It’s no small feat to build a popular youth program in an under-resourced community. But with faith and the encouragement of their neighbors in Nicholtown, Cam Hill and his wife, Joy, launched an open-gym basketball ministry in 2016. Éleos (“mercy” in Greek) soon became a comprehensive after-school program, providing opportunities for middle and high school students to succeed academically, form positive relationships and develop leadership potential.
“You have to capture their interest,” Hill says of the challenge. “You’re competing with so many influences in the neighborhood. No middle schooler is going to do anything they don’t want to do. You have to earn their attention by creating something that’s truly appealing to them.”
Éleos does that with creative arts, field trips, mentoring, home-based small groups and a leadership cohort for older youth. It currently serves about 45 students, around 30 high schoolers and 15 middle schoolers, usually led by a staff member and two volunteers. More neighborhood students would like to join — and the adults are eager to serve them — but the ministry is constrained by the size of its current building, purchased in 2019.
An ongoing capital campaign, “There’s Room for You,” aims to correct that by funding renovation of a building that will more than double Éleos’ available space. The work should be completed early in the new school year.
“Our goal is to have a space large enough and designed intentionally to serve more than one activity at a time, so groups of students can rotate between homework help, dance class and other activities,” Hill says. “Our goal is to double the number we are serving over the next 18 months.”
Éleos is one of three programs that make up Lead Collective, of which Hill is executive director. The nonprofit was formed in 2020 when Éleos joined with GOAT, Great Outdoor Adventure Trips, formed in 2009 by Ryan McCrary. Reach, a ministry for justice-involved youth, was added in 2021.
The Community Foundation of Greenville is supporting the work of Lead Collective with a grant of $10,000 made possible by the Jim and Kit Pearce Endowment Fund.
“This grant will help the nonprofit expand [its] current footprint so [it] can serve more children and families in the Nicholtown community,” says Bob Morris, CFG president.
In addition to donations toward the building, Lead needs adult volunteers to be a consistent presence for the young people, helping with homework and mentoring.
“We would love to bring on an additional 20 mentors by this fall,” Hill says. “The true impact is when you build relationships over years and commit to being there for them.”
Cathy Barton, a registered medical assistant who lived in Nicholtown with her family until a house fire last November forced them to relocate, understands the importance of those connections. Her voice breaks with emotion when she recalls how the Hills cared for her and her children like family when she had surgery to remove a brain tumor in 2019.
Barton’s younger daughter, Faith Hood, 12, participates in Éleos’s open gym, after-school program and girls’ Bible study. Her older daughter, Janell Hood, 20, participated all through high school, ultimately completing her GED and continuing her education to become an emergency medical technician. A member of the leadership group during her time there, she was equipped to lead others and may come back to be a mentor herself.
“They have been with me and my family through some of the toughest times,” Barton says of the Lead team. “I don’t know where my kids and some others in the neighborhood would be without them.”
For more information, or to donate or volunteer, visit https://www.leadgvl.org/.
