By Cynthia Grau/WJEZ News

Pontiac Central School recently received an Illinois Prairie Community Foundation grant to bring a special arts program to its students in the future.

Principal Kel Krenz explains what they are able to do with the grant they received.

“We received $1,200 from the Illinois Prairie Community Foundation and with that $1,200, we are bringing in a production of ArtsPower’s ‘Harry the Dirty Dog.’ Many of you may remember ‘Harry the Dirty Dog’ from your childhood, because it is a well-known child’s book. The fact that we can pull the arts and literature together, we are taking advantage of this grant and bringing in this production and not only are we bringing the production to Central School , but we’re bringing it to the Eagle Performance Arts Center. This way, our students are going to get a chance to take part in professional theater in a professional venue, which many of our students would never have the opportunity to do so,” Krenz said.

Michele Evans, grants and communication director for the Foundation, said the mission is to engage and assist individuals in sharing their gifts and to build permanent funds in the four county service area of Livingston, McLean, DeWitt and Logan counties.

“What happens is any nonprofits can apply for a variety of grants through that. They obviously have to be nonprofit. It has to be a program. The cycle that Central School qualified under was an arts and culture grant. We have general grants. We have Schulman Grants, which are Jewish in orientation. In the fall, we generally have youth and women-to-women featured grants,” Evans said.

For more information, visit ilprairiecf.org.

Evans and  Krenz were guests on a recent Community Forum where they further explained the grant programs and the special event for students. That is available at wjez.com.