How can we help?

In our last post, we announced that Bitty City Players is becoming a nonprofit! Our Executive Director, Caroline Patterson, shares why this next chapter will be the best yet.

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Hello friends!

Caroline here. I hope that you and your families are hanging in there. It’s been a rough year for all of us, and one of the roughest parts for me personally has been not being able to spend time, in person, with most of our Bitty City community. I MISS YOU! The Bitty City teachers and I miss the smiles and the discoveries, the eagerness to show off projects, the hugs and personalized drawings. 

We miss facing challenges with you too - figuring out how to share, dusting off after a fall, sorting through the emotions of a hard day, and solving problems big and small.

But most of all, I miss sharing programming that has made a positive difference in the lives of many children, families, and teachers in New York City.

As I adapted our work to be online and outdoors, I also spent a lot of time looking inwards. I asked myself - and my teachers and community members, including some of you - about the core values of our work. I meditated on what is meaningful to us as educators and as human beings. And I wondered how to make some lemonade out of these pandemic lemons.

Our answer, so far, is that we want to provide programming that is accessible. We want Bitty City to be a resource for young children of NYC and their families and teachers, especially those who have limited access to enrichment opportunities. So how will we do this?

The very short version is: we are starting a nonprofit!

This change will allow us to:

• Offer reduced or waived tuition for our comprehensive afterschool programs, providing necessary and meaningful childcare for working families
• Provide free or low-cost “in-school field trips”, especially our unique STEAM-based enrichment workshops for each of NYC’s PreK curriculum units
• Expand programming to new audiences, such as working with social service partners to provide small group arts classes designed to help young children process trauma.
• Partner with stakeholders in the community to provide public programs and events.

We are so excited to go on this journey with you, and would love to hear your feedback. What do YOU need from us? Please share your questions and ideas with us in the comments or at [email protected].

For more info and resources, keep an eye on our blog and follow us on social media:  Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Most importantly, stay safe and healthy.
Let’s crush these lemons!

Playfully Yours,

Caroline