diversity : Innovation + Job News

Big news for books in the School District of Philadelphia: $30 million in combined investments from the District and major foundations, announced this month, will spur a major literacy initiative for the city’s elementary schoolers. Plans are also afoot to put about 2,000 individual classroom libraries into Philly schools (about a million books in total).
 
It’s a three-year, three-pronged effort, funded in part by $4.5 million from The Lenfest Foundation and $6 million from the William Penn Foundation. The programs will focus on kids in kindergarten through third grade; it's part of District Superintendent Dr. William Hite’s longterm plan to boost early childhood literacy, a particular challenge for our city.
 
According to a statement from the District and the partnering foundations, Philly has 48,000 kids in kindergarten through third grade. Eight-five percent of them are members of low-income families, 14 percent have special education needs and 10 percent don’t speak English as their first language. A little over half of Philly's students can read at grade level by the end of third grade, an issue the District has already been tackling with its READ by 4th! Campaign (the new efforts will be an extension of this work).
 
According to William Penn Program Director Elliot Weinbaum, this investment has been in the pipeline for a while. The District had been working with the foundations for almost a year prior to the announcement; the foundations were impressed by the scope and specificity of the District's plans.
 
For the first part of the new initiative, 2,000 of Philly’s K-3 teachers (about 65 percent of them overall) will receive a week-long intensive summer training program on research-backed literacy instruction, institutionalizing new evidence-based approaches. Dedicated literacy coaches will support teachers throughout the school year.
 
Finally, the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia will spearhead a campaign for $3.4 million in matching funds from public donors over the next three years. The money will go towards customized in-classroom libraries.
 
"The classroom-based library is very much meant for the child to take agency over his or her learning," says Weinbaum. Students will be able to take volumes home with them for reading outside the classroom, and school staffers will help select the books, customizing the individual collections.

"It won’t be a one-size-fits-all library," adds Weinbaum. "We have a very diverse student body, both in terms of cultural and ethnic background," at a range of reading levels. Because of that diversity, the span of classroom interests and needs is "much broader than you would find in other schools and districts around the country. There’s plenty of research out there that shows when kids are interested in a topic, they are more likely to engage with the books."
 
Members of the public interested in supporting the libraries effort can call The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia at (215) 979-1199.
 
Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Elliot Weinbaum, The William Penn Foundation

With a major new grant in excess of $100,000 from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Historic Germantown (HG) is tackling the "Elephants on the Avenue" – i.e., long-standing issues of race and class.

"The impetus for the project really was continuing Historic Germantown’s vision to contribute to the cultural and economic development of this community,” explains HG executive director Trapeta Mayson of the newly-funded "Elephants on the Avenue: Race, Class, and Community in Historic Germantown."

That means respectfully interpreting Germantown’s deep and diverse history on a few main themes, including slavery and abolition, inclusion and exclusion, and tolerance.

"I don’t think people can always easily find themselves in some of these stories, so we feel that some of the responsibility of our historic site is to make this information accessible and relevant to today’s public," says Mayson.

The project, which will launch in October and last two years, will pair local artists and historians to "collaboratively curate text and image-based public art and educational workshops about race and class" with the help of member sites and community partners.

The project boasts four historians: Dr. Abigail Perkiss, Dr. Matthew Countryman, Dr. Molefi Assante and Dr. Thomas Sugrue. Participating creative types include visual artists, educators and poets: Barbara J. Bullock, Ife Nii Owoo, Diane Pieri, Sonia Sanchez, Yolanda Wisher and Benjamin Volta.

Pew dollars will let HG compensate the artists and historians, Mayson explains, and cover materials for workshops, festivals and other community events. "Elephants" will also have a dedicated part-time project manager.

And it’s not just about reckoning with the past -- exploring the full potential of Germantown’s historic fabric has economic importance, too.

"Economics is something that people tend to forget when we think about historic sites and how important they are to a community," insists Mayson. "People come to a neighborhood, they spend money, they become interested."

That means Germantown has a lot of growing to do, from upping the number of available restaurants to improving walkability and transit -- that’s why HG already partners with several non-historic community organizations, meeting monthly with Germantown United CDC, Germantown Community Connection and others.

"We’d be missing a great opportunity if we didn’t realize we were just as essential to economic development and community planning," adds Mayson.

"Elephants on the Avenue" will culminate in a final performance/exhibition curated by iMPeRFeCT Gallery co-founder and Germantown resident Renny Molenaar.

Source: Trapeta Mayson, Historic Germantown
Writer: Alaina Mabaso

In 1995, a small group of Philadelphia-region women entrepreneurs got together for mutual support and access to capital. Now, 20 years later, the group -- renamed the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) -- is the Mid-Atlantic's largest organization dedicated to fostering high-growth businesses founded or led by women. 

Still, according to Executive Director Victoria Burkhart, "there is a sense…that now is the time to 'move the needle' on women and entrepreneurship, and for AWE to take a more active role in connecting women to capital. AWE approached Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania (BFTP/SEP), a longtime partner, to brainstorm strategies for aligning efforts in support of funding for entrepreneurial enterprises founded by women."

