Elderly Melodies

Elderly Melodies, founded in Manhattan Beach, California, establishes contact with senior homes to host student-led performances. We coordinate recital dates and practice times for elementary, middle, and high school students to perform pieces that exhibit their hard work and musical talents. To do this, we maintain active communication with members before and after performances to continue our initiative. In addition to holding recitals, we promote senior connection by creating heartfelt letter-writing activities that are distributed during recitals. Elderly Melodies has held 12 successful recitals, helping to spread the joy of music to individuals looking for access to music programs.

The goal of Elderly Melodies is to make senior citizens feel seen, heard, and connected through music, while also providing students like us with a way to give back to our community. Our club founders have witnessed how senior citizens are often overlooked in their communities, and we want to share our happiness and joy of performing with them as well. We aim to fuse community engagement and our love for music to promote positive impact, as well as promote music education to aspiring students. We believe music is a universal language that we can use to evoke feelings of warmth, comfort, and happiness in audience members. Not only do these performances provide social support to senior citizens, but they also provide opportunities to students to perform and share their hard work. Elderly Melodies helps students from all musical backgrounds and ages gain confidence in their musicianship, hone their musical abilities, and support senior citizens in their communities.

We aim to promote health and reduce senior isolation as it relates to public health, considering that social isolation and loneliness is a pressing issue amongst many community members. According to a study conducted by the Federal Centers for Disease Control, senior isolation is an issue that needs to be made more visible because it puts seniors at risk of dementia and other chronic health conditions that have long-lasting impacts. We aim to mitigate these negative statistics by educating our club members about the impact that musical performance can have on seniors. They learn about the importance of community support and we are dedicated to helping these seniors feel supported. We also aim to grow in ways of being able to support senior citizens. We have launched personal letter-writing activities and other activities that boost intergenerational social support.

Our initiative focuses on senior citizens and students because they are cornerstone members of every community. Our initiative relies on student passion for music, and it focuses on assisting overlooked members in our community, senior citizens. Senior citizens are often ignored and are in isolated situations without access to mental stimulation. Many senior citizens face significant challenges, including social isolation, loneliness, and cognitive decline. Music is scientifically proven to stimulate the immune system, enhance memory, support motor skills, and reduce stress and anxiety. Music is an underappreciated method of spreading connection and forming intergenerational relationships. Elderly Melodies also focuses on enriching students’ education, giving them a chance to grow and improve their music abilities by granting them an outlet to perform. This helps to build musicians’ confidence while performing on stage and allows them to showcase their hard work.

Elderly Melodies was started by high school students Hannah Wu and Evelyn Green back in the summer of 2023, right before the tenth grade. Before the school year started, Hannah and Evelyn began reaching out to nearby South Bay senior homes to gain interest for recital opportunities. By the time school started, they had already reached out to more than ten senior homes, most of which were open to the idea of hosting student-led recitals there. The first Elderly Melodies chapter was created at Mira Costa High School in 2023 and started as a smaller club of around 30 students. During this year, the Mira Costa chapter solidified the process of planning performances, first releasing polls of available dates to be voted upon by the members, then creating a sign-up form. Near the end of the 2023-2024 school year, Elderly Melodies began working with members in the South Bay community. We have since grown to over 70 members at Mira Costa and over 10 musicians in the South Bay who are also in elementary and middle school. The club is now about to start its third year of hosting a board of 7 hardworking students, all dedicated to the cause of Elderly Melodies. The Mira Costa chapter has since hosted over 10 recitals at Hermosa Sunrise Senior home and reached 100+ seniors in our community. In 2024, Elderly Melodies began to expand across California, creating new chapters in cities like Buena Park, Redondo Beach, Torrance, Cypress, Fullerton, and many more. As of 2025, Elderly Melodies currently has 18 incoming chapters for the upcoming 2025-2026 school year, engaging over 300 students in our initiative and helping to serve a projected 800 seniors by the end of this year.

The idea for Elderly Melodies was created by the two current presidents of the organization. The idea was inspired by the recitals that one used to attend as a young piano student, as well as her experience at her grandfather’s senior home. The other also witnessed the impact that isolation had on her grandparents when she was young; the toll that loneliness had on their mental health inspired them to take action. They have both committed over 350 hours to this organization over the years, planning meetings, managing social media, creating the website, leading the Mira Costa High School chapter and board members, and outreach to new chapter leads. The Mira Costa High School orchestra director has also been involved in the process by hosting the Mira Costa chapter and giving helpful guidance along the way. Our Mira Costa High School club board members, including our vice president, secretary, treasurer, social media manager, and meeting director have volunteered a combined 100+ hours towards helping Elderly Melodies succeed. They have assisted the presidents in reaching out to senior homes to coordinate recital dates, plan engaging meeting activities, and record member service hours.

