Information
about our partnership with the
Get Well Network
About the
Pickleberries:
Our
non profit public charity, Pickleberry
Pie Inc. has put on thousands of monthly concerts in 22 children's
hospitals and hospices around the United States for more than a decade.
We present paid children's musicians, storytellers, puppeteers and
magicians to kids and their families in hospital auditoriums,
playrooms, and day rooms. When kids are too sick to come to the
playroom, we go to them with personal mini-concerts. All of this is
done in conjunction with hospital staff. It's a wonderful program.
The funding for these concerts currently comes
through foundation support. Since the Pickleberries are primarily a
volunteer organization, all of the money we raise goes directly to help
the kids. As you can imagine, we've had numerous requests to expand to
help other kids in other hospitals.
All of the money we'll raise through this partnership will go to expand the
concert series nationwide.
About the Get Well Network:
The Get Well
Network is a for profit company based in Bethesda, Maryland.
They specialize in providing information and entertainment for patients
in over 50 hospitals nationwide. For instance, they have informational videos
on demand on health subjects, tips on how to manage diabetes, etc. They
don't have much for their pediatric patients. That's why they need
the Pickleberries.
What we need:
We are creating a pilot program to place in selected GWN hospitals
around the United States. It will feature on-demand stories and music
for kids age 0 to 15. In nearly every case, portions of the DVD will be
used, not the entire DVD. In order to do this, we need donated DVDs
from
children's storytellers, musicians, authors, and entertainers. Live
action, animated, or other types of DVDs are all eligible. If you have
a DVD that you own the copyright to, we would be interested in using a
copy for one year.
We need DVDs only, not videos. Please note that not all of the DVDs
that we gather may be used in the pilot program. We will hold all DVDs
for futher consideration as the program expands.
Artists please also note, the
GWN is not interested in making individual contracts with individual
artists in regard to the use of their DVDs on this system.
That's what the Pickleberries can do for them: gather, screen, and
organize the material so that it becomes usable to GWN.
What you get in return:
DVDs that are selected for participation in this pilot
program will have segments aired on the GWN system within the
hospitals. For instance, selected individual stories from storytelling
DVDs will appear on a menu in patient rooms. At the end of each
story or concert segment, contact
information about the artist will appear on the screen. Also, artists
featured in the GWN network will be able to participate in a special
"as heard on Get Well Network" section of selected hospital gift shops
and an online hospital gift shop.
Information about contacting gift shops will be sent to participants
after the selection process is complete.
Interested? Please fill out this form
and send your DVDs to the address on the bottom.
Please address further questions to pjswift@sbcglobal.net
Thank you for your help. And tell your friends!