PORTLAND, Maine — The Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine is seeking sponsors to help pay for staff to hold after-hours events for kids who might not normally get to explore the space designed just for them.
The events are called "community partner nights." The Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine has hosted four of these so far, reaching out to groups such as the Center for Grieving Children. Executive director Julie Butcher Pezzino said these nights are sometimes the only opportunities for some kids to visit the museum.
"For a lot of kids, it is one of the only times that they come here," Butcher Pezzino said. "Having an after-hours opportunity for them just makes it easier for them to access."
She said some of the kids they've invited during the previous four community partner nights have struggled to get to the museum due to financial reasons, lack of transportation, or parents' limited schedules.
Butcher Pezzino said the events cost the museum a minimum of $5,000 to pay for transporting kids, paying staff, and keeping the lights on later. She is now asking companies and philanthropists to help fund the eight community partner nights the museum hopes to hold in 2023.
"These nights could not happen without donor support," she said. "We're always looking for additional support, and it is needed. We have many more nights that we're hoping to plan and they are not yet funded."
In early November 2022, the museum coordinated one of its largest nights yet, hosting 300 kids from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southern Maine. Part of the community partner night was the performance of a play that club members at the South Portland location had been working on for weeks.
That community partner night had no sponsor.
"The buy-in has been tremendous, and the kids have actually been sticking along with the program. If anything, it grows every week. So it's bringing in more kids than we expected, and keeping more kids as well," Anthony Martin, program coordinator for BGCSM, said. "Some of the kids that have started that are more on the quiet side are now the loudest kids in the room."
"Exposure to new opportunities and new experiences helps our kids figure out what path they want to go through in life," Erin Giwer, senior program manager for the BGCSM, added.
That's where Nathan Lapointe comes in. Lapointe is the theatre program associate at the Children's Museum and Theatre. He also used to attend Boys and Girls Clubs as he moved from Florida to Arizona and eventually to Van
Buren, Maine. It was in Maine that he found theater and, ultimately, purpose and identity in school after culture shock and bullying.
"It's very personal, yes. It's a full circle moment," Lapointe explained. "I gained more confidence in myself through theater. To know we can give them that experience and to get on a stage for the first time and be creative and improvise and collaborate -- it's necessary for kids."
The Children's Museum and Theatre will hold another night in the spring with Boys and Girls Clubs of Southern Maine, sponsored by Bank of America. To help, email: development@kitetails.org.