Pictured: Emerald City Theatre’s THE SNOWY DAY. Photo by Austin Oie.

Emerald City Theatre (ECT) has announced the 20 winning schools benefiting from the 2017- 2018 One Fund campaign. ECT’s One Fund program is the company’s signature outreach initiative, providing a free performance and free companion book to low-income Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students.

Created to support the improvement of CPS students’ reading abilities, this year’s One Fund will reach 4,000 children with limited access to arts programming throughout the 2017 – 2018 school year. One Fund programming is for schools with 80% or greater low-income populations. 16 of this year’s 20 winning schools have low-income populations of 90% or greater. The 20 schools represent 15 neighborhoods across Chicago’s North, West, and South Sides are:

One Fund will distribute $150,000 worth of programming and books in three ways:

• Read, Write, & Act Classroom Residency by ECT Teaching Artists
• Field Trip Performance to Emerald City Theatre
• Post Show Theater-Literacy Workshops

The 2017 One Fund Committee reviewed all applications and determined final winners. This year, the campaign raised $80,000. The One Fund is powered by KPMG’s Family for Literacy, the One Fund Committee, and over 2,000 individual donors contributing between $1 and $10,000.

ECT’s 2017 One Fund Committee: 
Karen Cardarelli (Co-Chair, ECT Staff), Stephanie Free (Co-Chair), Carly Crawford (ECT Staff), Kate Leslie (ECT Staff), Abby Chung, Julie Duggan, Jessica Dunne, Leslie Fineberg, Amy Lavery, Karen Lurie, Ashley Manzella, Isabela Marchi, Elizabeth Marcus, Lily Rin-Laures, Sharon Silberg, Heike Spahn, Charlene Tomazin, and Nichol Vargas.

For more information on Emerald City Theatre visit EmeraldCityTheatre.com.