Celebrate your milestone with The Phillips Brooks House Association!
We are so excited to have you back on campus to celebrate your time at Harvard, PBHA, and beyond!
Please stop by to reminisce and share how PBHA has shaped your life's journey.
Join us in the Parlor Room of Phillips Brooks House, interact with PBHA alumni from other class years, and hear from current students and staff about PBHA's current activities. Hors d'oeuvres and refreshments will be served.
Alumni from classes 1954 through 1974 will gather in the Parlor Room at the Phillips Brooks House on Thursday, May 30th from 1:00pm - 2:00pm
Alumni from classes 1979 through 2019 will gather in the Parlor Room at the Phillips Brooks House on Saturday, June 1st from 3:00pm - 4:30pm
You can now designate a gift to PBHA through Harvard to receive class credit!
Select “other” for the fund
Type in “General Support of the PBHA Fund - allocation code 310-330584RG” in the comments field
This year, join us as we celebrate 120 years as an organization!
1904 - an org is born
Phillips Brooks House was constructed in the memory of the Reverend Phillips Brooks, a preacher at Trinity Church, Harvard graduate, and advocate for social service. Plans for the building were drafted and completed upon Brooks’ death in 1893, and Phillips Brooks House was dedicated on January 23, 1900, to serve “the ideal of piety, charity, and hospitality.”In 1904, six organizations formally organized themselves into the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA), and by the 1920s all of the religious groups had withdrawn from the organization. The Social Service Committee and several offspring philanthropic groups continued to serve the mission of PBHA in a non-sectarian manner.
I was really active in PBHA during a time in my life where I was figuring out the person I was going to be. The experiences and opportunities for reflection I had with PBHA made service part of my identity--for the rest of my life, I've asked myself whether what I'm doing makes the world better, and how. This is how I think of who I am. ‘03
PBHA’s Unique Model
PBHA’s unique model for impact on student volunteers comprises three primary components:
Meaningful service: PBHA provides students with unique, year-round service and social action opportunities that are deeply grounded in community, involve real-life responsibilities, and center opportunities for leadership and innovation unique among Harvard experiences.
Community of practice: PBHA’s student-led community volunteers, leads, and reflects with each other, facilitating mutual learning, relationship development, and a supportive, inclusive environment.
Intentional Leadership Development: PBHA’s staff coaching, alumni mentorship, and intentional training and reflection, which have substantially increased in the last 20 years, provides the scaffolding for transformative student leadership development, the impact of which lasts long after graduation.
Check out some historical newspaper clippings of all the work PBHA has been up to since 1904!
Harvard Crimson
January 22, 1930
Titled: “P.B.H. GraduateSecretary Gives Picture of Every Field in Anniversary Report”
Excerpt: “When one of the undertakings developed by the Association has proved its usefulness and is on a firm footing, it is very often made independent of the Association or turned over to the direction of some organization better equipped to administer. For example: the Legal Aid Bureau was organized by the Phillips Brooks House Association in 1914. After the Bureau had developed under the wing of the Association for many years and had proved its worth, the Harvard Law School assumed the responsibility of supporting the Bureau and it was given an office in Gannet House in addition to its office in Central Square.”
Harvard Crimson
April 21st, 1941
Titled: “10 Accepted for PBH Summer Unit”
Excerpt: “With six girls and four men already definitely accepted, the Phillips Brooks House work camp is well on its way toward a successful summer program. Applications are coming in daily, and it is expected that the quota of 25 members will be soon filled.”
Harvard Crimson
1950’s
Titled: “President Hunt Proposes Brooks House Initiate Social Service Program in India”
Excerpt: “A plan for Phillips Brooks House to initiate a social service program in India will be proposed by PBH president Douglas W. Hunt ‘55 at the House’s next Cabinet Meeting… The program will be sponsored jointly by PBH, the Delhi University in India, and World University Service, an international group whose aim is to create mutual understanding between institutions of learning throughout the world.”
Unidentified Source
December 7th, 1978
Titled: “Walpole Prison Shutdown Halts PBH Volunteer Tutoring Work”
Excerpt: “Officials at Walpole prison are refusing to allow student volunteers from Phillips Brooks House (PBH) to tutor prisoser since the closing of a section of the prison to outsiders following the November 15 murder of an inmate.”
Harvard Crimson
1983
Titled: “Program Takes Students to South End”
Excerpt: “Two-thirds of the way through its maiden summer, the Keylatch Summer Enrichment Program is in full swing, providing two dozen inner-city youths with both classroom instruction and field trips to museum and other often-foreign sites in the area… Keylatch - run under the auspices of Harvard’s Phillips Brooks Gouse (PBH) - aims to provide a constructive outlet for disadvantaged children.”
Harvard Gazette
1997
Titled: “PBHA Returns to the Fold”
Excerpt: “The undergraduate public service organization Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) has finally achieved entente with the college.”
Harvard Crimson
June 5, 2007
Titled: “PBHA To Open New Service Office”
Excerpt: “The Spanish-speaking section of the Small Claims Advisory Service (SCAS)- an undergraduate group affiliated with the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA)- is set to open a new community office near Central Square to serve the Latino community in the Greater Boston Area.”
Harvard Crimson
October 6, 2015
Titled: “PBHA Mission Hill Program Relocates to Three New Locations”
Excerpt: “After losing its old site, the Phillips Brooks House Association’s Mission Hill After School Program has relocated to three centers in Roxbury for the foreseeable future… MHASP…. found itself scrambling this past summer after it abruptly lost the space it had previously occupied at the Maurice J. Tobins K-8 School.”
Harvard Gazette
November 15, 2023
Titled: “An honor named for her best friend and mentor”
Excerpt: “‘Dr. Coles reached across the aisle to come work with me, being 6 years old and going through that and not really being able to talk about it,’ Bridges told a packed crowd at Harvard Memorial Church last week, where she was honored with the Phillips Brooks House Association Call of Service Award that bears Coles’ name.”