McSwigan Family Foundation Grant
PHLF led students and youth counselors in Camp Downtown 2016, hosted by First Lutheran Church, on two walking tours in June. Campers spied “The Two Andys,” a mural by Tom Mosser and Sarah Zeffiro on Wiener World, as they walked down Strawberry Way, featuring “City Composition,” the new street mural by Deanna Mance.
PHLF does tremendous work educating the community and young people. This work fills a historical void in the city. ––Hampton Middle School Teacher
A grant in the amount of $32,500, awarded by the McSwigan Family Foundation in June, will help underwrite PHLF’s educational programs with young people and its Landmarks Scholarship program. “This is terrific support,” said PHLF Executive Director Louise Sturgess, “and is so essential to the success of our programs. This funding support makes it possible for us to keep our school tour fees affordable, initiate new programs, and continue our popular architectural design challenges, poetry and art workshops, career awareness presentations, Portable Pittsburgh artifact kits, and Architectural Apprenticeship.”
Through its award-winning, interdisciplinary educational programs, PHLF turns the Pittsburgh region into a classroom for learning for more than 5,000 students and their teachers each year. By involving young people in exploring local history and architecture, PHLF is able to encourage a preservation ethic and promote character development, community awareness, citizenship skills, and a sense of belonging. In the process, students strengthen critical thinking and problem-solving skills, explore historic places, embrace diversity, expand their imaginations, and develop hometown pride. As one Pittsburgh Public School teacher noted after her students participated in a poetry and art field trip:
Students are much more engaged when they get to learn outside the classroom. Being away from school levels the playing field for kids of different abilities and allows those that don’t normally excel to demonstrate their strengths. It also gives kids whose parents don’t necessarily have the time or ability to expose their kids to the city’s riches a chance to see and experience them.
We thank the McSwigan Family Foundation for partnering with us in our educational programs.