A year ago, when the state shut down all but essential services, a Braddock-based nonprofit found that one of its services could not stop and the others were more vital than ever.

Paula McWilliams, CEO of Heritage Community Initiatives, said the bus service her organization operates, Heritage Community Transportation, was needed to make sure that workers in eastern communities, including Braddock, Liberty, McKeesport, North Versailles Twp., Port Vue and White Oak, could get to their jobs at hospitals such as Forbes Regional, UPMC McKeesport and UPMC East.

The Heritage buses, which are 14-passenger vans, operate on three fixed routes. They had to be modified for transporting workers and senior citizens who needed to get groceries and to medical appointments while keeping passengers and drivers safe.
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The Heritage buses, which charge 25 cents a ride, are often how workers get to their jobs or to Port Authority bus routes that are too far to walk to.

At the same time the organization was also updating health and safety protocols to reopen the organization’s daycare, 4 Kids Early Learning Center, the after school program that became a learning hub, Heritage Out of School Time, or HOST, and the organization’s nutrition programs for children and adults.

For years, Paula McWilliams has understood the value of Heritage Community Transportation through the rides it provides to jobs, medical appointments and grocery stores for residents in disadvantaged communities in the Monongahela Valley.
Now, the president and CEO of Braddock-based Heritage Community Initiatives Inc. has the facts and figures to back up her position.
An economic impact study released by the agency last week found that customers who pay 25 cents per ride generate more than $14 million a year in economic activity. The study by Delta Development Group found that every dollar spent by the agency returns $13.16 to the community.
That includes $8.3 million in direct and indirect salaries of employees, riders and the businesses they patronize. Riders also spend $3.2 million on health care, education, retail and entertainment, and state and local governments collect about $1.2 million in annual taxes from them.
The agency uses five 14-passenger buses to carry as many as 8,000 riders a month on a fixed weekday schedule from 6 a.m. to 10:45 p.m. About 67% of the rides connect passengers with Port Authority routes, but the rest provide service between local communities that isn’t easily available through the countywide agency.
Over the past 21 years, Heritage has carried more than 1.5 million riders as the only human services nonprofit in the state operating public transit.
“We thought it was time for us to measure the impact so we could actually show people what we know — how important this service is for the people who need it,” Ms. McWilliams said. “The people we’re privileged to serve have to get to work and have to get to the doctor, and they need us to get there.”
Heritage gets its operating funds for the bus program through an $888,000 allocation from the state Department of Transportation. Allegheny County provides the $133,000 local match.
Like all transit agencies, Ms. McWilliams said, Heritage has faced problems during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has continued to provide service. Initially, it waived the 25-cent fee to limit contact between riders and drivers, and the buses still carry a maximum of six riders to maintain social distancing.
Ms. McWilliams said the agency has made “some tweaks” in service to reduce the number of times it has to pass up riders because vehicles have reached their limit. Through rigorous sanitizing protocols, the agency hasn’t missed any service.
“Our challenge is folks we aren’t able to accommodate,” she said. “It’s the time to be nimble and flexible.”
Heritage started as a program at the former Braddock General Hospital. It also operates early learning and out-of-school programs for about 300 at-risk children and a nutrition program that provides more than 100,000 meals a year for youths and senior citizens.
Ed Blazina: eblazina@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1470 or on Twitter @EdBlazina.
First Published February 28, 2021, 1:38pm

A new economic impact study found the transportation service from the Braddock-based nonprofit organization Heritage Community Initiatives adds more than $14 million in economic value per year to the region's economy. The service has been offered for the past 21 years and to date has provided nearly 1.5 million rides, the Heritage Community Initiatives said.

The study, which the nonprofit commissioned Harrisburg-based Delta Development Group to conduct, also found that every dollar invested into the transit service yields a return of $13.16.

The fixed-route transit service, named Heritage Community Transportation (HCT), connects passengers to 16 communities or neighborhoods in eastern Allegheny County at a price of $0.25 per ride.

“Thanks to funding from PennDOT and Allegheny County, Heritage has the privilege to continue serving thousands of individuals each month with vital transportation services," Heritage Community Initiatives’ President and CEO Paula McWilliams said in a press release announcing the study. "We are extremely proud of HCT’s legacy and the positive impact we are able to make on the economy and social mobility in our region."
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According to McWilliams, 74% of HCT riders earn less than $20,000 per year. She also said that 67% of its riders can connect to additional service options from the Port Authority of Allegheny County.

Imagine you have a child with severe asthma. You call your family doctor who recommends that you visit a specialist in Cranberry. You currently live in Turtle Creek and do not have access to a vehicle. You do not have family nearby to take your child to the specialist, and all of your friends are in a similar situation as you. 

How do you get there? 

Taking three buses during a pandemic may not be the most optimal solution and you don’t have the ability to ask your employer for an entire day off for “personal reasons.” Who would you turn to? 

This situation may seem extreme, but is more common that many of us realize. All over the greater Pittsburgh region, thousands of our friends and neighbors lack personal transportation or live near a bus route. Those that do may not be able to afford regular bus passes and have to condense their trips to make their dollars stretch. Simple tasks like picking up groceries or prescriptions, visiting doctors or applying for jobs are out of reach for many.  

