Our MDT Outreach Mission

Our MDT Outreach Mission

In every walk of life there are opportunities to give back to individuals, groups and the community. As skills and techniques are mastered, often the greatest rewards can come by giving those talents and skills to others.

Recently Stanford University completed a 10 year study of young people's participation in community based organizations outside of school. Art-based activities emerged as having the greatest impact on children - greater than athletics, greater than community service.

Youngsters in arts programs are: 31% more likely to say they plan to continue education after high school, 4 times more likely to participate in a science or math fair and 23% more likely to say they can do things as well as most other people ca.

Since its founding over eleven years ago, Marin Dance Theatre has established a tradition of community outreach to share the traditions of dance in many of its forms. We are very proud to have several excellent MDT Outreach programs that reach out with our students, teachers, staff and parent volunteers to our extended community. We have made this commitment in three distinct areas:

• By creating customized dance education programs for our public schools.

• By performing at venues like Stanford Children’s Hospital and nursing homes and retirement centers in association with Bread and Roses – benefiting both public and private programs.

• By providing extraordinary opportunity for children of low-income families to obtain a world-class dance education through scholarship programs.

Our Community Dance Director, Cynthia Pepper, has taught dance in both public and private schools in Marin County for the past twenty years. Ms. Pepper has directed and taught “Dance In Schools,” programs for “Youth In Arts,” Marin Dance Theatre, Vector and also independently as a freelance choreographer/teacher.

As you know, the funding for all schools is being reduced and arts education is always among the first programs to be eliminated. But dance makes children smarter! Recent research has shown that tools developed through arts education extend to other subjects. A widely quoted 1995 study of SAT scores indicates that students who studied the arts for four years or more scored an average of 59 points higher on verbal and 45 points higher on math sections.

Outreach programs of this caliber simply cannot exist without the generous support of charitable organizations. Opportunities abound for foundations and individuals to join in support of the MDT Outreach program. To Invest In Our Future please contact our Director of Corporate and Foundation Development, Susan Brown info@mdt.org.