For too many families in our region, being heard shouldn’t depend on whether you have the right technology, the right access, or the right room to speak in.
Level Flat Association has spent years working to change that — and now, with a $12,000 grant from the Pottstown Regional Community Foundation, that work is about to reach further than ever.
The funding will power When Pottstown Speaks: Digital Tools for Community Power, a project built on a simple but stubborn belief: that every resident, regardless of circumstance, deserves the tools to be part of the conversations that shape their own community.
“This is so much more than a grant to us,” Deb Spence, Chief Innovation Officer of Level Flat Association, said. “It’s a promise to the people who have too often been left out, the neighbor who couldn’t make the meeting, the parents who didn’t know where to turn, the resident who assumed no one was listening. When Pottstown Speaks, levelflat.org, is our way of saying: we hear you, and we’re building something so the whole community can hear you too. To have the Foundation believe in that vision means everything.”
This tool embodies the notion that real change comes from neighbors who refuse to let anyone go unheard.
At the heart of the project is the One Calendar — one place where everything happening in Pottstown finally lives together. The library. The Chamber. School board and borough council meetings. Community action meetings. The Pottstown Farm. Comedy shows, live music, parades.
For decades that information was scattered across a dozen websites, flyers, and word-of-mouth, and the people who missed out were almost always the same ones who could least afford to: the family without reliable internet, the worker juggling two jobs, the resident who never got the email. The One Calendar fixes that.
For the first time, organizers can see what’s planned months ahead — so two big events don’t land on the same day, so efforts get coordinated instead of competing, so nothing important gets buried. And when everyone can see what’s happening, everyone can show up. Showing up is how a town becomes a community.
The partnership goes beyond dollars. Level Flat Association will designate a board or staff member to serve on the 2027 Pottstown Community Voices Grant Fund, a resident-led participatory grantmaking initiative of the Pottstown Regional Community Foundation, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with neighbors to decide how future support reaches the people who need it most.
Throughout the next grant period, Level Flat, residents, and the Foundation’s staff will work hand in hand, learning together and lifting up the community at the heart of this effort.
This project is made possible by a grant from the Pottstown Regional Community Foundation, committed to strengthening health, education, and economic opportunity in our community.
To learn more about the foundation, visit pottstownfoundation.org.
Learn more about Level Flat Association’s work and how to get involved at levelflat.org.
