Allentown is considering reviving a program that pairs local teens with their elderly neighbors for much-needed snow shoveling assistance during the winter months.
Milagros Canales, an Allentown activist and community liaison for state Sen. Nick Miller, founded the Snow Angels program in 2011, after her son offered to shovel snow for an elderly neighbor while walking home. The neighbor told Canales’ son they wished more of Allentown youth would offer their time and skills to help seniors who cannot shovel snow on their own.
Canales reached out to Rick Daugherty, executive director of Lehigh Valley Active Life, and launched Snow Angels that year with seven Allen High School students.
The program expanded over the years, with up to 65 students regularly volunteering between 2014 to 2016.
The program was a win-win, Canales said — local seniors and residents with disabilities people were grateful for the shoveling help, while local students fulfilled the volunteer requirements they needed to graduate and made new connections with the neighbors along the way.
“It didn’t matter what you look like, we did it,” Canales said of the snow shoveling efforts at a Wednesday City Council meeting. “Sometimes we didn’t get home until 11 o’clock at night, but we made sure we went.”
The program fizzled out after 2016 when the city and school district became more involved in oversight, which Canales said made it harder to recruit volunteers. School officials also wanted to exclude students on disciplinary probation from the program, Canales said, which she disagreed with.
The need for such a program is apparent — six people died in snow shoveling-related cardiac incidents this year in Lehigh County, according to county Coroner Daniel Buglio. Shoveling snow can be dangerous and life-threatening for people with heart conditions and other disabilities.
The region faced a major winter storm in late January which dumped a foot of snow across the Valley that took weeks to melt because of prolonged sub-freezing temperatures. Another storm in February dropped around five inches throughout the region.
To date, 35.5 inches of snow have fallen this winter, making it the snowiest winter since 2020-21, when 58.1 inches of snow fell. Nearly 21 inches of snow fell in January alone.
Canales presented the details of the Snow Angels program to a City Council public works committee Wednesday. Members Cf council unanimously agreed to look into reviving the program to help the city’s elderly residents.
“I think this is really touching, it’s what our community yearns for, as somebody who went out and shoveled throughout high school in that exact time frame, 2016, I wish I knew about the Snow Angels, I would have been involved too,” said City Council member Cristian Pungo. “I definitely want to see what is possible and what we could do to give this a second wind.”
According to City Council Policy officer Genesis Ortega, Daugherty, Lehigh Valley Active Life’s executive director, is willing to help revive the program.
Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.