Serving Children from Germantown on the campus of Greene Street Friends School

Community Impact

Building Community and Growing Impact through Partnerships

Our program thrived in partnership with the immediate and broader Germantown/Mt. Airy community for many of the experiences our students had this summer. We are deeply committed to continuing to build these local community partnerships in meaningful ways. This summer we were lucky to receive programming support from the following local organizations:

 

  • Fresh Grocer at La Salle: Provided all of our snack foods throughout the duration of the summer.
  • Tree House Books: Our friends at Tree House Books are on a mission to grow and sustain a community of readers, writers, and thinkers in Philadelphia. The Traveling Tree House stopped by to provide free books to our PreK-6th scholars on The Book Mobile. What a cool way for our scholars to add to their home libraries over the summer!
  • Los Bomberos de la Calle: This culturally-rich program provided one assembly performance that included traditional and contemporary styles of Bomba & Plena music from Puerto Rico. Their mission seeks to “give a piece of Puerto Rican culture to Philly and the surrounding areas.”
  • Karen Smith and the Drummers: Karen and her drummers provided one assembly for our students performing traditional rhythms for our students.
  • Philadelphia Museum of Art: Our field trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art was a very fun field trip for our oldest students. Our students were able to take a curated gallery walk through a section of the museum learning about the history of art. 
  • Briar Bush Nature Center: Briar Bush provided a hands-on assembly where students were able to learn about the night sky by sitting in a planetarium and being able to learn by seeing outer space.
  • Quiver Farms: this group visited us on campus, bringing animals for our students to learn more about including cows, pigs, and chickens. Our students were able to learn about these animals by feeding and petting them, while a knowledgeable guide explained more about the different animals. 
  • Joseph E. Coleman Northwest Philadelphia Regional Library: Our local library allowed our teachers to deepen the pool of book choices for our students by giving us a school library card for us to check out student books on walking trips we would take to check out books as a class.  Their summer programming also included read alouds and access to a children’s library on specific days each week.  It was great to be able to have students connect with their local library to model early literacy habits for our students, as well.
  • Germantown Life Enrichment Center (GLEC): This resource is a fundamental partner in the successful implementation of the Horizons mission to provide swimming instruction to all students. 4 days each week, our students received their swimming instruction and practice here. They were always super warm and welcoming to our young students when we would arrive each day and provided a safe and consistent schedule for our swimming program.
  • Germantown Cricket Club (GCC): This resource is a fundamental partner in the successful implementation of the Horizons mission to provide swimming instruction to all students.  3 days each week, our students in our older grades received their swimming instruction and practice here. They were always super warm and welcoming to our young students when we would arrive each day and provided a safe and consistent schedule for our swimming program.