The Steelers Visit Homewood

Heinz Ward and Mike Wallace from the Pittsburgh Steelers visited the children at Faison Primary School in Homewood this morning.  Faison won a $10,000 grant from the NFL Play 60 program to be used for bicycles and other physical activity that is so important to the healthy development of children.  The school staff at Faison works very hard to provide resources for the children in Homewood, and it was quite a celebration for everyone involved.  I spotted a few of my mentees in the crowd of kids who were listening closely to everything the Steelers had to say.  They heard a strong message about the need for kids to be physically active and work hard on their grades in school.

Many people choose to focus on the negative things in Homewood, but there really are so many positive things going on there right now.  Besides a visit from the Steelers, in just this one week over 100 LAMP mentors from Pittsburgh-area churches will spend several hours with their mentees, over 600 children and their families from Homewood will be participating in the Harvest Party sponsored by North Way at Faison Primary School this Friday night, and on Saturday morning for Compassion Day volunteers will be picking up trash around my neighborhood, helping a single mom move, and hanging drywall in my basement so that we can turn our basement into a youth recreation room.  I know there are also many other people who will be doing great work in Homewood this week.  Transformation is often a difficult process, so it's important to pause every once in a while to celebrate when positive things happen in the community.