Riverside Convalescent Center-Mathews is trying a new program to help enrich the lives of its residents and provide them with comfort. The center is asking for help from the public to get the program off the ground.
Music and Memory is a national certification program based on the concept of offering individualized music to nursing home residents by providing them with Apple iPods filled with songs that they can listen to with headsets.
Music is profoundly linked to personal memories, according to Riverside’s activities director Richard Miles. The idea is reinforced by the video “Alive Inside” created by Music and Memory, a nonprofit organization.
The video focuses on a nursing home resident named Henry, who is non-communicative until he begins to listen to his favorite songs by Cab Calloway on an iPod. Once he begins hearing the music, his face lights up, he begins to sing and move his body to the beat, and when asked about the music immediately afterward, he is able...