The Yates Community Endowment is the latest benefactor to support the Penn Yan Theatre Company’s annual Youth Theatre Summer Camp, entering its 19th season. The grant award of $1,000 will be used directly towards offsetting the cost of this year’s program as camp director, Dusty Baker, plans to extend the program after many years of steady growth.
According to Baker, “The continued support of the Yates Community Endowment for another summer is crucial to not only maintaining our programming, but helping reach our vision for growing it.” Having hosted 45 area youth last summer in their production of The Little Mermaid Jr, this year’s program already has 62 youth signed up with registration open until mid-June. “It’s our consistent growth that’s led our planning and production team to the idea of expanding our programming,” Baker adds. “This year we’ll be adding a total of 12 hours of camp time to our schedule and that’s going to make a significant impact on the amount of time we get to spend on the educational piece of our program”.
This year’s camp, thanks to supporters like the Yates Community Endowment, will run for 2 weeks during the day in July and then one week in the evenings in preparation for their production of Willy Wonka Jr. An additional 2 hours of operation will be added on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays during those first two weeks. Funds from the Yates Community Endowment will directly support these efforts as they’ll be used to purchase lunch for youth that indicate they need it and provide small honorariums for high school-age students that serve as counselors for the program.
The Yates Community Endowment is under the guidance of an all-volunteer, all-local advisory board. Since its beginning in 2011, Yates Community Endowment has distributed more than $700,000 in grants to nonprofit organizations serving Yates County. These grants have provided scholarships for Yates County youth to attend summer camp, helped with disaster relief efforts after the flood in 2014, assisted in the creation of the HOPE Center, and connected people in need with programs to help improve their lives.
The camp is set to run July 10 to 27 with the production being July 28, 29 and 30. To learn more about PYTCo’s Youth Theatre Summer Camp, register your child, or support the program yourself, head to pytco.org or email Dusty at contact@pytco.org.
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