These 17 people are overseeing the $500 million Rebuild
Rebuild is a $500 million citywide initiative that’s seven years in the making, so you can bet that there have been a lot of questions in recent months about how the whole process is going to roll out....
View ArticleAmbler finally has its own community-owned grocery store
Residents of Ambler have gone without a stable grocery store in their area for years. But that changed last Friday when cooperative grocery Weavers Way officially opened its Ambler location at 217 E....
View ArticleHere are some future-focused takeaways from the 2017 Philanthropy Network...
What a year, huh? Last year’s Philanthropy Network fall conference followed on the heels of what former Executive Director Maari Porter called a “very divisive election. The 2016’s annual gathering of...
View ArticleThe anti-gentrification community development model Jumpstart is expanding in...
Jumpstart Germantown was an idea implemented by social impact real estate developer Ken Weinstein to help other aspiring developers in that area learn the skills and gain access to resources that would...
View ArticlePolicyMap made the transition from a nonprofit to a benefit corporation
The desire to have an impact doesn’t mean socially minded entrepreneurs need to go the nonprofit route. That’s why PolicyMap, a Center City-based GIS mapping and data organization, recently made the...
View ArticleKnight Cities Challenge winner PHL Participatory Design Lab is launching next...
Back in May, the Knight Foundation announced this year’s Knight Cities Challenge winners and one of the five from Philly was the City of Philadelphia itself. The city netted the largest amount of grant...
View ArticleJuntos just formed Philly’s first Community Resistance Zone for immigrants’...
Immigrants in the U.S. today face plenty of challenges, from the risk of deportation for seeking healthcare while undocumented to finding targeted support when it comes to mental health services. But...
View ArticlePrevention Point Philadelphia marks 25 years of battling HIV, AIDS and the...
“Nontraditional” is a word that comes up often when Jose Benitez, executive director of Prevention Point Philadelphia (PPP), describes the work his nonprofit does for those living with AIDS, HIV and...
View ArticleDrexel’s Urban Innovation Fellows are tackling workforce development and...
The Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University has always focused on solving the problems that persist in an urban environment like Philadelphia through civic engagement. But most of...
View ArticleThis Philly nonprofit is teaching social entrepreneurship to middle schoolers
The Business of Doing Good (BODOG) wants young people to think about how they can be socially responsible at the same time as they think about starting their own businesses. Because as one student put...
View ArticleThis new PhillyCAM fellowship will teach you to help others become engaged...
As much as PhillyCAM’s mission is about making media accessible and celebrating the power of that media, the nonprofit has also always been committed to educating young and old on how to critically...
View ArticleMural Arts is getting $200K to expand its criminal justice reform program
Local arts and the criminal justice system are in a iffy relationship. There’s a lack of stable funding and data to back up advocates’ desire for new, arts-focused approaches to reform. But Mural Arts‘...
View ArticleHere’s how the Penn Museum wants to engage visitors with vision loss
If you’ve ever been to a museum, you know that most of the art and items you see on display have strict “no-touching” policies. But more of these institutions are finding new ways to service visitors...
View ArticleWhat a North Philly film 10 years in the making can teach about building...
When Jonathan Olshefski first met Christopher “Quest” Rainey at his North Philly home back in 2006 with a camera in hand, Rainey was … confused, to say the least. “We thought he was the media or the...
View ArticleTeenSHARP is making its ‘long overdue’ expansion into Philly
TeenSHARP, a nonprofit college prep program for disadvantaged students founded by a husband-and-wife team in Camden back in 2009, recently opened its regional headquarters in Wilmington. Cofounders...
View ArticleSTEM program KidsMakeItRight is exposing elementary schoolers to compassion
Local edtech startup SmartyPal was created with a framework that focused on six C’s: communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, confidence and content. It’s a model that has certainly...
View ArticleHow broken instruments provided bonding — and a prop — for a Philly sketch...
Last weekend’s performance of “Symphony for a Broken Orchestra” at the 23rd Street Armory saw 400 people from all backgrounds playing some of the more than 1,000 broken instruments owned by the School...
View ArticlePhilly’s reentry office just moved back to Center City
Philly’s Office of Reintegration Services for Ex-Offenders (RISE) ED Ceciley Bradford-Jones has been talking about moving the agency’s office to Center City since the beginning of 2017. Because for the...
View ArticleMeet Samantha Porter, the West Philly Promise Zone’s biggest cheerleader
A recent report from the Pew Charitable Trusts affirmed, once again, that Philadelphia has the highest poverty rate among the nation’s 10 biggest cities. That means around 400,000 Philly residents —...
View ArticleTell the Philly school district what you think ‘local control’ should look like
It’s been a month since the city’s School Reform Commission, a five-member governing body appointed by the state of Pennsylvania to run the School District of Philadelphia since 2001, voted to dissolve...
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