Read descriptions of these timely, early-stage projects that are aiming to shift practice in the social sector.
Lift Every Voice Philly (LEV) aims to test a new community organizing model for parents of school-age children in Philadelphia where parent-led chapters set agendas for collective action. In Philadelphia, where many schools are underfunded and community engagement is limited, parents often feel excluded from decision-making processes regarding their children’s education. Parents also face systemic barriers such as limited access to information, restricted communication with school staff, and racial stereotypes. Existing approaches fall short because they often overlook the critical role that parents play in advocating for their children’s needs. To combat these barriers, LEV will recruit and build relationships with parent members in schools with the highest rates of gun violence, that lack existing parent organizations and have poor school outcomes. They will train and coach parents, striving to cultivate their leadership abilities. Finally, LEV will work with parents to design and execute campaigns that seek resolution on the priority issues that parents have identified. In 2025, LEV will explore the viability of this new community organizing model as a way to drive education systems change from the grassroots level by building from initial experiments toward a citywide presence.
The Bridge Way School will test whether by providing a high school recovery education program with student-led garden learning and arts programming, it can increase youth engagement and help them make progress in substance use recovery. Bridge Way is Pennsylvania’s first and only recovery high school and is designated under state recovery high school legislation to educate students who agree to engage in a recovery program while pursuing their diploma. Young people in recovery are not easily granted opportunities to have unsupervised activities in an attempt to keep them safe. However, Bridge Way, with ample support from a community of trusted adults, will offer self-affirming, off campus autonomy with plant and community-care projects. Students will work with a recovery artist-in-residence to curate experiences in the garden and its adjacent nonprofit arts space. This first of a kind, off-campus, creative experience will also test the transferability of an education recovery model to other settings, while serving as a model for other high school communities.
Philly BOLT aims to test whether strategically integrating community leaders into neighborhood schools as mentors and advisors to students can alleviate pressure on teachers to manage student wellbeing and cultivate student agency to make change in their neighborhoods. In addition to teaching, public school teachers are expected to manage non-curricular student priorities, such as socio-emotional well-being, securing summer internships, and mediating conflicts. Underpaid and overworked, nearly 1 in 3 Philadelphia teachers quit their jobs in 2021-2022. Meanwhile, students in under-resourced schools often feel powerless to overcome the challenges and environments they experience, despite the existence of grassroots community leaders working to do just that, often through self-funded, ad-hoc youth programs. The BOLT model leverages these two untapped groups- community experts and student leaders within the schools–to provide in-school support. Via BOLT’s model, these groups will strengthen neighborhood schools and connect students to opportunities to improve their neighborhoods. By systematizing the relationships between community experts, adolescents, and schools, BOLT aims to increase teacher retention, cultivate youth as changemakers, and ultimately strengthen the social fabric of neighborhoods.
Through their project, FamFrequency will test whether taking youth music producers’ artistic ambitions seriously and equipping them with both creative and business skills can foster sustainable pathways for youth to financially support themselves through art. Most existing arts-focused youth programs focus on leveraging creative practice toward other ends – like academic success and personal development. However, in the era of TikTok and YouTube, many high school student artists are moving away from the high school-to-college-to-salary trajectory and toward independent creative and media-engaged careers. The current lack of professional development and business support for aspiring young artists leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and financial instability as they attempt to enter a complex and competitive industry. FamFrequency Productions aims to channel this energy into entrepreneurial success by capitalizing on and cultivating young people’s dreams of creative careers, with a particular focus on women and BIPOC individuals. They will do so by exposing youth to the varied ways they can put music production skills to work, building their technical and entrepreneurial capacity, and helping broker and facilitate early client relationships, to smooth the way to artistic income.
By combining a workforce development program with a community of practice for employers, Triple Bottom Brewing is testing whether providing both supply and demand-side supports can transform the hospitality industry into a supportive and sustainable employer for people impacted by violence, housing insecurity and the justice system. Individuals who have experienced these challenges often encounter disproportionate barriers finding and keeping employment upon return to the workforce, and most workforce development programs put the onus of employability solely on the employee, rather than the employer. Triple Bottom will anchor its workforce development program within a for-profit business, leveraging the credibility of an industry leader to create a seamless transition from apprentice to industry employee for participants. By focusing on often-overlooked populations and building both employee and employer capacity, Triple Bottom intends to break down barriers to employment while stabilizing the hospitality industry by meeting pressing needs for qualified personnel.
We Love Philly (WLP) intends to test whether by providing systemically marginalized young people at risk of not graduating high school with access to an alternative paid pre-apprenticeship program, and by building supportive networks and professional contacts with community leaders, they can increase graduation rates and create a pipeline to financially viable careers in growing industries like cyber security and solar software development. This first-of-its kind paid pre-apprenticeship program for high school students is a timely response to Act 158, which provides alternative pathways for students to graduate. WLP aims to serve as a model for others responding to this Act 158 opportunity. A “youth-first” nonprofit, WLP prides itself on listening to and centering the needs of students in developing its programming.
Research For Action is developing a first-of-its-kind Democratizing Education Data Collective that puts research and advocacy power into the capable and knowledgeable hands of the students, families and communities impacted by public education in Philadelphia. RFA will work with community members to source, understand and use research for their most pressing issues.
This emerging model of participatory research will enable people closest to the issues to set the research agenda and the questions being asked. RFA aims to develop an approach that will change the research conversation and ultimately lead to more just and effective educational systems, policies and practices at the school and neighborhood levels.
New models of education are taking on very real barriers that constrain many students. Workshop Learning’s Workshop U pilot program seeks to create a college environment focused on real world learning and skills for recent high school graduates, centering traditionally excluded populations. The pilot program aims to reduce the cost of the college experience, help students develop valuable workplace skills that serve them within and across careers, and ground students’ learning journey in a deep understanding of who they are and what they want from life. By working with a cross-sector of partners and organizations, Workshop U is creating a model for collaboration, iteration and long-term systematic adoption of this educational model.
Philly Rise is a five-year real estate accelerator program for emerging black and brown real estate developers designed to provide them with the training, affordable capital, technical assistance and networks they need to grow their companies. A cohort of 10-12 black and brown real estate developers will be recruited into Philly Rise each year with each developer receiving 14 weeks of high-level training, a committed pool of capital that they can promptly access for their projects, mentorship and coaching through the predevelopment and construction phases of their projects, and access to an ecosystem of developers, architects, contractors, and other residential development professionals in Philadelphia. The Philly Rise accelerator brings together a range of partner organizations (Black Squirrel, Urban Land Institute, Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation and AR Spruce) to provide developer cohorts with these resources.
Seventy-five percent of individuals in the United States from the lowest economic quartile who started post-secondary degrees, never finished. College Unbound (CU) is a contemporary accredited college that aims to reinvent the higher education experience to address the very real barriers that constrain underserved adult learners. A convenient schedule and support system tailored to working and parenting adults initially attracts students. They stay engaged because of the small cohort model and transformational curriculum that develops high-value, field-specific knowledge that builds on their interests and provides credit for life experience. After successfully completing the rigorous, project-based curriculum, students are awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Organizational Leadership and Change. CU partners with nonprofits and businesses to enable access to CU’s target adult population and to embed degree completion in the workplace. In January, 2022 College Unbound (CU) Philadelphia launched two pilot cohorts in partnership with the Philadelphia Housing Authority and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. The business model limits student debt and aims to further economic advancement.