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“The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it”

By Jeanne E. Harrison,Producing Artistic Director, Traveling Players Ensemble
HamletRoyalsTraveling Players Ensemble is a not-for-profit theater company whose mission is to bring great theater into the great outdoors. Kids from Virginia, Maryland, and DC join ensembles to learn and perform plays by Shakespeare and Moliere, Greek myths, and fairy tales retold using the Commedia dell’Arte style.

At the company’s landmark summer camp, performers in elementary through high school rehearse and perform outdoors, working with professional directors and designers. Younger players tour their productions locally, while older performers depart on multi-day tours to outdoor venues like Skyline Drive’s Skyland Amphitheater, Lime Kiln Theater, and Douthat State Park. High schoolers camp out near their performance venues like traveling Renaissance artists.
MacbethWitchesTraveling Players Ensemble puts the “camp” back in “summer camp.” Our no-phone policy allows performers to learn high-level language skills, teamwork, camaraderie, and problem solving skills, all while creating lifelong friendships and a deep love and stewardship of the great outdoors. Our teaching artists return yearly to help our kids create theater and watch them grow as artists and people over the summer, and then from year to year as so many campers return to Traveling Players again and again!

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The cold snap at the end of 2017 made for a not so happy start to the new year for Traveling Players Ensemble. Pipes froze and burst in the donated storage space housing Traveling Players’ 4,000+ costume pieces, props, and camping equipment. As temperatures rose, water rained down, saturating ceiling tiles and collapsing large portions of ceiling into the storage space. The leak soaked expensive costumes donated by the Washington Metropolitan Opera, tents used on tour, sleeping bags used by scholarship students who may not have the means to purchase them for tours, and thousands of articles of clothing used every summer and winter by TPE’s costume and prop artists to create the worlds inhabited by our performers.

Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire.
I do wander everywhere
Swifter than the moon’s sphere.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

Miser BowWe may not be preparing for the arrival of the Queen and her elves, but we are a resilient community of performers, teaching artists, staff, and families. Our community responded to the flood with a brigade of volunteers who laundered and salvaged costume pieces. Alums and staff rolled up their sleeves to excavate the storage space with no heat and no bathrooms. Families, alumni, and friends banded together to donate more than $6,000 in a week. We are so thankful for the outpouring of support from our community, but we need more help now and in the months to come.

Here are some things you can do to help:

Boost our signal!

Know kids who would be perfect for our programs? Let them know! Enrollment is open for 2018′s summer camp. Early Bird enrollment ends on February 10th. Share information on your social media channels and on your school and community listservs. Here is a link to our summer camp signup information. Also, share this post so others can learn about Traveling Players.

Want to Volunteer? Two Options!

1) Join our all volunteer Board of Directors. We are actively looking for new members to join us. Quarterly meetings and a small Board allow each member to make an impact. Please email Deborah Stein at dlsteinhome@gmail.com to learn more about Board service.

2) Volunteer your time. Enter your information here to be added to our volunteer contact list. Once we secure new storage space, we will need volunteers to move stock into its new home and to organize it. We welcome volunteers grade 7 and up.

Attend a performance!

DATE AND TIME: March 18th at 3 pm

PLACE: The Madeira School, 8328 Georgetown Pike, McLean, VA 22102

WHAT: You can see our younger performers in Winnie the Pooh & Friends. After Pooh and pals leave the Hundred Acre Woods, you can see our high schooler’s stage Euripides’ classic tragedy Trojan Women. Tickets may be purchased at the door.

Calling all Girl Scouts!

Girl Scouts can no longer earn a Theater Badge — unless they do it with us! Yes, we have a limited supply of “Make Your Own” Theater Patches and expert staff to get you through it in an afternoon. Spring dates are April 8, 22 and June 3. Book early as dates are limited.

#TPETuesday.

Search our hashtag and like our posts. Follow us:

Facebook – @Traveling Players Ensemble

Twitter – @travplay

Instagram – travelingplayers

Moliere tells us, “the greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.” We have glory to share with any and all who respond to our call for help. Join us. All are welcome here!

Mentoring Matters at Community Bridges

by Shannon Babe-Thomas, Executive Director, Community Bridges
image1Community Bridges is a local nonprofit with a mission to empower girls from diverse backgrounds to become exceptional students, positive leaders and healthy young women. We do so by addressing the developmental needs of immigrant and minority girls and their families living at or below the federal poverty level in Montgomery County, Maryland. Our integrated 4th through 12th grade after and out-of-school Girls Program supports the growth of our young women over a 9 year continuum by helping them understand their potential and life choices, learn creative strategies to become leaders and break their family’s cycle of poverty using education as a vehicle.
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We further extend our impact on Community Bridges girls by supporting them with one-on-one mentoring, college and career programming, service opportunities, educational learning trips and by offering workshops that provide resources and support for their families. Combined, our programs encourage the development of the entire girl so that she will have the greatest chance to reach her fullest potential.
image3The Community Bridges Mentoring Program connects positive female role models with diverse high school girls for an impactful mentoring experience. Throughout the course of the mentorship, mentor and mentee work together to achieve the mentee’s long- and short-term goals while developing a close, caring relationship based upon consistency, mutual respect and trust.

