PECAA Gives… Leaving a positive, lasting impact on the communities where we come together.
Thank You to Everyone Who Donated!
We are pleased to announce that together, the PECAA Community raised $20,760 for the PECAA Gives 2019 beneficiary, Anthropos Arts!
The PECAA Event Planning Team toured several local non-profit organizations while site visiting for the 2019 Annual Meeting in Austin, TX. After careful consideration, and many heart-tugging discussions, PECAA chose Anthropos Arts as its 2019 PECAA Gives beneficiary, with a fundraising goal of $20,000.
We were able to present a check to the organization during the Member Appreciation Party on Friday, May 17th, after a lively performance from the student band.
Left: Jamie Hughes, PECAA Senior Vice President & General Manager, presents the Anthropos Arts organization with a check after their Friday night performance. PECAA went on to raise an additional $3,260 for the charity through the course of the meeting!
2019 PECAA Gives Beneficiary
Anthropos Arts, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization, was founded to address a need in Austin for high-quality music education for low-income students. They are committed to connecting at-risk youth with professional musicians to cultivate confidence, integrity and life-skills through musical instruction and mentorship.
100% of their students are from low-income families, ranging from homeless, food-insecure, to just short of meeting the basic needs for survival. The students are, on average, 7 times as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to still be poor/unemployed by age 35, and 63 times more likely to have an adult crime on their record than someone with a Bachelor’s degree. These are just a few of many daunting statistics showing how the odds are stacked against the students they serve.
Anthropos began in the Spring of 1998 at Travis and Reagan High School, with 2 workshops and 15 students getting free lessons. Since then, they have gone on to provide over 18,000 music lessons to students living in poverty, have offered over 100 incredible workshops in Title I schools with world-class and Grammy-winning artist, have held over 150 public student performances, have conducted over 10,000 lessons and collaborated with world-renowned artists. All of this has come at a $0 cost to the students, families, schools, or districts that they serve.
Students get free instruction and mentoring from some of the best artists in the country, performance opportunities at Austin’s best-known venues and exposure to a wide range of music as both an audience and a performer.
For 12 years, 100% of the Anthropos Arts students have graduated High School and more than 90% have gone on to college on scholarship. For 5 of the last 6 years, 100% of grads (15-20 each year) have gone on to college. Twelve out of 18 of the 2017 class received full-rides to four-year universities – all of them the first in their families to do so.
