Read descriptions of these timely, early-stage projects that are aiming to shift practice in the social sector.
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.
Barra’s investment in The Philadelphia Learning Collaborative (PLC) aims to further embed the innovative education approaches the Foundation has previously supported. Through a “thematic review,” in 2018 Barra looked back at several investments it had made in new school models including Science Leadership Academy, Building 21, Vaux Big Picture and the Workshop School and found that there were challenges to embedding these approaches into practice. These schools (and others) came together to address their need to strengthen the student-centered deeper learning practices in their schools and spread the innovation to other public, independent and charter schools interested in implementation. The PLC is an efficient way for the schools to collectively address these challenges as well as some of the obstacles they face working with colleges and universities to build a pipeline of educators prepared to teach at their schools, professional development, authentic assessment and establishing real-world connections for learning beyond the classroom.
The ongoing commitment of residents and community-based organizations to the Kensington section of Philadelphia has recently been bolstered by significant investments in the neighborhood. At the same time, economic forces associated with city-wide development threaten to change the neighborhood and make it unaffordable and culturally unwelcoming for current residents. Through a partnership with Shift Capital—a nationally-recognized impact developer—Impact Services Corporation will work with neighborhood stakeholders to create an emerging model for supporting the business corridor based on existing community land trusts. The Kensington Corridor Trust (Trust) will support sustainable and equitable community development through thoughtful real estate acquisition, community engagement, broad local ownership, small business lending and technical assistance. There are a few things that make this initiative different from other economic development efforts. The Trust will be controlled by a board of majority community stakeholders who represent the cultural and socioeconomic diversity of the current neighborhood and will hold and manage the properties. This community trust also aims to incorporate the commercial corridor, whereas other trusts have typically focused on residential community ownership. Neighborhoods around Philadelphia as well as other cities are watching the development of the Trust model as they consider how to avoid the economic inequality and displacement that often result from rapid gentrification.
The National Theater in London recently launched a new technology that allows hearing impaired audience members to access captioning through smart glasses that harness augmented reality to project captions within the user’s line of vision. Working with the local office of the National Theater’s technology partner, Accenture, the Temple University Institute on Disabilities will adapt the technology for use by regional theaters, who might not otherwise have the resources to develop such a tool. This approach overcomes existing cost and staffing barriers to providing closed captioning at every performance, allowing more equitable access for hearing impaired audiences. The Institute will extend the technology to include American Sign Language and Spanish language captioning.
AIM Academy has developed a research-based methodology that has proven to be successful in helping children with learning challenges succeed. Through their AIM Institute for Learning & Research, AIM has taken this approach and piloted it in the School District of Philadelphia to address struggling readers from low socioeconomic backgrounds who have a cognitive profile that is similar to children with learning differences. Given the limited reach of in-person trainings, AIM is developing AIM Pathways, a robust online platform that will decouple the opportunity to learn AIM’s approach from in-person courses allowing for more teachers to engage with this pedagogy. Because AIM Pathways is an online resource that is available anytime, anywhere, teachers will be able to continue to engage with the content and use its case study based curriculum in real time when identifying learning barriers in the classroom. AIM’s relationship with the Haskins Lab at Yale University’s Global Language and Literacy Innovation Hub provides a strong partner for designing the platform and dissemination model. The platform’s alignment with the goals of the national Grade Level Reading campaign provides opportunities for nationwide dissemination.