Please come and join us—
we want you here!
The Pacific Swing Dance Foundation Scholarship Program was launched for California Balboa Classic 2019 to help address long-standing imbalances in who felt welcome and able to attend the event.
Since then, the program has expanded to also serve Camp Hollywood and we’ve awarded almost 300 scholarships across ten combined years of the two events. Hundreds of dancers have participated and the difference at these events is profound.
The goal of the PSDF Scholarship Program is to help swing dance events like CalBal and Camp Hollywood become more accessible and welcoming to a wider and more diverse array of dancers.
It is a simple a tool we use to invite more dancers into these events and to say unmistakably “Please come and join us—we want you here!”
Scholarship Program Mission Statement The scholarship program of the Pacific Swing Dance Foundation (PSDF) is committed to helping dancers who have been disproportionately affected by discrimination and structural inequalities in society to fully participate in swing dance culture, to include attending swing dance events. Barriers to participation are often related to factors such as race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, social class, income level, disability status, and age; however, this list is not exhaustive and the scholarship committee recognizes that dancers have unique lived experiences of inequality that may involve a combination of these and other factors. The scholarship committee will fulfill this commitment…
The Pacific Swing Dance Foundation scholarship program is committed to helping swing dancers who have been disproportionately affected by discrimination and structural inequalities in society to participate more fully in swing dance culture, including attending swing dance events.
Barriers to participation are often related to factors such as race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, social class, income level, disability status, and age; however, this list is not exhaustive and the scholarship committee recognizes that dancers have unique lived experiences of inequality that may involve a combination of these and other factors. The scholarship committee will fulfill PSDF’s commitment to help dancers by providing monetary support, opportunities for community, networking, and personal growth, and additional guidance during the event as requested by scholarship recipients.
To operate the Scholarship Program for two events a year, serving 20–30 dancers per event, PSDF has developed a process to make systematic decisions and reach beyond our own limitations.
For each event, Program Director and PSDF Board Chair Dr. Nicholas Centino assembles a selection committee of at least five dancers from diverse backgrounds. We try to have a mix of veteran and novice selectors on each committee to constantly incorporate new perspectives. Dr. Centino works directly with each event to understand and align our respective goals and missions.
Event registrations are provided by each event itself—usually between 20 and 30 per year. But in addition to registrations, PSDF also provides financial help to aid with travel expenses. In most years, we can offer a small subset of applicants a financial stipend, and a still smaller subset a “full ride.” Typically we receive 2–3 times as many scholarship applications as we have scholarships. The scholarship committee reviews all incoming application and works to identify eligible applications.
Our primary method of awarding scholarships is by lottery—for each scholarship level, we randomly select recipients from among the eligible applications. However, committee members have the option to recommend particular applications to bypass the lottery and receive a scholarship directly. Those recommendations are reviewed by the full committee and selections are made by consensus.