We recently connected with Danae Yume Shanti and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Danae Yume, thanks for joining us today. Can you share a story about the kindest thing someone has done for you and why it mattered so much or was so meaningful to you?

Since I was a little girl I wanted to sing to help children in need. That stayed with me throughout my adulthood.

I met a Japanese born visionary buddhist monk, His Holiness Gayuna Cealo, at a meditation program in 2002. He had a plan to raise money to build an orphanage for the street children in Burma and Cambodia.

He was assembling a band whose purpose would be to travel internationally to raise money through concert performances for this project.

I had a private interview with him and he “saw my heart’s purpose” and opened the invitation to me.

I became the American female vocalist in The Global Harmony Band. We travelled throughout Japan and the U.S. singing songs we wrote from the beautiful poetry he provided, which he wrote.

My childhood dream came true as I dedicated my profession as a singer in service to orphaned children.

The Orphanage of Dreams was built resulting in the the children having a home, love, nourishment and care. A fresh start at life!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Singing Children Home is my entrepreneur company and PowerSongs is my first service product.

I lost a 12 year old friend to cancer just before her 13th birthday. She loved to sing, it was her big passion. I was envisioning having her write her own original song and recording it when her cancer took over and she died. It was devastating for all of us.

I made a promise to myself to follow the inspirations coming to me after she passed. I never wanted to lose another child’s precious voice. My company focuses on children who are compromised be that living with anxiety, depression, ptsd or lifelong disease and terminal illness.

Singing Children Home is the name that came to me for the company because when children sing, they find their way home to feel their own hearts. They sing their way home to themselves. This is a priceless gift of wellness for them.

I combined all of my skill sets into one program and named it PowerSongs. I have an extensive background in vocal coaching, songwriting, touring, performing, producing, recording and developing singers. I’m also a show host, author and motivational speaker.

When I put all of this together in a mapping exercise the name PowerSongs just popped out from the page.

I recognized that the best benefit these children could have is knowing that they are so much more than the compromised state they deal with. They are not their disease. Through PowerSongs they reach inside to find the hero within, give it words and develop their own song of courage and “can do” under my direction.

Some of these kids are super excited to record their song and have it professionally produced for radio play. This is a life giving project and brings great joy and aliveness too them.

Through PowerSongs, kids get to create from their genius and give the world, their family and friends their song, in their voice sharing so much more of who they are. Imagine what a profound gift this is especially for those children who are terminally ill. They leave a legacy through song.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Understanding how precious and temporary life is happened for me when I almost died from an auto-immune disease in my body. Living with a compromised immune system is a vulnerable experience. Imagine how these children feel with what they’re navigating.

Although I was a professional singer, I hadn’t experienced the healing power of sound to the degree that I did in this nearing death process. I barely had energy to speak let alone use my voice.

Something inside me said, “Sing as if your life depends on it.” In the middle of my suffering, I was baffled. It seemed ridiculous to me and yet the words ‘as if your life depends on it” really had my attention.

The best I could do was moan and tone. Shockingly, I received energy and vitality from doing this. I continued until my toning turned to singing, I just made up a song, singing it to myself for courage. The next thing I knew I had so much vitality I couldn’t believe it. I had been bedridden for months at this point.

The singing continued to provide energy and vitality until I was up and walking within 2 hours.

This was an unthinkable, miraculous experience. It was then that I learned just how powerful our own voices can be for our own healing.

Since then, my passion to teach children in compromised states to sing has grown exponentially.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

After thirteen years of carefully developing my program, I delivered my first pilot at Camp Boggy Creek, in Florida in February of 2024. This camp is one of ten SeriousFun Network camps which serves children with long term disease.

There are many more SeriousFun camps world wide.

My goal is to touch as many children’s lives as possible, to turn them on to their voice, their creative genius and their ability to use the hero within for courage to live their precious lives.

I plan to bring PowerSongs to as many camps as I can, while I have the energy and capacity to travel and teach.

At 63, I’m motivated to stay strong and healthy to achieve my goal.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://singingchildrenhome.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/353284410952101
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/singing-children-home/?viewAsMember=true
• Youtube: coming soon!

Image Credits
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