State Department Awards $20,000 to Ecuadorian Non-Profit to Host ‘Drag Theater Performances’
The State Department awarded $20,600 to a cultural center in Ecuador to “promote diversity and inclusion” through drag performances.
The funding was provided to Centro Ecuatoriano Norteamericano (CEN) on September 23 to enable the non-profit to promote diversity and inclusion through the production of 12 “drag theatre performances,” three “workshops” and a two-minute “documentary,” according to the grant listed on USASpending, which was first reported by Fox News. The project began September 30 and will run through August 31, 2023.
CEN has been the recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars in State Department funding since 2009, with $234,000 awarded in 2015 alone for the construction of a new auditorium. Historically, the funding has also gone toward teaching the local population English and improving the cultural center’s technology. This appears to be the first grant intended explicitly for the production of drag shows.
The initiative is part of the State Department’s broader public-diplomacy program, which is designed to “support the achievement of US foreign policy goals and objectives, advance national interests, and enhance national security by informing and influencing foreign publics and by expanding and strengthening the relationship between the people and government of the United States and citizens of the rest of the world.”
CEN was founded in 1957 and its stated mission is to “strengthen the bonds of friendship and understanding between the Republic of Ecuador and the United States of America, through intellectual and cultural exchange; spread the teaching of English and Spanish.”