Our initiative employs outreach platforms like Instagram, GroupMe, and Microsoft Teams to keep stable contact with our club members. We actively use these three platforms to ensure active communication with members about recitals, announce recital dates, and meeting times. We used Google-powered platforms like Gmail and Google Drive to create resources for our members and chapter leads to access. These resources are guides and research templates for club members and chapter leads to apply in their own community. For example, we have a Google Document that entails how interested students can start their Elderly Melodies chapters in their school and community. It helps them run and organize their club, connect to senior homes and Elderly Melodies leaders in case they need assistance. For creative marketing, we mainly use Canva to create social media posts, announcements, and digital posters. These have helped us reach a wider audience of musicians on social media. These resources have contributed to helping us expand our initiative to more music students. We have recently launched a website through the Framer platform, which allows members to view our mission statement, our currently active chapters, and how to get involved by becoming a volunteer or registering to start their own chapter.

Elderly Melodies relied heavily on social media to reach teenagers around the world and get them involved in our initiative. We used a lot of direct Instagram messages as well as regular posts to engage a consistent audience and grow Elderly Melodies. We have also used posters made by our Non-profit graphic designer to advertise our chapter within our school, helping us gather 50 students for our first meeting. We also attended school events to advertise our club using posters and prizes to gain the support of students. We’ve also gone to music classes at local high schools and middle schools to speak to the students and teachers about our organization directly.

Elderly Melodies has not created a budget and does not need funding; we rely upon our student volunteer efforts and dedication to keep our program alive.

While Elderly Melodies is currently extremely successful, we have encountered a few obstacles along the way. During the Mira Costa Elderly Melodies club’s first year, we looked to recruit a board of dedicated students to assist in working on Elderly Melodies. While many of our board members were hardworking, we had trouble with one board member who didn’t fulfill their elected officer duties. This caused a delay in productivity since this officer’s role was to record member community service hours, and we had to step in to help fulfill these duties. Despite this challenge, we have developed a distinct leadership style that allows us to maximize effective communication. We have found the best way to lead our organization is with empathy and kindness, while ensuring to take a firm hand when necessary.

Another major challenge that Elderly Melodies faced was in the Spring of 2025, when we began outreaching to nearby schools. With hopes of inspiring music students from neighboring schools to start their own Elderly Melodies chapter, we started by posting a volunteer interest form on an online volunteer outreach website. This was not successful, and we had to think of a better method to recruit and inspire more leaders. With this, we began directly messaging music students via Instagram, which helped us gain attraction to our social media page while directly connecting with motivated students. This method helped us gain interest from 18 dedicated students in starting a chapter, helping us understand the importance of persevering despite being unsuccessful the first or second time. We also learned the importance of proper outreach and reaching the correct audience, because once we were able to reach out to the right people, we found many students who were interested in what we do here at Elderly Melodies.

Our work at Elderly Melodies has been immensely effective, which can be seen by the popularity and growth of our initiative. We have accumulated over 70 members and we have been growing since. Seeing that the next school year is also coming up, we also hope to expand to younger high school students. Our impact can also be measured by our growing interest in starting Elderly Melodies chapters. We currently have at least 18 students who have expressed interest and registered to create their own Elderly Melodies chapter in schools across California and a few in other states. This expresses the effectiveness of our organization in inspiring students across California to spread our mission of helping seniors and expanding music education.

The senior citizens at our primary recital home, Hermosa Sunrise, have always responded positively, telling us they appreciated our efforts and enjoyed our performance. They often congratulate our performers after the performance and have reported to us that they’ve felt much happier after hearing the musical performance. Furthermore, we have club members who make an impact by writing several letters during every performance, showing club engagement from performers, and even when some club members are unable to make certain recitals. The directors at senior homes have also told us how much they appreciate us coming to perform for the senior citizens and how happy they are to attend because it has helped provide monthly entertainment and social support. Some seniors and staff have even reported improved moods after attending our music recitals.

Elderly Melodies has improved our music programs by giving students the confidence to perform well in school music competitions and at school concerts. A student at Mira Costa High School and also a member of the Mira Costa Orchestra reported that it helped her gain confidence while performing, as well as gave her a chance to learn new music and improve her overall music abilities. The orchestra director and advisor has also dedicated and stressed to students that this has a positive impact on our community while also having the opportunity to perform and hone individual musicianship. We have several members and parents of members who have recommended our organization to their children who are passionate about both community service and music. Additionally, there has been a positive response from Mira Costa High School as Elderly Melodies has been featured in the school newspaper, La Vista, for our community impact and the work that we have done during senior recitals.

During outreach to students about leading other Elderly Melodies chapters, we met and came in contact with many music directors and teachers through social media. Many of them have commended our work with senior homes and have endorsed our program for students in their schools. We aim to expand our impact to schools across the state and hopefully the country, and we have already been effective in being able to inspire students to join our initiative.

If you’re interested in starting Elderly Melodies in your community, please reach out to us via social media. Our handle is @elderlymelodies. We recommend that you stay dedicated and motivated even through failure. It’s amazing to want to make an impact by combining music and community service.