Rosie’s Theater Kids’ Passing It On Gala

Rosie’s Theater Kids (RTKids) will hold its annual Passing It On Gala on Monday, April 15th in New York City. The evening will be a joyful celebration showcasing months of our students’ hard work and mentorship by acclaimed Broadway artists and performers, with post-dinner entertainment.

Rosie O’Donnell and Lori Klinger founded RTKids in 2003 to enrich the lives of children through the arts. To do this, we teach comprehensive music, dance, and theater classes to underserved New York City public school students in grades 5-12 in their classrooms and at our Maraval Arts Center home. In addition, we provide our students with thoughtful mentoring, structured academic support, and guidance as they prepare for high school, college, and beyond. Rosie’s Theater Kids has long recognized that the practice of theater and the performing arts among young people instills in them the lifelong skills of communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and perseverance, and as arts education is cut from school budgets nationwide, this work is more important than ever.

Since our first graduating class, we have boasted 100% high school graduation and college acceptance rates, and our college scholarship program has awarded more than $1.7 million in funding to our most deserving and accomplished students. And we are especially proud that our holistic and all-encompassing approach to supporting our students earned us the 2015 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award, the nation’s highest honor for after-school programs, from former First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House.