Thank you for Keeping Us Moving

Dear Friend,

As 2024 comes to a close, our team is filled with gratitude for your support, and inspired by the incredible milestones we've achieved together this year. Your generosity and engagement have powered Dance for PD's mission to bring movement, joy, creativity, and connection to individuals living with Parkinson's and their families around the world. 

Over the past year, you helped us:

• Expand opportunities: We offered more than 400 free classes for people living with Parkinson's and their families in NYC and around the world. We worked with New York City partners to increase Dance for PD PRO programming for Young Onset Parkinson's participants by 50%. Globally, we worked with our partners and affiliates to launch or pilot programs in 20 new communities in 6 countries, including the US, United Kingdom, South Korea, Sweden, Australia, and Norway.
• Expand access: We launched new Spanish-speaking classes in NYC, released Spanish and Mandarin versions of our At Home instructional videos, and partnered with Mediflix to drive new audiences to our resources.
• Expand Knowledge: We rolled out an interactive online training portal in English and Portuguese that enables teachers with busy schedules to learn valuable skills and prepare to lead classes in their own communities. We also launched an NIH-funded research project with Northeastern University to study our program's impact on physical activity in people living with Parkinson's. 

For more than two decades, our program has been committed to supporting people in 30 countries who rely on Dance for PD to manage symptoms, enhance well-being, and foster community. Behind the numbers are individual lives transformed by joy, connection, and hope. Every day, Dance for PD programs remind our global community that they are more than their diagnosis.

I thought you might enjoy hearing from some of our participants about the impact your support makes:

Meet Carol and Bill:

Meet JM:

Community members like Carol, Bill, and JM inspire us to plan ambitious goals for 2025:

• Offering hundreds of free classes for people living with Parkinson's in NYC and around the world
• Training 125+ new teaching artists dedicated to sharing the joys and benefits of dance with their local communities on six continents and creating professional development resources for thousands of teaching artists around the world. We'll also roll out a version of our online training portal in Spanish.
• Distributing 10 microgrants to help newly trained teachers jumpstart Dance for PD programs in new and underserved communities worldwide through the Bowen Fund for Growth
• Building new partnerships in healthcare, academia, and social service sectors to share the benefits of dance with more people

Your generosity this year makes it possible for us to dream big and deliver programs that truly transform lives - for people like Carol to “be active and live a creative life”. 

Thank you for being an integral part of our Dance for PD family. Together, we’ll keep moving forward—one step at a time.
 

With deep gratitude and best wishes for the new year,
David Leventhal
Program Director, Dance for PD

ps. You've already supported us so generously - thank you! If you'd like to make an extra year-end gift before December 31, please click here.