Local Philanthropy by Hill School Students

The Cluster will use its grant for its Getting Ahead Initiative, which is a poverty education program that runs throughout the year for members of the Pottstown community below the poverty line. The program focuses on helping these members come to terms with their poverty, and it uses educational and constructive seminars as means to aiding those in need down a better socioeconomic track.

Led by co-presidents Nabil Shaikh '13 (Reading) and Auguste Boova '13 (Pottstown.), The Hill School’s Student Philanthropy Council (SPC) recently presented checks totaling $10,000 to four local nonprofit organizations to help fund those entities’ educational and community programs:

Pottstown Downtown Improvement District Authority ($2,110); The Growing Center ($2,690);

PDIDA will use is contribution for the Clean & Safe program,
which uses enhanced security methods and hired cleaners
as vehicles for downtown revitalization.

Montgomery Child Advocacy Project ($2,500); and the Pottstown Cluster of Religious Organizations ($2,700).

The SPC was established in 2009 through a gift to The Hill School courtesy of Charles A. Frank III, Hill ’59, and his wife, Betty.

Hill student participants solicit and evaluate local nonprofit requests for funding, and then award a total of $10,000 in grants each year. 

Last year, through the Franks' leadership and the generosity of several other donors, The Student Philanthropy Council became an endowed program at the School with the establishment of The Student Philanthropy Council Endowment in honor of Kay and David Dougherty.

The Montgomery Child Advocacy Project (MCAP) will fund the training of 10 lawyers for their initiative: providing legal advocacy for children of extremely unstable backgrounds in the Pottstown area. This non-profit grew out of a noticeable need for lawyers for children for whom parental advocacy is unstable and insubstantial.

The Growing Center plans to use their grant to provide materials for horticultural therapy for mental health patients. Horticultural therapy introduces patients to gardening activities, and is an incredibly potent means to psychological treatment. The Growing Center provides a secure hosting site to local horticultural therapy.