Technically speaking, Saleem Ghubril has two children, but in his mind, there is a third child he takes pride in acknowledging in the form of a three-story building on the North Side: The Pittsburgh Project.
The Christian nonprofit began in 1985 when, after Ghubril and his wife welcomed their daughter, he accepted a job offer from a North Hills church, which tasked him with starting a youth project. Flash forward 40 years, and what started as a summertime program has evolved into a year-round nonprofit that hosts a day camp, an afterschool program, and multiple electives designed to help students keep learning outside of school hours.
“They were very gracious in terms of being a kind of permission-giving church while they hired me to work with their kids. They recognized that I felt drawn to the city and to kids in the city, and they supported me in launching The Pittsburgh Project,” Ghubril tells Pittsburgh City Paper.
Still, Ghubril admits he didn’t originally foresee The Pittsburgh Project going beyond the summers, when he and the young program participants would go into North Side seniors’ homes and offer assistance. Sometimes, this meant home repair; other times it meant cleaning or painting. As time went on in the early years, Ghubril says the project expanded from the North Side to include areas such as Duquesne, Wilkinsburg, and Braddock.
As The Pittsburgh Project grew, Ghrubril went from being its only paid employee to ultimately moving into a building on Charles Street. He explains that a tenet of the work included living in the community you work in. Ghrubril credits one of his mentors, Dr. John Perkins, a teacher on issues surrounding racial reconciliation, with educating him about the importance of building bridges across chasms.
“His conviction there is that if you want to be involved in developing communities, you’ve got to be a part of those communities you’re developing. So if you don’t live there, you relocate, and if you live there, you remain,” Ghubril says.
To this day, Ghubril still lives in the neighborhood, but he left The Pittsburgh Project in 2008 to work with The Pittsburgh Promise, a nonprofit geared towards setting urban youth up for secondary success. Although he feels that his 23 years as The Pittsburgh Project’s executive director were well spent, Ghubril says that, at the time, he believed that in order to make the lives of the young and the elderly better, he needed to shift his focus to addressing systemic issues.
“I remember saying the words something like this: I’m no longer content helping kids with their homework, but then sending them to schools that are failing them; and I’m no longer content fixing houses for seniors on streets that remain unsafe for them,” Ghubril says. “If we truly care about these two populations, as we most certainly do, then we have to impact the systems that impact most, namely, schools and neighborhoods.”
Ghubril says that he left The Pittsburgh Project with his friends and coworkers’ blessings and still can be found at the organization’s annual Christmas party. When thinking about The Pittsburgh Project’s current leadership, Ghubril says he has the utmost faith in Rick Mason, who took the reins as the organization’s executive director in 2021.
“What excites me about the future of The Pittsburgh Project is the fact that Rick is leading it into that future,” Ghubril says. “I trust him, I trust his heart, I trust his mind, his compassion, and if there’s anything that Rick wants to do with which he needs my support, I am there for him.”
Here’s the part where I must admit I’ll likely never be completely unbiased about the Pittsburgh Project and its work: I was one of the youth who benefited from The Pittsburgh Project’s programming. The winter of my freshman year of high school, after yet another move I hadn’t wanted and a death that I hadn’t seen coming, I felt completely disillusioned. Yet, for all the sadness that year brought, it also made me cross paths with a woman named Bethany Friel, whose husband ran The Pittsburgh Project’s Leaders in Training program and encouraged me to apply. For the three years that followed, I spent my Thursdays mostly working at The Pittsburgh Project’s then-farm stand, and my summers helping out in the ecology program.
When someone asks me why I know off the top of my head which neighborhoods run farm stands, or how I ended up spending three weeks in China when I was 16 years old, the answer is always the Pittsburgh Project.
Whether it was a service project or a kind adult who likely had more pressing matters to attend to than indulging a teenager’s ramblings about her current hyperfixations, but listened avidly anyway, my years as an L.I.T. were indispensable.
A summer working at Sandcastle can give you spending money, but being an L.I.T. gave me a college scholarship, connections to people I still cherish, and leadership that stressed that it isn’t just about having the loudest voice, but a willingness to serve others.
I know that life doesn’t make narrative sense, but it felt like a pleasant full-circle moment to interview Mason, the man who wrote one of my college recommendation letters.
Mason began his journey at The Pittsburgh Project in the fall of 2009 as the coordinator of the Leaders in Training program. Occupying positions at different levels within the nonprofit, such as a teacher and a department director, he says, prepared him well to become the executive director. In 2025, Mason says The Pittsburgh Project ensures that students are given help with their homework and a snack while having the option to be taught about chess or robotics, participate in a fitness class, or utilize the organization’s maker space.
“We partner with the schools, we work with the schools, but we’re not teaching kids in the same way that they’re learning in schools,” Mason tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “They come here and they’re able to have fun, they’re able to learn how to persevere.”
In addition to The Pittsburgh Project’s youth programming, the nonprofit maintains connections to organizations such as the Charles Street Area Corporation, Light of Life, and the Perry Hilltop Citizens Council to ensure that community members have access to resources.
“If there are things that our families or neighbors might need that The Pittsburgh Project can’t directly meet, we will connect with those other organizations to try to help our families as best we can,” Mason says.
When looking to the future, Mason wants to stay connected to the organization’s past and the principles that led to Ghubril’s founding, The Pittsburgh Project years ago. In the months ahead, Mason looks forward to another summer spent hosting students. In the long term, he wants it to remain a place of truth, as Ghubril intended, where the residents can age gracefully and children can play together safely.
“The vision of the organization from the very start was that we will all live in a community where we were all loved, where we were all cared for, where we were all seen, no matter who you are,” Mason says. “And while we are imperfect, of course, we don’t always get it right. My hope is that that will continue to be the vision.”
Correction: An earlier caption misidentified Minton. The error has been corrected above.
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2025.
