Waynesburg University’s ‘Leah Project’ honors former student
Abigail Standley, a junior education major at Waynesburg University, works with local pre-kindergarten students as part of a service project, “The Leah Project,” which she stared three years ago in memory of a former Waynesburg graduate student who died in 2008.
Abigail Standley, a junior education major at Waynesburg University, reads to local pre-K students as part of “The Leah Project.”
An Earth Day ceremony Friday at Waynesburg University will honor the life and legacy of a woman who died in 2008.
Leah Abbe Zwerver, an education graduate student at Waynesburg, died while at a bonfire when a farm tractor rolled over on her. The 23-year-old left behind many family members and friends who donated money in her memory.
Now, a 21-year-old Waynesburg education major who never met Leah is using that money to build Leah’s legacy. She’s calling it “The Leah Project.”
“We’ve used the money to take underprivileged students to classrooms and museums and teach lesson plans to prepare them to go to a green house,” junior Abigail Standley said.
Standley said about $10,000 was put into an endowment fund by Leah’s mother Pam Abbe, who wanted a program established for area youth in memory of her daughter.
“She was an amazing educator,” Abbe said of Leah. “I wanted something to reach out to the primary school age and Leah always felt really strong about this community.”
Abbe, who’s worked at Waynesburg as director of the Knox Learning Center for more than 30 years, met Standley on campus. After the initial meeting, Standley spent three years working on creating “The Leah Project.”
“Pam is like a mom to me now,” Standley said. “I just feel connected to Leah because she was an education major who was very passionate about what she did. I’m a junior education major and I think that’s what empowered me to do it, and it helps Pam to heal more.”
Standley works with Community Action Southwest and receives about $460 a year of the endowment fund to take about 40 underprivileged pre-kindergarten students from Jefferson-Morgan and West Greene on field trips to places such as Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.
On Friday, they will embark on another field trip to Shield’s Greenhouse and Flower Farm in Spraggs, to plant flowers and tour the greenhouse.
When they return, they will plant a tree on Waynesburg’s campus in memory of Leah.
“This has been very uplifting with moving forward with the grief and being able to recognize the people who donated in her memory,” Abbe said.
Standley said next year she hopes the service project will branch out to more local school districts. She said they started out small because “parents have been the ones providing the transportation for all of this.”