Nobody succeeds on their own: each young person’s strength and resilience is fostered by those who have taught them they can do anything they put their mind to. Barack Obama, National Mentoring Month Proclamation 2017

January is National Mentoring Month. Research has shown that youth with mentors are more likely to enroll in college, volunteer in their community, and hold leadership positions than youth without mentors. In short, mentoring matters.
image1 (1)Below, read the story of Community Bridges mentor Margo and her mentee Etsube to find out why mentoring matters to them.

“Etsube says that when I walked into the room she had hoped I’d be her mentor. When I was, in fact, paired with Etsube, we talked readily about , the freedom that comes with a driver’s license, about her Ethiopian family. Etsube surprised me with her intensity it was a glimpse of her resolve to embrace opportunities to express herself.

I was not sure what to expect , but I know what I have found: richness and meaning through a warm new friendship.

In our first month I asked to meet Etsube’s parents. I arrived at their home and we enjoyed in the traditional way using homemade injera to pick up the vegetables. We talked about technology in kids lives, the classic masinko stringed instrument, and the importance of developing our own strengths in life.

In a fractured world, mentoring offers ways to knit together lives and cultures.”

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Margo and Etsube are one of many mentoring pairs in the Community Bridges Mentoring Program, and theirs is one of many stories showing why mentoring matters. You too can make a difference in your community through mentoring. Help inspire the next generation of leaders by becoming a mentor today! To learn more about Community Bridges go to www.communitybridges-md.org.

Applying to the Catalogue with Only Make Believe

by Tamela Aldridge, Regional Director, Only Make Believe
omb2Only Make Believe (OMB),established in 1999 in New York City, is a nonprofit organization that creates and performs interactive theater for chronically ill and disabled children in hospitals and care facilities. Only Make Believe is dedicated to the principle that engaging a child’s imagination is a valuable part of the healing and learning process.

Since our program launch in Washington, DC in 2012, OMB has added special education programs to our growing list of local partner facilities . Combining imaginative play with aspects of the students’ learning curricula enriches their educational experience and retention. Our local partner facilities include: The Children’s Inn at NIH, Children’s National Medical Center, Jill’s House, HSC Pediatric Center – Kids in Action program, St. Coletta of Greater Washington and River Terrace Education Campus.

As a fairly new organization in the DC metro area, we learned about the Catalogue of Philanthropy and its mission in 2013. Having determined our short and long term goals for the DC program, our organization recognized that a partnership with the Catalogue would be greatly instrumental in ensuring our success.
omb4 The ultimate goal for Only Make Believe is to serve as many chronically ill and disabled children in the DC metro area as possible, and to meet this goal OMB needed to become one of the top philanthropic organizations in this area. Partnership with the Catalogue was a huge step towards achieving our goal.

The application process is very thorough. I wouldn’t say its hard, but it require a lot of time to concisely construct thoughtful, accurate and impactful statements which reflect the alignment of your organization to the Catalogue’s mission. This application process is not simply stock answers that you provide for grant applications. Each organization that applies needs to really consider what it would be bringing into a partnership with the Catalogue, not just how the Catalogue can benefit their organization. Also, you definitely need your financial records (990, audit, 501 (c) 3 letter) to be up to date and accurate.
EOY-17OMB applied to the Catalogue three times before being invited to join in partnership. The first rejection in 2014 was due to a lack of clarity and separation between our DC office and our New York headquarters. We learned from this first experience how to present our financials to demonstrate we are a branch of the organization that specifically serves the DC metro area and our operations are contingent upon fundraising done in this area.

The second rejection in 2015 was actually great for us. We were about to see how we had improved from the feedback from the previous year and basically the panelists were uncertain about our longevity in this area since we had been in existence for less than 3 years and had a very small footprint in DC. That being said, OMB decided to forgo applying in 2016, which provided more time to create more local partnerships and serve more chronically ill and disabled children and clearly articulate the impact our organization has in the DC metro area.

Our 2017 application was successful and upon notification of our acceptance, we squealed in delight! Only Make Believe was accepted into the Catalogue of Philanthropy during our 5 year anniversary celebration in DC!
28360853626_6ef2ae6de4_oThe DC staff has received invitations to professional development workshops, organizational assessment of office functionality, online tools and cultural insights since our acceptance in the Catalogue. The support of the Catalogue staff has been immeasurable and the visibility that is provided with acceptance has been awesome.

Our Giving Tuesday campaign results doubled from our previous years, and we’ve received several inquiries from people wanting to volunteer with our organization. But most importantly, being members of the Catalogue took us out of our bubble and showed us there is a robust community of nonprofit organizations in DC of varying sizes, missions, and capabilities. We are able to share with and learn from these fellow nonprofits, which in turn helps in galvanizing all our efforts to support the DC community and continue upward momentum of growth and service.
28111233170_031f89ccdc_oOMB would certainly still apply, but we would be more mindful about how Only Make Believe can add to the collective of wonderful nonprofit organizations that comprise the Catalogue for Philanthropy. With every partnership there is give and take; OMB strives to ensure that we give just as much to support the mission of the Catalogue and our fellow nonprofit partners as they freely give to Only Make Believe.

For more information about Only Make Believe or to volunteer or attend of our our events, visit http://www.onlymakebelieve.org/

To apply to the Catalogue for Philanthropy, visit https://www.cfp-dc.org/cfpdc/apply.php