On Saturday, September 23, the Hill School community participated in the fifth annual Pottstown CARES event.

CARES stands for community, awareness, responsibility, empowerment, and sustainability. Headmaster Zachary Lehman came up with the idea to implement Pottstown CARES when he had lunch with the Pottstown school district superintendent and the Pottstown borough manager in 2012. In their discussion, they decided to create an event in which the students of Pottstown would clean up the central area town.

The Hill faculty representatives for Pottstown CARES are: Director of Community Service Jason Coady, former Chair of Sustainability Katie Scanlan, Director of Communications Cathy Skitko, and Manager of Community and Economic Development Twila Fisher.

The student leadership council consists of 12 members, four of whom are from the Hill School: Juliana Ma ‘20, Anya Gupta ‘18, Quam Phan ‘19, and Max Moore ‘19. The remainder of the council is made up of students from Pottstown High School.

“A lot of us at the Hill School are more fortunate than others so cleaning up for two hours is the least we can do,” Gupta said. “It’s great when everyone comes out with a good attitude and helps out.”

The Pottstown CARES student council and adult organizers work with the Borough of Pottstown, the local Montgomery County Community College, and the Chamber of Commerce to bring Pottstown CARES to life for the sake of giving back to the neighborhood. Much of the organization process is the gathering of supplies, which includes orange vests, tools (like rakes and shovels), big garbage bags, and gloves. When all the supplies are prepared, the event is ready to go.

According to Coady, the work done during Pottstown CARES is a collective of 1,000 hours.

“For one person, it would’ve taken half a year, so we did half a year’s work in one morning,” Coady said.

Each year, members of the community pick up litter, rake leaves, landscape at the community center, and help out in the Hill School community garden.

Over 500 people participate in Pottstown CARES and break up into 40-50 groups. The entire event took two hours to cover the area west of the Hill’s campus to the park in central Pottstown.

“We get many responses with people thanking us and it feels really good to know our work is something greatly appreciated by the community,” Maddie McKean ’18 said. “It lets us live up to our Hill School reputation.”