The Giving List Dunn School

by Steven Libowitz

Dunn School’s Kalyan Balaven, head of school for the private co-ed college prep boarding and day school in Los Olivos, had no idea of the floodgates that would open when he decided to find a way to help a student from the Ukraine who early last year was initially only seeking a few extra days to delay re-enrollment for the 2022-23 academic year.

“The war hadn’t started, but within those few days the invasion happened, and then her mother reached out again to talk with me,” Balaven recalled. “We get on a video call with her in Poland, with her little kids scrambling in the background, and she is telling me she’s lost everything. She and the kids got out, but her husband is still back there.”

All the student’s mom wanted was for Balaven to write a letter of recommendation from Dunn for her oldest daughter, who would try to attend somewhere closer to the family.

But Balaven refused.

“I told her, ‘No, I won’t give you a letter,’” he said. “I’ll figure out a way to fund her, so she can come back to Dunn.”

With the year’s financial aid fund already allocated, but given the extraordinary circumstances, Balaven began the unprecedented process of fundraising for a single student. When word got out, press coverage began, and as a result other Ukrainian students started to apply.

“They’d tell me their situation, just horrific stories, and I wanted to do what

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I could to help, and try to fund as many as possible,” he said.

Dunn expanded its efforts, reaching out even further to the larger Central Coast community, which eventually resulted in the creation of the Emergency Ukrainian Student Scholarship. The program enabled the school to welcome six Ukrainian students to campus for the current academic year.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

He’s also heard from two organizations. One in Cairo is run by a 1970s graduate of Dunn who had connected the school with African refugees in the 2010s. She told Balaven that her learning center was being shut down because contributions had been directed toward Ukraine.

“She asked if we could take some of her kids, and I told her, just have them apply. We’ll figure it out.”

At the same time, someone from a Santa Ynez Valley organization reached out about two refugee girls from Afghanistan who were in school in Iran but had to leave because the authorities discovered that their father had supported the American efforts. She asked Balaven if Dunn could take them on as scholarship students.

“I’m thinking, there’s already six students in the pipeline and this will make eight more behind them,” he said. “It’s like a domino effect from that one Ukrainian student. Now, I need to raise a lot of dollars for these kids. But I don’t know how to say no, because there’s this part of me where I can’t sleep if I have a kid asking me for help.”

Balaven said he was also worried that perhaps the community was exhausted from hearing about refugees and wanted to know what we’re going to do for the local kids. For sure, Dunn certainly wasn’t planning on being a refuge for the world’s refugees, but the truth is, Balaven said, helping them out also aligned perfectly with the school’s mission.

“The refugee program isn’t just about those kids,” he said. “It’s about arming all our students with the skills that they need, so that they can prevent refugee crises from happening. I don’t just want to raise money for these kids. I wanna raise money to create a lasting position at Dunn School in perpetuity, a position that oversees and helps support refugee students with strong

English language learning and also creates courses like refugee lit, looks at refugee narratives, and offers peace and conflict studies that understands the parameters and framework that create wars in the first place. It also covers environmental justice, because environmental refugees are a huge and growing problem.”

Balaven is proud that Dunn stands out among private and boarding schools in endeavoring to create the program. But he’s also aware of another domino effect that might come from his efforts.

“Schools in general try to keep up with the Joneses, they try to compete,” he explained. “My goal is to make Dunn a proof-of-concept school where you can support refugees, and you can create real learning outcomes for all our students in the process that are really powerful for the world they’re entering. If you really want to be a change-maker, the best result is to inspire schools with much larger endowments, even right in our backyard, to create a program like this to benefit all its students.”

It’s all in keeping with Dunn’s dedication to Whole Student Education, the guiding philosophy Dunn was founded on more than 65 years ago. Which is why Dunn student life focuses on an all-encompassing experience – emotional, mental, physical, and social – and its goal to help students find their moral core.

And it’s an evolution of the school’s extraordinary entrepreneurial spirit where the Latin motto translates to “Attempt not, but achieve.”

While it costs north of $90,000 to give a scholarship, including transportation and myriad other costs for a refugee student, donations of any size help.

“Every little bit goes straight to that effort,” Balaven said. “We’re working to supplant it with aid and local community efforts and funds from our gala, but ultimately there’s a hope that we can get the community behind it. Participation is more important than anything.”

Dunn School

Kalyan Balaven, head of school

LynnRae Dunn, director of philanthropy

(805) 686-0627 www.dunnschool.org

Join together as a community for an in-person event marking an incredible story of survival. Joe Alexander recently celebrated his 100th birthday, and will share his story of survival in the camps and perhaps of equal importance, survival to grow and flourish without living as a victim.

