An ongoing effort to reduce community violence in the McKees Rocks area has gotten a boost from a most unlikely source.
An 8-year-old Squirrel Hill girl who attended a community basketball event at Sto-Rox High School earlier this year was so taken by what she saw that she created an event to raise money for the cause.
That effort, spearheaded by young Phoebe Leer, resulted in a $750 donation to Focus On Renewal, the McKees Rocks-based nonprofit social services provider that heads the Sto-Rox Community Violence Reduction Initiative, or CVRI.
The initiative is a public health-driven strategy supported by the county Department of Human Services.
Phoebe attended the March 14 event largely because her mother, Jenn Batterton, serves as the director of the county Office of Community Justice and Safety and is intimately familiar with the ongoing CVRI work not only in the Sto-Rox area but throughout the county.
Phoebe said she was leaving the March 14 event when she turned to her mother and said, “I can do something like this.”
“Then we started planning ideas in my notepad,” Phoebe added.
She created a PowerPoint document, specifying what she wanted to accomplish and which entities she wanted to help – and the first one she thought of was the Sto-Rox group. She made similar donations to two other causes – Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh and a hospital in Baltimore where her grandmother was treated for three different types of cancer.
“Specifically I want to give money to scientists who study the types of cancer that my Noni had,” Phoebe wrote in her PowerPoint planning document. She shared the PowerPoint with neighbors and those at Phoebe’s school – St. Edmund’s Academy in Squirrel Hill — and her mom also spread the word.
To generate donations, Phoebe put together a 5k walk/run around her Squirrel Hill neighborhood on April 18. A total of 54 people participated and that resulted in $2,400 in donations, including money raised from a lemonade stand set up at Phoebe’s house.
Phoebe said it was gratifying to see that many people participate and their enthusiasm made it extra special.
“When we came back (home) I felt really good because everyone was really happy,” she said.
“People looked like they were having fun,” she said. “There was some free time (in between games) and we got to shoot around and play games. It was fun playing with some of the players in the game.”
She said one reason she chose to donate to the FOR cause was because of the mood that was prevalent during the March 14 basketball tournament at Sto-Rox High School.
Kevin Platz, FOR’s executive director, said he remembered seeing Phoebe at the March 14 event and even recalled playing catch with her. When FOR received a recent email informing him that Phoebe and her friends had done this fundraiser and wanted to make the donation, he was overwhelmed.
“For an 8-year-old young person nowadays to think about this – to put something together and say this is what I want to do and why I want to do it, and then to execute the plan and get other friends to go along with her, it’s a really big deal,” he said.
“You don’t see that a lot with today’s youth. They’re on their phones – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. They’d rather be looking at things than doing things.
“This is a cool, heartwarming story, for her to do this for us and the other organizations she chose.”
Platz said the donation certainly will come in handy and will go toward incentives for people who are actively participating in a program to help individuals find a healthier way to deal with their emotions than resorting to violence. The goal ultimately is to help participants find gainful employment, but there’s a lot that goes into that, including helping them with resumes, job interview skills and even a suitable wardrobe to use when going on job interviews.
Phoebe’s donation, Platz said, “will help people transition from where they are now to where they’re hopefully going. It’ll help individuals on the ground in the program that (Phoebe) wants to help.”
Batterton said that through her work with the county, she’s well aware of the violence reduction efforts that FOR and program manager Rick Davis have been involved with in recent years. She said she doesn’t have many opportunities to bring her children to work events, but the basketball tournament at Sto-Rox was one that made sense.
“I think the kids enjoyed getting to be in community,” said Batterton, who also brought her 11-year-old son to the March 14 event. “We talk about important issues in the house, and it’s nice to be able to connect my children to people doing work on those important issues.
“That was part of my interest in bringing my family along. It was a nice way to be supportive.”
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