Stephanie Crockatt and Gina Burkhardt join Emily to talk about the BCAT program. BCAT stands for Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology. They have a great collaboration with Olmsted Parks.
Stephanie Crockatt, Buffalo Olmsted parks Conservancy executive director says it’s been very helpful to their staff to have pretrained individuals come in, so they are boots on the ground ready to go.
Gina Burkhardt, CEO, BCAT says she has lived in many places and Buffalo has the most exquisite parks and our obligation as residents here is to take care of these parks. She goes on to say this is an opportunity for community members to get involved and give back the community by taking care of a resource that if it’s not taken care of, it is going to go away and we will miss something really important.
Gina says a lot of their participants have the goal of being entrepreneurs and opening their own businesses. She says they are using this as a real opportunity for getting the skills, getting the field work experience and then, who knows.
Our mission, Gina says, is to provide workforce and after school opportunities for the community that doesn’t have opportunities or the resources to pay for these kinds of programs and just want a better life for themselves.
Applications are now being accepted.
For more information visit Buffaloartstechcenter.org/apply-now
