Singer Amy Winehouse’s father says he’s had a tough time dealing with the loss of his daughter, but he’s happy she’s having a helpful impact through the foundation named after her.

“Even after a small space in time — we’re talking a year since Amy passed away — we are beginning, well, Amy is beginning, to have a positive effect on a lot of disadvantaged young people’s lives,” Mitch Winehouse said in an interview. Monday marked the one-year anniversary of her death from alcohol poisoning; she was 27.

The Amy Winehouse Foundation was launched last year in the United Kingdom and in April in the United States.

Mitch Winehouse spent Monday with family and friends. First they planned to go to Amy’s house for Jewish prayer and to be with the singer’s fans. Then close friends headed to a party at Jazz After Dark, which was “Amy’s favorite jazz bar.”

“There are going to be lots of tears and lots of laughter, and that is exactly how Amy would have wanted it,” he said.

Amy Winehouse was one of music’s critically revered singers, praised for her touching lyrical content, soulful tone and authenticity. Her debut, Frank, was a U.K. success, but her breakthrough came with 2007’s Back to Black, a multiplatinum effort that won her five Grammy Awards.

Mitch Winehouse said during that peak, “she was Adele and Lady Gaga rolled into one.”

In the United Kingdom, the Winehouse family has raised more than $1 million and has assisted various charities. In the U.S., the group is working with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra to develop “after school music club houses” and feed hungry children throughout Louisiana.

The foundation has raised profits from donations and the release of the Amy’s posthumous album Lioness: Hidden Treasures and a book by Mitch Winehouse released earlier this summer, Amy, My Daughter (It Books, $27.99).

“I don’t feel any accomplishment or any joy,” Mitch Winehouse said of the book. “The reality is I shouldn’t have had to written the book in the first place.”

Mitch Winehouse also said there’s more Amy Winehouse music on the horizon: “We’re working with (music producers) Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson to see what they’ve got. But we have to be mindful; we don’t want to put anything out that could be damaging. It wouldn’t be right for Amy’s fans.”