It is so inspiring and amazing to see so many women involved in fundraisers and non-profit organizations. Charitable organizations help to change lives and make monumental changes. Over the years of being in business at The Rouge Cosmetics in downtown Danville, I have had the opportunity to be involved in raising funds for many charity organizations. This year I am going to partner with a fantastic and passionate professional dancer and choreographer, Melanie Buttarazzi from Los Angeles, who started a program to help foster teen children through dance.
Living in Los Angeles, Melanie Buttarazzi has worked with the industries’ top choreographers on stage, in music videos, and on set, including A-list-artists such as Pitbull, Neyo, and Jennifer Lopez, and has toured the world with the award winning musician Robert Michaels. She also performed in numerous commercials including Christian Loubutin, Sony, and many more. Melanie, an acclaimed pro-dancer and exceptional choreographer from Canada, started dancing at age four and has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dance, from York University.
In 2014 she enrolled in a self-expression leadership program to further her studies in dance. While attending she met a former foster youth who changed the course of her life. She realized after talking to him she wanted to make a difference in foster children’s lives after finding out that only two percent of foster kids go to college and 50% end up homeless. She felt called to make a change.
Melanie understood that foster and at-risk youth needed critical tools to find confidence in themselves. They needed friendships, a sense of community, team building, and most of all, the ability to see a brighter future for themselves and that they could make their dreams happen.
Through Melanie’s influential dance programs and classes at middle and high schools in Los Angeles, she has since helped hundreds of foster teens get through tough times through the Fostering Dreams Project she created. It has helped shape and give positive direction and purpose to these young children through dance, giving them important team building exercises and accountability through dance competitions and performing as a team. The program creates dynamic, self-building, lifetime motivation.
With the donations raised from the many events Melanie does throughout the year, she will be able to continue her outreach program providing youth in group homes and in school districts in Los Angeles and beyond, providing foster kids the means to join in their community and feel a part of a family and team, while meeting kids their own age and developing friendships. While it is hard for foster kids to feel welcome or comfortable in a new environment, through the dance program, Melanie has seen a tremendous shift in attitude with a very successful positive outlook socially and academically amongst the youth. They achieve self-belief, develop a magnificent sense of confidence and high spirits, and do well in school, thus creating a brighter future for themselves.
Melanie brought her youth program to one middle school in Los Angeles with resplendent success and now has seven schools involved with more that want to join. Her success is equally shared with the generous donations from donors that believe in the arts as a way to make positive change. There is mutual benefit for all involved. Evidence shows how the arts inspire and change people’s minds and hearts, which in turn energizes social influence and change.
On March 27th and 28th, you will have a unique opportunity to improve and grow the Fostering Dreams Project by shopping the boutiques on Prospect Avenue in Danville. A portion of all sales will go directly to the program to pay for dance teachers, studio rentals, dance productions, costumes, and scholarships to continue youth dance training and transformative activities. Please come and share with us the dreams of the future generation and give them a chance to dream big.
You can also donate directly to Fosterdreamsproject.com. Any contribution, big or small, will go directly to fund the foster youth program and to grow the organization to benefit each and every foster child attending now and for the future.
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