by Juna Dawson-Murray, Guest Writer
When asked to describe Ase’s fundraising event, The Butterfly Effect, Tracee Thomas director of Ase and mentor to countless students at Penn and in the Greater Philadelphia community simply said, “The power of youth to effect change is amazing. Ase is a grass roots organization, the Butterfly effect was grass roots organizing.” Ase Academy is a nonprofit, academic and cultural enrichment program on Saturdays. Ase’s main focus is to help Philadelphia middle and high school students become leaders within their individual communities.
Recently, Facebook held a fundraising competition in which the group that received the most donations would receive an additional cash prize. In an effort to raise donations, Ase hosted The Butterfly Effect, which featured a variety of performing and visual arts from Penn students and artists from other universities and the Philadelphia community. The impressive list of artists included: Excelano Project, Lyrical Playground (a spoken word group based in Philadelphia), Freaks of the Beat, Destination Hip Hop, live painting by Ana Nunez, and music provided by DJ Huevos. Joshua Bennet, Vision Staff Writer and member of Excelano spoke highly of the arts saying, “The Butterfly Effect was a remarkable and perhaps unprecedented collision of hip-hop, personal narrative, the theater, and community activism. Featuring an ensemble of stage performers par excellence, there were moments where I felt as if my heart were going to abdicate its throne and frenetically run elsewhere.”
Though the Ase Saturday Academy did not win the overall competition, we did raise $15,000 on our own in only three weeks. Ase ranked third among all educational organizations participating in the competition. The competition itself and the Butterfly Event were both amazing experiences that participants are sure to remember for some time to come. ASE!
Ase is always excited to have new members in our family. If you are interested in getting involved with Ase Saturday Academy, please feel free to email our director Tracee Thomas at sankofachild@gmail.com , if you have an interest in urban education, or have a particular skill that you would like to teach to 6th-8th graders. Also, feel free to continue to support Ase by donating to us through Facebook causes.
