Junior League of Pelham Awards 2011-2012 Community Grants

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1 May 2012

On Tuesday night April 17 at The Manor Club, the seventh annual Junior League of Pelham Community Grants Program awarded 2012 grants to four worthy organizations: Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum, Friends of Highbook Highline/Pelham Preservation Society, Pelham Children’s Center and the Pelham Art Center.

Jennifer Michailoff-Anderson, JLP Community Grants Coordinator and Chair of the Community Grants Program, along with Community Affairs Committee members Aisling Bier, Mary Beth Fisher, Zoe Henriquez and Laura Kalehoff, as well as JLP President Daragh Murphy and President Elect Elizabeth Hart, were thrilled to award these needed funds for projects that align so well with the JLP’s guiding values of education, healthy families and Pelham improvement.

The Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum, which opened in 1946 and hosts thousands of visitors a year, received $500 toward the Children’s Gardening program for elementary school students. Through this program, launching later this spring, the Museum will host local, underserved children, teaching them how to prepare soil, plant seeds, tend plants and produce, and finally, harvest and taste the fruits of their labor. Lauren Gill and Cynthia Martin Brown accepted the grant, which will allow the Museum to purchase at least 30 child-sized gardening tool sets for the children to use as they learn.

The Pelham Children’s Center received $1,500 toward their playground beautification project. Since it was launched with the support of the JLP in 1970, the Children’s Center has provided affordable, full-day, year-round care to children from Pelham and neighboring communities. These funds will enable the Center to undertake the first phase of their playground makeover by removing two languishing sandboxes from the grounds and replacing them with open space for Center students as well as children in the community to play freely, says PCC Director Lori Woliner.

Friends of Highbrook Highline/Pelham Preservation Society received $2,000 toward their effort to turn a two-acre railbed–Young Avenue Field–into a greenway inviting recreation and nature study by the community. Lead in the land was recently remediated, and now the funds can go to planting the field as well as the next phases of this transformation. Susan Mutti of Friends of Highbrook Highline accepted the award, along with Carol Spawn Desmond, Chair of Pelham Preservation and Garden Society.

The Pelham Art Center was awarded a grant of $1,000 toward the Interactive Gallery Program for elementary and middle-school students. The Center, which provides Pelhamites as well as nearby residents the opportunity to experience the arts for free in a community setting, provides free and affordable programs to more than 16,000 adults and children in Westchester County and the Bronx, helping to spark a lifelong interest in the arts. Through the Interactive Gallery Program, the Center will be able to transport students from neighboring areas to the Center for gallery tours and activities. “There shouldn’t be barriers to art institutions or creativity,” says Executive Director Lynn Honeysett. “We want to get art to as many people as we can.”

 

Back row, Left to right: Lynn Honeysett, Laura Kalehoff, Daragh Murphy, Jennifer Michailoff-Anderson, Mary Beth Fisher, Aisling Bier, Susan Mutti     Front row, Left to right: Zoe Henriquez, Carol Spawn Desmond, Lori Woliner, Cynthia Martin Brown, Lauren Gill

Back row, Left to right: Lynn Honeysett, Laura Kalehoff, Daragh Murphy, Jennifer Michailoff-Anderson, Mary Beth Fisher, Aisling Bier, Susan Mutti Front row, Left to right: Zoe Henriquez, Carol Spawn Desmond, Lori Woliner, Cynthia Martin Brown, Lauren Gill