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Connecting campus and community

Transformation Story: Arts & culture, Students, Environment & climate, Nation, world, & society, UCLA & community
Three students from L.A. schools play the trombone in a classroom; each wears a white shirt and blue jeans.
Gifts for immediate use yield tremendous benefits to the Los Angeles area, quickly powering K–12 programs and research into pressing environmental issues.

UCLA and Los Angeles are intertwined. Philanthropy makes the connections between the two deeper and more meaningful.

Gifts help UCLA apply the creativity and knowledge developed on campus to the wide-ranging needs of our community. One type of philanthropy — gifts directed for immediate use — lets us do this right away.

UCLA students on left wear lab coats and goggles and stand behind table to provide a lab demonstration to young children and their families.

Thanks to donors, some 10,000 children, families and teachers enjoyed dozens of interactive booths at UCLA’s Exploring Your Universe science fair in the fall of 2024. Experts gave talks about everything from bird flight to space telescopes.

Five dancers in bright tops and wrap skirts hold up their right fists and look to their left; the center dancer is crouched while the others stand.

Gifts to the Center for the Art of Performance supported Design for Sharing, a K-12 outreach program. In 2024, students from 37 city schools attended performances at Royce Hall, the UCLA Nimoy Theater and partner schools, and participated in hands-on workshops with artists.

Santa Monica Beach with tall buildings on top of bluffs

Donations to the Practicum Support Fund at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability helped students apply their classroom learning to real-world projects such as combating ocean acidification, increasing green space on Los Angeles schoolyards and improving wastewater management in Hawaii.

Two dark-haired men wearing dark clothing stand holding up guitars and smiling to camera; man on left points to camera

Donors to the Music Partnership Program, including The Herb Alpert Foundation, helped inspire budding musicians. Student volunteers from The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music taught 1,200 individual lessons in underserved city schools in 2024.

More Stories: Arts & culture, Students, Environment & climate, Nation, world, & society, UCLA & community