Life Center grants help kids dance, learn
They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said, ‘NO! NO! NO!’
... I ain’t got time, and if my daddy thinks I’m fine,
He tried to make me go to rehab, but I won’t go, go, go!
Amy Winehouse
Back in the 1980s and ’90s there was a rambling adobe compound out on Agua Fria where people went to dry out, get un-strung out, hang out and work their problems out. Everybody knew somebody who’d been out to The Life Center.
In 2002 the venerable rehab’s board of directors decided to close the brick and mortar establishment, and ever since they have been strictly a grant-based foundation. Their fundraising efforts go to other people’s establishments, in the form of cash grant awards to worthy recipients. The priority now is specifically preventive, to enrich high-risk children before something happens to irrevocably mess up their lives.
About 60 avid supporters attended the annual awards ceremony in the Hacienda at Hotel Santa Fe. Fire crackling in the fireplace, delectable hors d’oeuvres, interesting people to talk to. Marjorie-Miller Engel has been on this board for 30 years, as have her husband, Bob Engel, and beloved Santa Fe pediatrician Ed Kleiner. Linda Osborne took a break from the board and is now back on. They keep on wanting to do this: identifying and giving money to important children’s programs.
The board awarded this year’s $10,000 grand prize grant to The National Dance Institute, whose exemplary “Dance to Success” program for elementary school children instills confidence and perseverance (among other things), as well as teaching some really serious dances!
Executive Director Russell Brand says NDI “teaches kids that it takes energy and effort to do something excellent,” and that we are each worth doing our best. What these children accomplish at the annual spring performance is always absolutely awe-inspiring!
Ten thousand schoolchildren were served by this “motivating and empowering” program in 2017. These are active, busy, positive kids who presumably don’t have the time, energy, or motivation to get into mischief — one good way to stay out of rehab (i.e., a preventive program)!
NDI is the cousin of the New Mexico School for the Arts, also the brainchild of NDI founder Catherine Oppenheimer. This is the charter high school moving into Sanbusco Center as soon as the renovations are complete, in spring 2019. Designed by trendy Lake/Flato, it will be airy, light and bright, multi-usage, and strikingly gorgeous! Remember, in art form follows function, and it does at this school. With academics in the classrooms in the morning and concentration on the arts in the studios in the afternoon — drawing, painting, music, dance, drama — intellectual excellence flourishes and artistic talent will blossom! This place makes me want to go right back to high school! And Hallelujah! They got a gift too!
The generous Life Center Foundation awarded the School for the Arts and four other finalists $5,000 each. The others were:
St. Elizabeth’s Shelter for their Child Enrichment Program; Performance Santa Fe for schoolchildren to receive individual instruction on their instrument from a professional musician(!) ; Wings for Life for their Life Skills Training for children in Roswell; and Canyones Early Childhood Center to teach literacy skills to preschoolers.
P.S.: Poor Amy. She shoulda gone to rehab.