribute their own songs and videos of gratitude and love. We may even connect some of the schools one-on-one via skype! Then we will invite the U.S. schools to create fundraisers around their songs of gratitude in order to help build a secondary school for the children in Arusha. The beauty for me is that these children–all over the world–will be creating a school through the power of their own voices.

What have you learned so far in this journey?

Humility. I have learned not to assume that I know what the world needs or how our work will get done. Ask (every day) how I can serve and then devote myself to that. OneVoice, at it’s core, is not about me or our team or even our donors. It is about children and the truth and beauty found in their creative sparkle.

What are your future goals and how do you define success?

Wow. I have no idea (I’m sure that’s not an approved answer in the non-profit President’s handbook). But truly, as I said earlier–to assume I know how this is going to go is just hubris. Our plan is to embark on two projects for 2012–one in the Spring and one in the Fall. There are things I can see, such as the potential to include technology partners such as Skype or Cisco, and we have had some preliminary discussions about that. But my guess is what actually ends up happening next will be more exciting than any plans I can make. As far as success is concerned,  a writing from the Talmud occurs to me: “to save one life is to save the world entire”. Music can transform a life. It certainly has transformed mine, and continues to do so.

For more info please visit: http://www.onevoicecommunity.org/