Vanessa Contopulos, a former Rotary Peace Fellow, is using music to create social change.
Music therapist Vanessa Contopulos knows the power of melody. But even she was surprised when, as a volunteer on a music-therapy project at a center for former child soldiers in Uganda several years ago, she bonded with a local woman who didn’t know much English. “We were trying to speak to each other, and all of a sudden she starts singing ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads,’” Contopulos recalls. “We sang this song together, even though we couldn’t really talk.” Moments such as those, she says, made her realize the power of music to connect people. Contopulos became a Rotary Peace Fellow in 2008, sponsored by the Rotary Club of Temecula, Calif., and earned her master’s in conflict resolution from the University of Bradford in England. “We know that music can be part of social change,” she says. “But sometimes that’s a vague idea. I thought: What’s a concrete way to help people build relationships?” The answer: the SongStream Project, a San Diego-based mobile recording effort. Contopulos and her colleagues gather personal stories about music and edit them into podcasts that illustrate how it can bring people together. The podcasts are at www.thesongstreamproject.org. “There’s huge power in people’s stories,” Contopulos says. “Music is a vehicle for making connections.” – Anne Ford
