Heart of Pelham (HOP) Award Winners!

We were delighted to hold our annual Heart of Pelham (HOP) Award ceremony on January 16 at J Cafe.

The HOP award is dedicated to those young people whose character reflects compassion, leadership, determination, perseverance, and integrity. HOP is intended to provide an opportunity to connect and elevate perhaps the quieter voices in our town whose actions have tremendous impact yet may go uncelebrated.

HOP Award Recipients

  • Eva Dagony-Clark is a great teammate, an inspiring leader, and a generous Pelham community member; taking on leadership roles on the cheer team and in Curvy Girls with Scoliosis.

  • Taya Senerchia is a thoughtful, compassionate, and curious individual who devotes her time to being a “tireless advocate,” as her nominator described her.

  • Jagarvey Samuel is a patient, considerate, and open-minded peer mentor who leads by example—modeling sustainable and genuine care to everyone around him.

HOP Jr. Recipients

  • Addy McKee and Minos Vukadinovic were nominated for being reliable, passionate, and kind members of the Pelham Middle School community. Throughout the year, Addy and Minos have worked closely as members of the Pelham Together Club to better understand the neurodiverse community; finding fun, authentic, and impactful ways to actively participate in classrooms as supportive peer mentors.

Addy, Minos, Eva, Taya, and Jagarvey each represent the heart of Pelham. Their impact is long lasting, and supports their community through actions big and small.

Thank you to all the nominators, to the community members who joined the celebration, to J Cafe for hosting, and especially to our young people. 

The Heart of Pelham (HOP) Awards are youth recognition awards given to Pelham teens who exemplify character traits such as compassion, perseverance, kindness, determination, and integrity. Young people (ages 14-18) can be nominated by anyone in the community, which gives adults a chance to recognize them in ways that often go unnoticed.

See the press release in the Pelham Examiner here.

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