Venture Description: Our venture is a program for kids wanting to sing and perform Broadway songs in a safe substance free and non violent atmosphere. The older teens in the group mentor the younger kids by helping them with learning the craft of performing, and by showing the younger kids that positive life choices are rewarding. We picked The Sad Cafe a non profit music venue that was having financial problems to team up with. Their mission statement, as ours, is to promote and support positive lifestyles is an important one for all communities to have. Our theater program will breath new life into The Sad Cafe and help get our message out to kids.

Venture Origin: Lauren and I were in a Broadway Revue together in the summer of 2005. We were the two youngest in the show and learned a lot from the older people in the cast. When the show was done we talked about doing a similar project where older teens would be mentoring younger kids in helping them with their craft and being positive role models.

Innovation: Our group is working on the age old problem of giving kids a reason for not getting involved with any type of substance abuse. We are giving them a place and a fun activity to become involved with. We are doing this by being partnered with an all ages music venue that promotes healthy life choices and has a zero tolerance for any type of abuse.

Impact

Impact: We have impacted the lives of more than 40 kids that practice and are performing in our shows. As we gain more kids our ensemble gets larger and our message to the community that kids that have positive things to do, choose to live a positive lifestyle without drugs, alcohol,and violence. We have had a huge impact for The Sad Cafe, gaining them recognition and support for all the wonderful programs they have that involve youth.

Engagement with the community: The Sad Cafe in Plaistow.NH, has partnered with us in providing their place for us to rehearse and hold our shows.They are a perfect fit for us as their mission of positive life choices and zero abuse of any kind is also their mission. Moynihan lumber donated materials for our props, a local copy shop did our playbill and others made donations by taking out ads in our playbill.

Impact and engagement progress since launch: We have many more kids than the 14 that started with us. They all feel ownership to our venture and committed to living positive lifestyles. The Sad Cafe is seeing an increase in support from the community. Attendance to other programs has increased and they believe that our committment to ourselves and to them is what brought this new attention and support.

Impact and engagement strategy: When we first started our venture we notified the local newspaper. They did a wonderful article on us and we plan on having them come back for a "look at where they are now" type article. We are also going to promote this show on our local community cable by doing little clips of the show, interviewing some of the kids to why this venture is important to them and asking for support.

Awards: Youth Venture

Budget

Amount of Youth Venture seed grant: $864.00

Money raised: We have raised an additional $1,800.00 (approximate). The money came from our split on admissions from our 1st show, ads sold in the playbill, donations, raffles and a small production fee.

Creative ways of raising resources: We have a production fee of $30.00 per kid. We are getting $15.00 of that amount, the other $15.00 is going toward a tshirt and DVD of the show. We also sell ads in the playbill at a very reasonable amount of money. We are putting together a cook book of favorite recipes of the kids to sell.

Strategy

Expansion plan for next 6 months: We will be doing our third show in the next period of 6 months. We hope to have more kids involved in the show and in the process of picking which musicals to do. We would also like to start taking our show to nursing homes by our third show.

Plans for sustaining the project: By having everyone involved feel ownership to this venture. We have the older kids involved with working to sustain the venture now with the younger kids learning what needs to be done to keep it going. Grant writing and finding funds will always be the biggest challenge.

Vision for three years from now: In three years I see this program as a model helping other communities set up similar programs where older teens mentor vunerable younger kids as safe positive role models. It does not have to be theater, it can be any program that brings passion and good role models together. I know in 3 years The Sad Cafe will be fiscally sounder and we will have been a big part of them reaching that point.

Project impact: We have made life easier for our community by providing a place where any kid under the age of 20 wanting to be in our program can be. We have endless roles on stage and behind the scenes. Our shows are made up of selected songs from 4 different musicals allowing kids that feel intimidated by a lot of lines in a play to still be able to perform in a musical. If the stage is still intimidating, they can build sets, paint, sew but mostly just be a part of who we are and who we are becoming. We are striving to be a place of fun and making the committment of sharing our craft with one another and making healthy positive life choices. We are giving parents the peace of mind that leaving their younger children with us will be a positive experience. We are helping The Sad Cafe, a non profit venue, with many great programs stay open in our community. The work that they do in addressing social issues of peer pressure, substance abuse, safe dating, and more is so important to our teens and community.

Youth Venture movement - what it means and how you can contribute: Being a part of The Youth Venture movement has been an incredible experience for me. I feel so blessed to have been introduced to this amazing group. They have fully supported and guided me and my decisions. I have participated in their conference calls allowing me to listen to experts and other ventureres on different subjects. I know that our group always mentions in all our correspondence that we are a Youth Venture team. Our t- shirts that are being made are going to carry the logo for The Youth Venture. When people ask we always explain what the Youth Venture is all about. Someday we (venture teams) can give back to them.

Author:
Carly
United States
Website: www.backtobroadway.net