A Kansas City charity hopes to welcome Taylor Swift soon after the 14-time Grammy winner’s generous $250,000 donation.
Operation Breakthrough is a nonprofit organization that provides quality child care and programs for children of the working poor.
A week before Christmas, Operation Breakthrough CEO Mary Esselman received a call from Swift’s team informing her that the singer wanted to make a quarter-million-dollar donation to the organization.
“Our children were very excited,” says the general manager. “We asked them if they wanted to give a little thank you and you could see we had a lot of enthusiastic participants.”
In a one-minute video posted to their social media, the children of Project Breakthrough expressed their gratitude for Swift and her donation.
The money received from Swift will be divided into three programs: the workforce development and entrepreneurship program, which includes 10 labs where children can learn industrial trades, the before and after school program, which provides child care services for families when they are not There are classes, and the early learning program.
Taylor Swift is invited to visit a Kansas City charity after her generous $250,000 donation.
“We have 432 students, birth to 5 years old, who are there every day for early care and education,” Esselman said of the early learning program. “Our goal is to make sure every child comes to school prepared.”
Swift’s donation was likely encouraged by Travis Kelce’s advocacy and support of the organization over the past decade. The Kansas City Chiefs tight end visited campus for the first time shortly after Esselman took over as CEO.
Given Kelce’s involvement in the programs, Esselman is optimistic that Swift would come to see the campus and the kids in the future.
“Maybe one of these times she’ll show up with Travis,” Esselman says, “but we couldn’t be more grateful that she selected us for such a special gift.”
Since March 2015, Kelce has been a constant contributor to the organization and sponsors the ’87 and Running’ robotics team. In 2020, he purchased the muffler shop for the high school’s entrepreneurship and workforce development program.
Most recently, Kelce highlighted the children’s projects by driving a 1996 Chevrolet Chevelle that they had converted to an all-electric vehicle at their Dec. 8 game at Arrowhead.
“It came for Reading Day Across America,” he recalls. “I was reading in some of the preschool classrooms and I kept coming back.”