Phillies honor community groups with grant money during annual holiday party
SOUTH PHILADELPHIA - The Phillies have been holding a holiday charity party for more than two decades. Wednesday night, 35 organizations are getting support from the Phillies to continue doing good work in the community.
"This program is run by young women. Female athletes," said Shannon George. She is talking about a program run at Simon Gratz Leadership Academy. She is with the Black Women in Sport Foundation, which is one of the community heroes the Phillies honored tonight.
"These high school female athletes, they will then pair themselves with middle school athletes and create a mentorship program," said George.
The annual Phillies Charities Holiday Party was held at Citizens Bank Park. The Phanatic greeted guests who enjoyed live entertainment and dinner. The Phillies gave $40,000 grants to 35 community organizations who were nominated. That is $1.4 million in total.
"We want to have a winning team on the field, but we also want to have a winning team off the field," said John Webber, president of Phillies Charities.
"When you meet the people and you hear the stories you just realize that the organization is doing good things," he said.
Five speakers, including Chris Brickhouse, who is with Better Days Ahead, a homeless outreach organization, spoke before the audience about how they will use the money.
"We're going to be able to prevent a lot of evictions with this money," said Brickhouse.
Phillies Manager Rob Thompson and Ruben Amaro, Jr. were among some of the Phillies notables in attendance.
Christen Johnson says it means so much that the Phillies have taken an interest in making an impact in the community.
"Our youth are our future. We all have a responsibility to do what we have to do to ensure that these young people have the tomorrows that they deserve," said Johnson, who is with Heights Philadelphia.
The organization works with students from middle school through college and into a career.
"This was an incredible unexpected grant. We are so grateful for it and we are going to be using it to provide more programming for students enrolled in our program," said Johnson.