Penn Yan Theatre Company Receives Additional Funding for Youth Theatre Summer Camp

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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Contact information:
Dusty Baker
contact@pytco.org
315-694-2207