Here we go, Pittsburgh, here we go: The Neighborhood Resilience Project, Polamalu family and the rest of the crew are headed to the Resilience Bowl!
Coming to Acrisure Stadium on Tuesday, May 21, the inaugural Resilience Bowl is a football-themed fundraiser supporting community development in Pittsburgh.
The event is hosted by the Neighborhood Resilience Project, a group inspired by the teachings of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Civil Rights movement that supports trauma-affected communities. Pastor Paul Abernathy is the project’s CEO and founding pastor at the Hill District’s St. Moses the Black Orthodox Church.
“What we said was we needed an event that will pull the region together,” Abernathy says. “An event that would crown the unity of a very diverse group of people in our region.”
Former Steeler Troy and his wife Theodora Polamalu are members of the Neighborhood Resilience Project.
“It’s also a celebration of what the Hill District has overcome and what they’ve done to attack trauma,” Troy says. “This little micro-community … it should set everything else on fire because of what this community has overcome.”
Theodora says the Resilience Bowl has been years in the making and will feature an obstacle course competition for corporate partners, games and events for children and meet-and-greets with Steelers and other celebrities. Doors open at 5 p.m.
The capstone of the event is a celebrity flag football game that kicks off at 7 p.m. coached by Mike Tomlin and Bill Cowher. Other players expected include Ben Roethlisberger, Damar Hamlin, James Harrison, Jerome Bettis, Hines Ward, Charlie Batch, Ryan Shazier, Kurt Angle and Wiz Khalifa.
“The Pittsburgh Steelers and a lot of their ownership have been truly integral pieces of making sure that this is an event that will be remarkable but community-oriented which is, first and foremost, our mission,” Theodora says. “It was really important when we thought about having a fundraiser that it wasn’t going to be your typical black-tie gala, something that people actually benefiting from this work couldn’t be a part of.”
General admission tickets for the Resilience Bowl — available through the event’s website — are $20 for adults and $10 for youth 22 and under. Theodora adds that while it’s not a Steelers game, the bowl might provide a similar experience at a fraction of the price.
Although Abernathy didn’t provide precise figures, he says the corporate response has been very positive.
“I’m very excited to see which corporation takes home the gold,” Abernathy says. “It’s been very entertaining to watch and hear some of their planning. One corporate partner told me that they’re now walking through their office trying to get a sense of who’s in the best shape.”
The funds raised will go throughout the region. After officially starting its community-based revitalization efforts in the Hill District in 2018, the Neighborhood Resilience Project has received funding to expand its reach — specifically in the Monongahela River valley.
“Those funds will support health care for the uninsured,” Abernathy says. “They will go on to support public health initiatives in medically underserved communities that have lower life expectancies. They will support trauma response for those who have just experienced homicide as a result of gun violence. They will support feeding programs for children who face food insecurity in our region.”
He adds that the project served 21,000 last year alone.
The Resilience Bowl marks an important milestone in terms of the project’s momentum. Its trauma-informed community development framework, which approaches and assists small parts of neighborhoods at a time, is beginning to be applied around the nation.
Troy says the framework has already spread to Columbus, Ohio; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and throughout Hawaii.
“Trauma from one block to the next block can be completely different,” Troy says. “One could be food, the other could be security.”
Theodora says the project’s grassroots nature lends itself to an increased understanding of what a community needs and easy communication as issues are being addressed compared to other organizations that provide resources to underserved areas.
“In order to start addressing some of the systemic issues that plague this country, we have to look at multi-generational poverty through the lens of trauma as opposed to willful ignorance or other things that people sometimes like to attribute multi-generational poverty to,” Theodora says.
To Abernathy, the support already garnered by the Resilience Bowl is a measure of success itself.
“The hope for us was always to bring this region together in this event, and the kind of support we’ve received so far is so diverse that we believe this is going to absolutely achieve that goal,” Abernathy says.
“What’s beautiful about the Neighborhood Resilience Project is that the partnership is just so broad. It’s people truly from every walk of life, from diverse faith, diverse perspectives. This is a time when we have to demonstrate that we — no matter what our faith is, no matter what our background is — can come together.”