PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Sister Mary Scullion is stepping down as executive director of the trailblazing homeless advocacy nonprofit Project HOME. Scullion founded the organization along with Associate Director Joan McConnon 35 years ago. McConnon is also retiring. The two women will leave behind a powerful legacy.
“We wanted to thoughtfully and methodically make this transition,” Scullion said.
She says she and McConnon have been planning for retirement for three years — elevating people to new positions so they can delegate responsibilities.
“So many people gave their talent, time and treasure to the Project HOME community, we felt a responsibility to make a strong foundation for the future,” she said.
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McConnon will step down next June, and Scullion will retire at the end of 2024. A search for her replacement begins next week. It’s hard to imagine who could fill her shoes.
Scullion is a member of the order of the Sisters of Mercy. She lived the name fully — and combined it with a remarkable level of passion, courage and energy.
She began as an activist. Defying SEPTA and Amtrak to feed people experiencing homelessness at 30th Street Station, she was arrested four times. But she learned not so much to work within the system as to bend the system to the needs of those she served.
She opened her first shelter in a vacant elementary school in 1984. Next week, she’ll cut the ribbon on her 1,000th unit of supportive housing.
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When the fledgling Project HOME was offered office and shelter space at 1515 Fairmount Avenue in 1990, the forces of power arrayed against it. Then-state Sen. Vincent Fumo, who lived nearby, tied it up in court for years. Then-Mayor Ed Rendell even went to the Archdiocese to try to get them to rein in the young nun behind the project. They lost.
For Scullion, 1515 is proof of what’s possible.
“What’s happened there has been amazing — not only the transformation of the people who live there, but also the people in our neighborhood who have embraced our mission,” she said. “Over the years of Project HOME, we’ve just seen what is possible when people work together and create a pathway home.”
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The thousands of people Project HOME has helped in the last 35 years fuel Scullion’s optimism homelessness is a solvable problem — if the political will is there.
“Of the 10 largest cities, Philadelphia has the highest poverty — but of the 10 largest cities, we have the lowest number of people living on the street,” she said. “So there has been a lot of progress, but we still have a lot to do.”
She says she and McConnon will continue the fight, but in different roles. She would not say yet what that will be.
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