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Celedonio made his U.S. recital debut at the Lobero, returning in 1959 with his three sons, Celin, Pepe, and Angel, each of them performing solo guitar works.

Two years later, the family performed together as The Romeros, the first guitar quartet on the international concert scene.

In 1990 Celin’s son, Celino, joined the quartet when Angel left to pursue a solo career and in 1996 Angel’s son, Lito, joined following Celedonio’s death that year.

The thoroughly entertaining evening featured works by Vivaldi, Granados, Barrio, Villa-Lobos, Tarrega, Boccherini, Bizet, De Falla, Albéniz, Iradier, Giménez, and founder Celedonio Romero.

Lang Lang Plays Again

two works – Schumann’s “Arabeske in C Major” and Bach’s 1741 fiendishly difficult Goldberg Variations, consisting of 30 pieces.

Lang Lang, 40, played the 80-minute-long work flawlessly accompanied by his usual dramatic flourishes.

An absolute joy to watch...

Harmonizing with Ladysmith Black Mambazo

After the Soweto Gospel Choir and Step Afrika! at UCSB’s Campbell Hall, courtesy of the Arts & Lectures program, it was time for the venerable Lobero, celebrating its 150th anniversary, to host Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a nine-member Durban-based South African male choral group, who have won five Grammy awards.

The highly entertaining troupe, founded in 1960 by Joseph Shabalala, sing in local vocal styles of isicathamiya and mbube. They became internationally known after singing with Paul Simon on his 1986 album Graceland, which sold 16 million copies, which led to them performing on Saturday Night Live in New York.

It has been a long, long time, eight years to be exact, since Chinese piano legend Lang Lang has played at the Granada.

But it was clearly worth the wait as the man, described by The New York Times as “the hottest artist on the classical music planet,” mesmerized the sold-out audience at the concert, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series.

The 90-minute-long show featured

Coastal Hideaways

With uplifting local harmonies, signature dance moves that would have put Radio City Music Hall’s Rockettes to shame, and charming onstage banter, the choristers, who feature two of Shabalala’s sons, were appearing the next day at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in the Big Orange, and in June head to London’s Barbican.

A truly inspirational group...

A Gastronomy Gala

To Gala, a new Anacapa Street eatery, formerly known as Pacific Crêpes, where I would eat regularly when I first came to Santa Barbara in 2007 and churned out a column for the Santa Barbara News-Press, just a tiara’s toss away.

Now it has gone from a decidedly French theme to Spanish-owned by chef Jaime Riesco and his wife, Tara Penke, who spent two decades in Barcelona and still have a restaurant there.

Tara hails from our Eden by the Beach and moved to Spain, where she met Jaime after graduating from UCSB. Both spent nine months in Manhattan – Tara at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s JoJo and

Jaime at Public.

In 2010, they opened the brunch-focused Picnic in Barcelona and seven years later decided to move back to Santa Barbara part-time, spending six months in each city. Eventually they moved here full-time when COVID scuppered their initial plans, opening their 50-seat eatery in the space formerly occupied by the Pigeon Cafe.

The name Gala is inspired by the wife of surrealist artist Salvador Dali and the couple’s love of the Costa Brava town of Cadaqués where Dali lived.

On the night I tried out the eatery with my trusty shutterbug Priscilla , it was socially gridlocked as we noshed on the salmon gravlax toasties, shrimp croquettes, duck confit, and mushroom and oyster risotto accompanied by Santa Barbara County pinot noir and 2021 Lieu Dit from the Santa Ynez Valley.

Lemon pie and Basque cheesecake wrapped the delightful repast.

A nice new addition to our city’s dining scene.

‘Fore!’ Play

Actor Michael Douglas, who formerly resided in our rarefied enclave, has revealed his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones has invented a revealing forfeit when they play golf together.

The Oscar winner, 78, has been married to the Welsh actress for more than two decades, but says they keep things spicy when it comes to mundane activities such as playing a round or two.

“The rules are, I have to whip it out if I don’t get it past the ladies’ tee, which I manage most of the time,” he tells London’s Guardian

“But there have been times when we’re playing alone, and I have to give her a little show because we are competitive. But only when I play with my wife.”

Thank goodness....

Tomson Receives Hero Award

My congratulations to MontecitoBased former world champion surfer Shaun Tomson, who is receiving the Community Hero Award in San Diego next month at the 25th anniversary Miscellany Page