It takes a village to help Millvale kids get the most out of summer

In Millvale, bike tracks and small shoe prints are just as numerous as the cars rushing through the borough’s slender streets.

It’s an idyllic borough, where kids commute to their friends’ houses each morning during summer break and explore alleyways until sunset.

But instead of shunning them off the street, community leaders open their arms to the crowd.

“We are a community where there are a lot of kids on their own for whatever reason — working parents, absent parents — and they just kind of become the children of Millvale,” says Melissa Mason, executive director of the Millvale Community Library.

Even before its 2013 opening, the Library’s founders envisioned a hub for youth programming, which borough leaders had considered a gap in the community.

Now, it hosts summer camps, music classes, chess club, environmental education classes, community crafting in an adjoining makerspace, free summer lunches for residents 18 and under, and more.

Mason has been a Millvale resident, volunteer, and leader for over a decade, and has been the library’s director since May 2023. In that short span, the library’s role as a youth hub has diminished, but not because its list of programs is shrinking. Instead, the network of leaders helping raise “the children of Millvale” is growing.

“We’re still a hub for a lot in the community, but we’re in this transition where [we’re asking], ‘Is this “the” space for kids?’” she says. “It is ‘a’ space for kids, but as this community is growing and changing, there are so many other cool, great, wonderful things happening.”

In April, music school You Be You and refugee support organization Be Our Neighbor settled into the storefront at 143 Howard St. While the pair’s core programming couldn’t be more different, they’re tied together by a shared mission: provide mutual aid and free events to Millvale’s kids.

Georgia English, the founder and director of You Be You, calls the organization a decades-old dream.

“It provides a space where every child can get what they need out of music,” they say. “For some, maybe it’s trying to get into music college or preparing for professional musicianship. For some, it’s a safe space to take a nap while they listen to their friends make music, and they can have a snack from our little community fridge.”

The school sees about 200 students per week between its six instructors. It’s home to children’s choirs, a beat-making club, youth rock bands, and private lessons for guitar, ukulele, piano, and more.

In total, 80% of its offerings are free, and 25% of local kids taking private lessons receive scholarships.

“This isn’t a place where parents drive and drop [kids] off and pick them up,” English says. “They’re out on their bikes and then they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s Wednesday, I have to go to this beat-making thing.’”

“It’s cute. We’ll have little bikes lined up against the walls.”

A San Francisco native and practicing musician, English and their husband moved from Nashville to Pittsburgh in 2022 so that English could pursue a Master’s of Music Therapy from Duquesne University.

At first, English was putting their education into practice by hosting all-ages lessons and music clubs out of the library — programs that continue to this day.

In the spring of 2023, they launched You Be You with the express goal of reaching kids with a music therapy framework called “Community Music Therapy,” which enables its participants’ pursuit of craft alongside community connectedness.

In a town as musical as Millvale, the first part is easy.

“We hosted the youth stage at the Millvale Music Festival, so we had a bunch of our students perform,” English says. “We hosted local teen punk bands. We really integrate our students who want to get into that larger scene. And, I mean, we’ve got Attic Records, we have Mr. Smalls, we have bar music — live bar blues bands pouring out of windows.”

When English obtains their master’s, the space will be able to host clinical therapeutic work as well. Until then, Be Our Neighbor is the arm through which it mobilizes resources to community members.

Even though moving into You Be You’s storefront this past April solidified Be Our Neighbor’s place in the borough, the organization’s work dates back nearly four years.

In 2021, Jess Landolina was the manager of Abeille Voyante Tea Co. on Grant Avenue. After the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August of that year, Millvale’s population began to shift.

“By September, October, we started to see Afghan families settling on Grant Avenue of Millvale, which was just so different for us being a small town, 99-point-something percent multi-generational white community,” she says.

Many of the refugee families were placed in Millvale by Jewish Family Children Services — one of the only resettlement agencies in the area. Landolina speculates that the borough’s mostly rental housing stock and relative affordability compared to other parts of Pittsburgh made it a prime spot for families arriving with next to nothing.

“We were having people from all over the world that were now settling in our town, coming to the tea shop, and finding something to connect with, but then, that was the avenue to communicate what they needed, especially for their children,” Landolina says.

For its first two years, Be Our Neighbor was simply Millvale natives connecting their new neighbors with doctors, dentists, clothing, furniture, and other community resources.

With a background in psychology and social work, Landolina’s goal was to find a job that allowed her to serve her community, and the pieces had all lined up. Be Our Neighbor was formalized under the Millvale Community Development Corporation (MCDC) in June 2024.

Currently, she estimates that the organization is connected with 150 individuals — at least 50% of them minors — and its programming seeks to reduce trauma inherent to their refugee status by building a positive community around them.

“We do monthly community meals and craft nights, where we’ve been going to Pamela’s P&G Diner,” Landolina says.

Events spill out into the streets as well. Last year brought an international holiday night and the celebration of Nowruz — Persian New Year.

Come the summer, it tugs on that network of “children of Millvale” supporters to fill gaps left by the school break.

“MCDC has gotten a grant program funded by Eden Hall that helps us get multiple kids into summer camps, helps fund this summer camp here, connects kids with scholarships to the Boys and Girls Club, [and] get field trip money for … the kids that can’t get into those camps,” Landolina says.

Landolina hopes to eventually grow the framework to other parts of Greater Pittsburgh, but the hardest part to replicate will be Millvale’s web of leaders who are endlessly willing to reinvest in their kids.

“The rest of us are privileged enough to have a little bit of extra that overflows our cup,” Landolina says. “That small amount of extra can really make this ripple effect for these kids i

This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2025.