Jordan Schwartz

Jordan got an idea to put theatre and language together. When she was 10 years old she founded The Children’s Bilingual Theater which works to help ESOL students improve their English language skills and helps young people that are learning or interested in learning Spanish. This in turn encourages her community to bridge the language and cultural gap through the theatre arts. Everyone has a chance to practice public speaking and work with different people. Jordan has put together three bilingual musicals, and has worked with almost 100 volunteers as cast, crew and costumed theatrical storytellers performing at schools, and public venues including this year's NAACP Cobb County MLK Celebration.

For the first show, she sent fliers and letters to friends, local businesses and community leaders. More than $3,000 in contributions came in to make the show a reality, and the show toured to 4 schools in Cobb County. Now with recognition at the local, state and national levels, Jordan has raised over $30,000 to continue the theatre and literacy outreach. The theater's work is now even known in Wisconsin and their school system as part of Democracy it is! an educational documentary series.

At age 11, Jordan was diagnosed with Turner’s syndrome, a condition requiring shots to help her grow. She was sad that along with shortness of stature, a heart condition, a kidney condition, hearing impairment and other hormone-related deficiencies she was needing Human Growth hormone injections to help her grow and help her healthy. Human growth hormones are giving Jordan an opportunity to improve her quality of life. This bad news did not stop her theater outreach and then she went on to set up ugrowgirl.org, which is a website to encourage and support other girls on human growth hormone injections. Through ugrowgirl.org Jordan celebrates all the things girls can do and with The Children's Bilingual Theater she gets our youth more involved in their community.