Elizabeth Hall Pollak (1917 – 2014) was raised poor on a farm outside of Annapolis. Her family had little money but they were a strong family and community. She was a person of modest means who lived simply and believed that we all have a responsibility to help those in need — especially children — and that we could create the “beloved community” that Martin Luther King spoke of.
With help from members of St. Lukes, her small Episcopalian church in Annapolis, and inspired by both her faith and her volunteer experience working with a young man in the county detention center, she founded the Martin Pollak Project in honor of her husband who had died of a heart attack at a young age and who also believed that we have moral responsibilities beyond ourselves. Using her own funds, she hired an executive director and drafted other volunteers to serve with her on the board.
Today, we are doing our best to carry on her “civic faith,” the belief that we can appeal to “the better angels of our nature,” as Lincoln put it, and make a better world by working together with love, patience and wisdom. We are committed to not only serving the kids in our direct care and working with the volunteer tutors and mentors that serve in DC and Baltimore but to building civic partnerships to get a tutor, mentor or “navigator” for every student in DC and Baltimore reading below grade level or with other academic or non-academic needs, and in the process create a civic culture that can help us realize our deeper aspirations for a flourishing and caring community that works for all people.
