Community Needs Assessment
Kennedy Dancers
Summer Youth Camp

Rapidly growing on the path of becoming the largest city in New Jersey, Jersey City has few enrichment artistic, or quality, of life programs for our children. Struggling for funding the arts are caught in the crossfire of funding between Newark and New York City. Jersey City receives NO funding from the Federal government. The state of New Jersey only gives the Kennedy Dancers and Scholar Canturom funding for their programs. In the past 40 years only 2 non-profit arts organizations have received small grants to serve Jersey City’s youth, yet Newark received over 40 million dollars for a multitude of summer day camps and after school programs. The Kenned Dancers easily serve over 500 school and studio students and students yearly. With the help of foundations such as CDBG and the New Jersey Council on the Arts we are able to continue our after school Inner City Youth dance and training program. However, we carry on where 95% of our students are very low to low-moderate income. These needs are assessed from statistics and intake forms of 500 Kennedy Dancer students, documenting income, residency, age, etc. The Inner City Youth students come here free of charge September through June. The Summer Camp Program is from July to August with classes in ballet, tap, modern, African, Latin, gymnastics, ballroom ,acting, singing, and piano (music theory) taught by certified professional teachers. Students will experience a summer of fun and learning, which would normally cost thousands. The families in the communities we serve simply cannot afford such high costs. Your grant will make it possible for us to accept students free of charge and which provide them with the opportunity to experience a summer program that typically only more affluent families can afford. In keeping with the Jersey City Consolidated Plan priority we have made our Summer Program accessible and available to all low to low-moderate income youth and their families who reside in Jersey City.