Harp Therapy

The Harp Therapy Outreach Program, a national first, was founded in 1995 as an outgrowth of the American Youth Harp Ensemble. Today, it has matured into a nationally recognized program pairing youth mentors with disabled peers through partnerships with community agencies and schools region-wide.

This life-transforming experience not only provides these students healthy social interactions with their peers, from whom they are often isolated, but also results in clinically documented improvements in behavior and occupational motor skills. An innovative program that utilizes the harp and music instruction to develop musical, psychosocial ,and physical skills in disabled children and youth, enabling them to build life and social skills and develop friendships and peer groups that otherwise would be difficult to acquire.

Through the program, students with disabilities build life and social skills and develop friendships and peer groups, opportunities critical for but seldom available to teens with disabilities. Mentor students benefit through experience in a viable application of their music study, giving them direction and strengthening their chances for a college education and a career in music. In addition to peer mentors, a professional harpist/educator, music therapist and occupational therapist staff classes. A weekly evaluation tool is used to measure the efficacy of the harp as a therapeutic tool: progress in musical, psychosocial and physical goals continue to be recorded.

In June of 2003 and December of 2004, the Harp Therapy Outreach Program was featured locally and nationally on the PBS children’s program, ZOOM!.