BusinessWire: "Inner City Students Cap Summer Enrichment Program at the Orange County Performing Arts Center"

Students at the Nicholas Academic Centers capped a summer of theater, music, dance and other cultural education classes by attending a performance of Fiddler on the Roof at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. The Henry T. Nicholas III Foundation, which funds the Centers, treated approximately 40 students to an evening performance followed by a question-and-answer session with cast members and informal dinner.

Throughout the school year, Nicholas Academic Center students from Santa Ana and Valley High Schools spend most their afternoons doing homework, studying for the SATs, and completing college applications. The free Summer Enrichment program was started as a supplementary course to the academic school-year portion to help make up for drastic cuts in summer school curriculum by partnering with organizations that are part of the Nicholas Foundation philanthropic network, such as the Performing Arts Center and the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. Students were introduced to various experiences oftentimes limited by their socio-economic backgrounds.

The program aimed to enhance the Nicholas Academic Centers’ curriculum, to help improve the students’ academic achievement and to encourage them to find new ways of expressing themselves through the arts. For many students, Fiddler on the Roof was only their second experience at a live theatrical performance—the first being a performance of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, at the Performing Arts Center earlier in the summer and also sponsored by the Henry T. Nicholas III Foundation.

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