Foundation donates $25,000 in art supplies for elementary schools
By Amy Widner
LITTLE ROCK — North Little Rock’s THEA Foundation and Chesapeake Energy delivered $25,000 in art supplies to 26 elementary schools in White, Cleburne, Faulkner, Conway and Van Buren counties last week.
The Three Rivers schools that received the supplies were Westside Elementary in Searcy and Heber Springs Elementary. From those drop-off points they are to be distributed to elementary schools throughout each county.
The THEA Foundation is a nonprofit organization that promotes the arts in education. Chesapeake Energy, a major company involved with developing the Fayetteville Shale natural gas deposits, donated the funds for this year’s delivery. This is the second year for the project, which is called THEA’s Art Closet.
Paul Leopoulos is executive director of the foundation. He said the deliveries average about $1,000 worth of supplies per art teacher. The THEA Foundation started in 2001 and emphasizes the importance of the arts in schools through scholarships and other programs, with the philosophy that the arts give students the confidence they need to succeed in other areasof life, like academics. Leopoulos said THEA’s Art Closet was started because the art programs he works with across the state often have little to no money budgeted for supplies from their school districts.
“The program stated because we were sick and tired of watching our teachers pull money out of their own pockets to buy art supplies when they don’t make that much money in the first place,” Leopoulos said. “Anda lot of Arkansas families are poor, so they shouldn’t have to pay for it either.
“And with art supplies, you’re not talking about reusable resources. They run out every year. So ultimately it should be a budget thing, not some nonprofit trying to help, but until then we’ll try to help because it’s a chronic problem.”
Last year THEA took in-kind donations for the Art Closet, but that process turned out to be overwhelmingly labor intensive, Leopoulos said. So this year, they decided to focus their efforts on getting moneydonations, although they will still accept in-kind donations. Chesapeake was the only corporation to donate this year, and the donations are going to schools in the counties where Chesapeake is doing business.
Chesapeake Communications Director Mark Raines said after meeting with Leopoulos, Chesapeake’s Little Rock office decided his vision was a good fit for the corporation’s mission to support education.
“Education is one of the things we mean when we talk about investing in the area,” Raines said. “Paul has a reallycontagious spirit about him, and we really believe in this project.”
The THEA Foundation’s next project is THEA Paves the Way, from 8:30 a.m. to noon Saturday, Sept. 13, at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock. Teams are invited to color the sidewalk in front of the library with sidewalk chalk.
More information about the THEA Foundation is available online at www.theafoundation. org or by calling (501) 379-9512.
- awidner@ arkansasonline.com
This article was published August 17, 2008 at 2:56 a.m.
Three Rivers, Pages 107, 117 on 08/17/2008
