Paul Leopoulos speaks at a news conference July 22 about the Thea Foundation's $2 million campaign.
After the Thea Foundation reached a $2 million endowment goal for its scholarship programs, Windgate Charitable Foundation topped it off with a $500,000 challenge grant.
John Brown, executive director of Windgate Charitable Foundation, presented the check to Paul Leopoulos, executive director of the Thea Foundation, at a news conference on Wednesday.
The Thea Foundation awards $80,000 across 30 scholarships every year and has given more than $2 million to 280 students over the last 14 years. The scholarships are awarded based on arts competitions in areas such as slam poetry, fashion design and creative writing, but students can pursue any degree with the scholarship money.
“The arts are important in everyone’s lives,” Leopoulos said at the news conference. “The arts generate civility amongst people and create and explain culture in our society … The arts are very important during the education process of or kids. The Thea Foundation advocates for the arts, but we are not only advocates, we are doers.”
Leopoulos explained that about three-fourths of the scholarship money that students are awarded through the Thea Foundation comes from the schools that the students attend as part of a matching program. Leopoulos said that in students in North Little Rock high schools have won a total of $365,000 in scholarships and students in Little Rock high schools have been awarded $550,000.
“Creativity is something that’s in all of us, it’s something we can all participate in,” Brown said before presenting a $500,000 check to Leopoulos and the Thea Foundation. “Paul is a great advocate and a great evangelist for this idea.”
Leopoulos founded the Thea Foundation after the death of his daughter, Thea, in a car accident when she was in high school.
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