Boulder, CO – Grace Sun, age 17, of San Diego, California, has been named a winner of the 2023 Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes. The Barron Prize annually honors 25 outstanding young leaders who have made a significant positive impact on people, their communities, and the environment. Fifteen top winners each receive $10,000 to support their service work or higher education.
Grace founded Melodies for Remedies, a nonprofit that uses the performing arts to bring healing and joy to senior citizens, including those living with Alzheimer’s disease. In the past three years, she and her team of over 100 student volunteers have hosted 50 large-scale concerts and music therapy sessions. A trained classical pianist of 11 years, she was first inspired by a talent show her middle school organized for a local senior home. Moved by the seniors’ cheers and the conversations she had with them, she realized the power of music to spread joy and forge connections. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Grace felt lost without her usual piano performances and competitions. Knowing that seniors were especially isolated, she gathered a group of peers to perform free virtual concerts for senior homes, family care centers, and hospitals.
Two years later, Grace stumbled across an article about music therapy as a possible treatment for Alzheimer’s. Intrigued, she and her team performed their usual classical program for an audience of Alzheimer’s patients — and were met with silence. They decided to overhaul their repertoire, replacing Beethoven sonatas with oldies from the 1950s. At their next concert, the Alzheimer’s seniors smiled, clapped, and sang along with the familiar tunes. An aspiring physician-researcher, Grace is fascinated by the cognitive benefits performing arts can provide and is interning with Alzheimer’s San Diego. Melodies for Remedies is working to increase awareness of the disease and has raised $4,000 to support research as well as music therapy materials. “Through benefit concerts and raising awareness of dementia, I hope to grow my musical cause for the community,” says Grace. “I hope the music we bring can touch more people’s hearts and bring joy to everyone involved in the program.”
The Barron Prize was founded in 2001 by author T. A. Barron and was named for his mother, Gloria Barron. Since then, the Prize has honored more than 500 young people who reflect the great diversity of America. All of them demonstrate heroic qualities like courage, compassion, and perseverance as they work to help their communities or protect the planet.
“Nothing is more inspiring than stories about heroic people who have truly made a difference to the world,” says T. A. Barron. “And we need our heroes today more than ever. Not celebrities, but heroes – people whose character can inspire us all. That is the purpose of the Barron Prize: to shine the spotlight on these amazing young people so that their stories will inspire others.”
For more information, visit www.barronprize.org