The McDonald’s Golden Grant Program presented a $1000 grant check to Rhythmix Cultural Works last Thursday, March 7, at Rhythmix.
McDonald’s owner/operators across Northern California through the Central Coast select Golden Grant award recipients from school programs and non-profit organizations that fuel the imagination, education, and growth of students. This year, a total of $40,000 was awarded to 17 different organizations. Rhythmix was the only recipient from Alameda.
This is the second year McDonald’s has orchestrated the Golden Grant program in the area. Last year, the program received 50 applicants and a total of $25,000 was awarded. This year, 118 organizations applied.
“We were really happy to double the amount of applicants,” Public Relations Manager for McDonald’s Anna Lane told the Alameda Post. “We went through and identified areas who didn’t apply last year and sent the information to their city councils to get the info out to their areas and constituents. McDonald’s put a lot of thought and energy into it to make sure that we’re covering as much as we can.”
Lane said McDonald’s strives to make the Golden Grant application process an easy one. “All of our applicants across the service area—that’s everything from Santa Barbara up to Eureka—apply online,” she said. “We don’t expect people to have professional grant writers or anything like that. We make sure we’re working with education programs and nonprofits. So we have those qualifiers to get through. Then they answer what their program is and who they’re serving. From there, we give the committee a description and everything is organically chosen.”
The committee is specifically looking for organizations that help students K-12. “We make sure funds are going directly to children,” said Lane. “We love that everything Rhythmix is doing goes back and directly affects the kids. We want it to really go back into the community and make a difference.”
Accepting the big check from McDonald’s was Rhythmix Executive Director Jennifer Radakovich, Youth and Family Director Michelle Labrador, and Creative Media Director Phong Chung.
“We’re very appreciative of the Golden Grant Award,” said Radakovich. “It is going to support our Performance Art and Learning program, which we affectionately call PAL. PAL is a multicultural assembly program for students. So we bring multicultural ensembles to our theater and we bring students from all over Alameda County to come and experience the shows, learn about culture, learn about music, learn about dance. It’s a really wonderful program. Right now we’re serving about 10,000 students a year.”
PAL’s mission is to foster awareness of world cultures, celebrate diversity, and empower underserved youth by offering professional world music and dance assemblies to students throughout Alameda County. Rhythmix achieves this goal with their lively and inclusive assemblies.
“The program focuses on second through fifth grade,” said Radakovich. “Sometimes we get kindergarten and first grade if we have extra spots. The program has been going on for about 12 years. We started out just by serving schools in Alameda because those were the ones that were close enough to walk. And then a few years into the program we received some transportation funding so we were able to provide buses and bring kids from Oakland. Now we’ve expanded even further so we are bringing kids from San Leandro, Hayward, Newark, and always kids from Alameda—that’s our biggest focus. But we want to make sure we can include everybody.”
A PAL performance is a field trip for participating students. For many of the children, it’s their first time ever stepping foot into a theater. For others, it’s their first time seeing a live performance. “Particularly right after the pandemic, it was a lot of students’ first time on a field trip,” said Radakovich.
The PAL program has grown significantly since its first year, when it served 900 kids from Alameda. Now, live performances see about 3,000 students a year. “We also offer a livestream component,” said Radakovich. “During the pandemic we were completely virtual and we sent recorded assembly programs to a list of about 800 teachers that represented about 25,000 students throughout Alameda County. And we also have been able to start going out to school sites as well and visiting district public high school theaters to bring local students nearby. So we’re trying out different models so that we can increase accessibility.”
Including Title 1 schools in programming is a priority for the Rhythmix team. “We look very carefully at Title 1 schools,” said Labrador. “We have a database, we have scholarships for them, for the bus, for the tickets. We’re really open with all teachers. We tell them, ‘If you can pay for your ticket, it really helps another school that can’t.’ So it’s kind of beautiful how that works out. Thankfully, we’re getting funding from different grants so we’re able to keep the scholarships and not turn anyone away. We’ve had classes come completely free.”
McDonald’s Owner and Operator Brad Goldblatt told the Post he’s hoping the Golden Grant award amount will only continue to grow, and that Rhythmix will apply again next year. “It’s an incredible program for kids,” Goldblatt said. “We’re so happy to be a part of this and help the community.”
Kelsey Goeres is a contributing writer for the Alameda Post. Contact her via [email protected]. Her writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Kelsey-Goeres.
