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 26
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. We
have been working with them for several years to put a comprehensive, stellar
collection of children’s songs and stories on their system.
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!