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You’ve been seeing the teasers on social media, but here is our reveal (well, some of the reveal.) A very special event will happen in our community this fall. In cooperation with Rivertown Dance Academy, Kids’ Club will lead a flash mob for charity. Flash mob participants will ask friends and family to sponsor them, with the money raised going to Kids’ Club to support local non-profits serving the youth of Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown. We already have some well-known community members signed up to dance with us! If you’d like to participate or learn more about the plans, please contact Char at vicepresident@kidsclubtarrytown.org.

Kids’ Club is excited to have added Community Wardrobe as a grant recipient this year. CW is a joint effort of the Horsemen PTA and the Village of Sleepy Hollow operating out of 222 North Washington Street in Sleepy Hollow. It collects good donated clothing for men, women and children and offers them in a store-like setting at no cost to families and individuals in need. What makes CW extra-special is the time and energy put into creating a dignified shopping experience for their clients. Volunteers, such as Daphne and Sophia (pictured here), spend many hours each month sorting the clothing onto well-labeled racks so that shoppers can easily identify the size and style of the items that they need. To learn more about collection dates, shopping hours or how you can volunteer, please email them at CommunityWardrobe@horesmenpta.com or visit their website at http://horsemenpta.com/community-wardrobe.

After five weeks of learning, practicing and having fun, Cumbia for Kids had its culminating performance on June 9th at the Kathryn W. Davis Riverwalk Center in Sleepy Hollow’s Kingsland Point Park. Kids’ Club, which provides scholarships to the program, was happy to join the participants’ friends and family members at the event. It was so fun to see and hear the students singing, dancing and educating the audience about the frogs of Colombia and how climate change is affecting their habitats. We loved the synchronized drumming too! Congratulations to directors and creators, Anna Povich de Mayor, Pablo Mayor and Daniel Fetecua for engaging our community’s youth with another delightful musical, cultural and educational experience.

To say that Kids’ Club donors have touched the lives of this year’s graduating class of SHHS seniors would be an understatement! When Kids’ Club launched in June 2009, the Class of 2023 had not even begun formal schooling yet, but many of the students already were benefiting from Kids’ Club supported programs, and that access to opportunity will have continued up until their high school graduation on June 22. Because of the generosity of our donors, Kids’ Club has been able to help enrich, encourage and educate these students for 14 years, and we are so excited to see what they will achieve next!

Kids’ Club directors were excited to meet with a group of first generation college bound seniors at Sleepy Hollow High School on May 31st to talk about their paths to college and the different programs that touched their lives and helped them achieve their goals. These programs included those that gave basic needs supports (e.g., food and clothing), to enriching after school arts programs and summer camps that kept the students busy and safe when their parents were working outside the home, academic programs that helped foster confidence in their abilities and helped them believe in their futures, and practical technological and college prep supports that helped even the playing field as these students competed for college acceptances against others whose families had more familiarity with the application process.

Specifically, among just the quartet of students we met, we learned that, collectively, they had benefited from more than 25 programs that received Kids’ Club funding. That is quite an impact! Without these supports, one has to wonder if their journeys would have been as successful and personally rewarding. For example, without access to working laptops donated by Kids’ Club to Warner Library, would some of the students’ grades have suffered, impacting their dreams of becoming, for two, a nurse or a computer scientist? Would the two other students be on their way to Bowdoin and Marist if they had not had encouragement and guidance from Hudson Scholars and Latino U College Access? Where would any child be who was food insecure and didn’t have the Community Food Pantry to fall back on when necessary?

So, as we celebrate the achievements of the Class of 2023, we also acknowledge the programs which supported them along the way, and the caring and generous people of our community who helped make those programs accessible to even more wonderful kids. Thank you, donors, and best of luck to the graduates!

Kids’ Club had the pleasure of visiting The Tarrytown Music Hall last week to observe a final rehearsal of the musical “Annie Jr.” performed by 46 Washington Irving students and 1 SHMS student, with 4 SHHS students contributing to stage/set production. The stage was alive with color, dance, and song. The children were wonderfully enthusiastic and engaged, excited to be in their costumes and to sing classic Broadway songs like “Tomorrow” and “It’s a Hard-Knock Life.”

This Theater Residency at Washington Irving School was made possible, in part, by a grant from Kids’ Club to The Music Hall Academy. The goal of the program is for children to learn lifelong skills such as concentration, confidence, coordination, creativity, discipline, empathy, imagination, musicality, physicality and teamwork, and to experience a sense of self-worth and accomplishment. We are thrilled to help bring the experience of live theater to even more children in our community, many of whom would otherwise not have the opportunity to develop their creativity in this way.

December is an especially fun and busy time for many, and that holds true for Kids’ Club too. We know how significant the holidays can be for children and their families, and so we are proud to add some extra support and love this month by:

Fun and games, tacos and the movie “Happy Feet” were on the menu this past Friday at SHADE’s (Sleepy Hollow Academy for Disability Education) Friday Night Social at The Neighborhood House in Tarrytown. There, special needs high school students from ages 13-21 gathered with professional staff and peer interns/mentors for laughs, friendship and camaraderie. Kids’ Club is proud to provide financial support to this unique program, which provides positive social interaction and life skills development and an enriching experience for all.