The gymnasium at the Collin County Boys and Girls Club was empty on a recent Wednesday, but you could still hear shouting.
It started loudly, with “TEN” and then, quieting slightly, “NINE.” The noise was coming from a nearby room, where a group of middle school students was slowly counting down. When they finally whispered, “One,” their silence was broken by the applause of a group of girls, not much older than the middle schoolers, who watched the activity.
The girls, who are rising seniors at Lebanon Trail High School in Frisco, make up the organization Humanities of Tomorrow. Kaushiki Roy, 17, started the group less than a year ago to develop an arts and humanities curriculum that could be taught to Boys and Girls Club students.
Roy said the idea came after she realized that many groups, especially nonprofits, put a disproportionate emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math education.
“If you aren’t good at math, they say you aren’t smart enough, but if you aren’t good at art, you just don’t have the aptitude,” she said.
To address the lack of arts nonprofits offered to lower socioeconomic students, Roy began planning a two-week curriculum that focused on art, theater, dance and music. She soon enlisted several classmates who specialized in each area to help teach.
Wednesday was the second day of the Collin County session, and the students were spending the day dedicated to theater. One of Roy’s classmates, Peyton Carlisle, 17, began the session by explaining the history of theater and some terminology.
As the day progressed, the students participated in activities, such as shaking out their energy and the loud-to-quiet countdown, before ending the day with a skit. The three-day session, which began Monday, ended Friday with a showcase of the skills learned throughout the week.
Holly Ray, a rising seventh-grader from Frisco, said that Monday's Zumba dance lesson was her favorite activity and that the program showed the students that they have the opportunity to pursue a future in the arts.
"It reminded me of what we did in choir at school, like the warmups," she said. "If you want to do theater, they prepare you, if you want to do art, they prepare you, dance, stuff like that."
Throughout the day, Roy seemed perfectly at ease watching her friends lead the instruction. Despite the occasional chatty student who needs to be shushed, or the shy one who has to be coaxed to participate, this is the easy part, she said.
But there were early difficulties, one being how to fund Humanities of Tomorrow. The Rotary Club of Frisco helped sponsor fundraising and donation drives.
Then in June, only weeks before the program was scheduled to begin, the children's center that was lined up to host pulled out because Humanities of Tomorrow wasn’t registered as a 501(c)(3), so it wasn’t a legitimate nonprofit.
“We were so, so close,” Roy said.
That’s when she reached out to Vanessa Ramirez, director of volunteer services for Collin County Boys and Girls Clubs. Ramirez, 28, said she loved the idea of Roy’s project so much that instead of the one session Roy had intended to teach, the club offered her the opportunity to do two.
“It was a really, really low point followed by a really, really high point,” Roy said.
And it was a great choice for the kids, Ramirez said. The emphasis on the arts offered by Humanities of Tomorrow is unlike other summer programs that visit the club, which mostly focus on athletics and STEM, she said, echoing the reason Roy said she began her project.
“I’m seeing them enjoy themselves and smiling and being happy and that’s all that matters,” Ramirez said. “That’s what I’m here for. Educating our students and making sure they’re having a good time, but making sure they’re learning from it, too.”
“It takes a village” to run the Boys and Girls Club run, and Roy and the other volunteers with Humanities of Tomorrow are doing more than their fair share of the outreach, Ramirez said.
While it would be easy for Roy to write off the summer program as a resume booster for her college applications, she doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon. She’s planning curricula centered around cultural awareness and the environment that she hopes to bring to the Boys and Girls Club within the next year. She is applying to colleges in Dallas, Austin and Boston.
“I think Boston has the demographics for Humanities of Tomorrow to expand there,” she said.
Humanities of Tomorrow also plans to officially apply for 501(c)(3) status within the next year. Roy said the project has been more successful than she imagined.
“I’ve been able to apply something that I’m so passionate about, and give it away to people who have the same passion but don’t have the same resources,” Roy said. “It feels really good to be able to give away some of my knowledge.”