However, organizations like Heritage Community Initiatives, based in Braddock, Pa, are working hard to support our local communities through education, nutrition and transportation support. Now in its 37th year, Heritage is a cornerstone of service, continuing to maintain its positive impact in more than 40 communities around Allegheny County.

“I always say this and mean it. It is a privilege to do what we do,” said Paula McWilliams, president and CEO. Recognizing that no one issue exists in a silo, it was important that Heritage addressed multiple concerns impacting families and individuals. 

Join us for the good of all our kids.
 
Today, we begin collecting petition signatures to get the Allegheny County Children’s Fund on the ballot. Will you join us?

Share your support – and your John Hancock – as we create a movement for the biggest ballot initiative in our region’s history. Find us at special events (some you might already be planning to attend!) across the county now through August 7. For a full list, visit our website. 

Get involved or learn more about the importance of early learning, after school and good nutrition at ourkidsourcommitment.org.

Visit OurkidsOurcommitment.org.
Sign our petition beginning June 19. 
Vote YES on November 6.

By Madison Brunner
Located just outside of Pittsburgh, Braddock has the second-highest number of senior citizens living alone and in poverty in Allegheny County. In under-served communities, two of the most vulnerable population groups are older adults and young children.

A summer nutrition program created by students from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health aims to combat this problem by offering a free, balanced lunch to both young children and older adults who otherwise may not be able to afford one.

Called “Assembly of the Ages,” an inaugural event organized with local non-profit Heritage Community Initiatives brought together people under the age of 18 and over 55 for an afternoon of games and activities while they enjoyed a gourmet, chef-prepared lunch. At the event on July 18, seniors and children bonded as they wrote down personal goals in areas of wellness, nutrition, activities and social interaction. After lunch, seniors watched as the children played a game of kickball.

“The purpose of the program is to make sure families don’t have to make the difficult choice between paying a bill in the summer or putting food on the table for their children,” said Laura Kelley, director of business development at Heritage Community Initiatives, which serves about 50 meals and snacks daily in the summer to children in Braddock who qualify for the free lunch program during the school year.

Ed Blazina, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, eblazina@post-gazette.com

In her position overseeing a transportation network that serves 14 mostly disadvantaged communities in the Mon Valley, Paula McWilliams has seen this scenario too many times:
Heritage Community Transportation takes someone to a medical appointment in McKeesport or Monroeville. Then the doctor refers the person to a specialist in the North Hills, leaving the person struggling to find transportation for the medical care.

“When we started getting those kinds of requests, we realized we had another problem to deal with,” said Ms. McWilliams, president and CEO of Heritage Community Initiatives in Braddock, which initially established a program to link workers with Mon Valley jobs.

“When someone says your life depends on it and the appointment is hours away or you find a second or third job and don’t know how to get there, that’s a real problem.”

To address that situation, Heritage pitched a program called the Travel Navigation Center, a sort of on-call transportation concierge, to the Pittsburgh Foundation. With an initial $70,000 foundation grant, the program is working with the Access system that provides transportation to the elderly to field calls and help design a way to get a client from here to there in the most efficient, least costly manner.  

By Mackenzie Carpenter, Freelance Journalist based in Pittsburgh

​MOST OF THE TIME, a person’s ability to make it in the world comes down to one thing: the ability to show up.

James Alexander learned that lesson after the Port Authority of Allegheny County eliminated his bus route to McKeesport, where he worked as a customer service representative.

“I’ve had a car in the past, but I just couldn’t afford one at that time,” says Alexander, who lives on Route 30 in North Versailles. “I really depended on the 60M to get to the office.”

After making some phone calls, he was led to Heritage Community Initiatives in Braddock, which provides crucial transportation at minimal cost to residents of eastern communities whose bus lines have been cut and who must get to jobs and medical appointments.

Alexander was immediately directed to the Heritage Community Transportation vans, basedat a Rite Aid parking lot. “It was five minutes from my house,” he says. “It was such a relief.”

For 41 communities in the eastern reaches of the Pittsburgh region, “when steel went away, so did access to a great deal of public transit,” says Paula McWilliams, president and CEO of Heritage, which is the only nonprofit in the state providing what is considered public transportation — three fixed routes that charge 25 cents a ride, serving about 6,000 people a month.

More than 60 percent of its riders have an average household income of less than $10,000, and many have more than one job, which is where Heritage’s new call center comes in. As of June, the call center, which is funded by The Pittsburgh Foundation, will design transportation plans that help people get from point A to point B in areas not covered by Heritage’s vans.

“Whether it’s a senior needing dialysis in the South Hills, a worker with a job interview in Robinson, or a mother whose child has an asthma referral in Cranberry, very often the callers have no idea how to get there,” McWilliams says. “And not everyone has access to the internet or a smartphone. That’s where we come in. The key to social mobility is to get people where they need to go.”

This organization is among the 97 nonprofits that benefitted from the May 23, 2017 Critical Needs Alert online giving event. That day, a total of $1,273,000 was raised for nonprofits providing basic needs: food, shelter, transportation, child care and physical and mental health care. Learn more about the Critical Needs Alert by reading this summer 2017 Forum story.

Every one of the 97 nonprofits that took part in the May 23 Critical Needs Alert has a significant impact on the community. To demonstrate the difference these organizations are making, we’ve profiled four, each of which provides basic needs directly to people in their communities. Read their stories here:
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