The resulting AWE Ventures—Powered by Ben Franklin is a crowdfunded, donation-driven initiative to raise $250,000 -- to be matched dollar-for-dollar by BFTP/SEP -- for seed-stage investments in women-led enterprises in the Philadelphia region. The new program will also provide hands-on support for entrepreneurs from both partners’ shared networks of capital, counsel and connections, and events, workshops and published content to empower entrepreneurs and celebrate successes.

“As much as it is our goal to help support the growth of female entrepreneurs, AWE Ventures will also provide an opportunity to mentor future women investors," explains Burkhart. "Programming offered by both AWE and Ben Franklin will be as much about ‘how to invest’ as it will be about entrepreneurship. Fostering increased participation of women in early-stage or angel investment is equally important to increasing the diversity of our technology ecosystem here in the Greater Philadelphia region; really, in the nation at large."

"AWE and Ben Franklin will identify potential entrepreneurs for investment, with full management of the due diligence and investment processes to be handled by Ben Franklin," explains RoseAnn B. Rosenthal, BFTP/SEP’s president and CEO. "Like all other Ben Franklin investments, companies will commit to being located in Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware or Chester counties for at least five years, or until repayment/exit. The number of companies to be funded remains flexible and will depend upon the amount of funds raised."

"AWE does a great job in creating events and programs to connect and advance women entrepreneurs, providing opportunities to share experiences, insights, best practices and lessons learned," she adds. "Ben Franklin does as well, actively working to bring insights from its investors, portfolio companies and regional partners into the mix. There's really no end date or fixed total hours for what AWE Ventures—Powered by Ben Franklin can provide. That's what so great about our two organizations working together on this initiative."

Source: RoseAnn B. Rosenthal, BFTP/SEP and Victoria Burkhart, AWE
Writer: Elise Vider

Winnipeg native and Montreal resident Kandis Friesen loved the two months she spent in Philly this year as part of Lancaster Avenue's Neighborhood Time Exchange (NTE) residency, which offers studio space and a stipend for hours of service the artists contribute to community-based projects.

The intitative, continuing with multiple artist cycles until the fall, is a partnership of the Mural Arts Program, the Ontario-based Broken City Lab and the People's Emergency Center.

An interdisciplinary artist who works with media including sound and video, Friesen, in her mid-30s, has been working as an artist only for the last five years or so.

"Before that, I was doing social justice-based and community-based work," she explains. "I’ve always seen it as part of my life, whether I’m making art or working a different job."

During her NTE stint (which ran from February 1 through April 1), she offered some of those project-manager skills to her peers: negotiating time, projects and space. In a program connecting residency artists to community service requests, that meant "working with really diverse groups of people who might have really different ideas, or similar ideas but…really different personalities," she explains.

Her own contribution to the neighborhood had many facets. She worked with the New Africa Center on a walking tour of Black History in West Philly, focusing on the saga of the self-identified Black Bottom Tribe, a thriving 19th-century African-American community living where University City stands today. The Tribe suffered forcible evictions under city development plans and university expansions in the early 1900s, alongside redlining laws that made it nearly impossible for African Americans to obtain mortgages.

This especially touched on Friesen’s interest in archives and memorials -- and how they’re made and maintained.

She also did a lot of work for the Artistic and Cultural Enrichment (ACE) Program at Martha Washington Elementary School.
ACE instructor Hope McDowell had written a script called More Than Martin, and enlisted Friesen to help her shoot and edit it. In the film, now available online, Martin Luther King, Jr. comes back to say, as Friesen explains, "I’ve been carrying Black History for myself for too long…I would like to introduce you to all these other people in African-American history, and you also might make history."

"It’s a great film, in line with my own practice as well," enthuses the artist. "People being able to tell their own histories."

She also led a variety of arts workshops for Martha Washington students, and collaborated with her fellow NTE artists on other projects, including time with the Earthship Philadelphia project and the New Bethlehem Baptist Church.

"We all helped each other in different ways, and that was also really nice to have a collaborative environment for our community work," she adds. "I think the strength of this residency was that it really was an infrastructure created." The artist residents didn’t operate on any assumptions about what they were bringing to the neighborhood: instead, they listened to hear what needed to be done, to "reinforce or connect what is already happening."

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Kandis Friesen, Neighborhood Time Exchange
 

Girls just want to have…parity in the tech world.

With the aim of addressing gender inequality in the sector, Drexel University’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio is working with the Philadelphia nonprofit TechGirlz to create a virtual game design class that will be made available, free-of-charge, to schools and students nationwide.

This set of self-contained, online instructional videos and educational materials will guide middle school and high-school-age students – and their teachers – through a basic game design curriculum. 
 
"Our goal is to give young women a little taste of game design," explains Frank Lee, an associate professor in Westphal College of Media Arts & Design and founder of the Entrepreneurial Game Studio. "Many of them are already playing video games, but we’re hoping our workshops will inspire them to ask questions about how they’re made, and think about how they could make them better. We want to make a program that is useful and engaging enough that students will get enough basic coding knowledge to make a simple game."

"Our goal for this program is to make sure girls understand what technology is all about and how they can be part of it," adds Tracey Welson Rossman, founder of TechGirlz. "This particular program is targeted to increase the number of girls who understand how cool creating games can be."

Participants in TechGirlz’ ongoing workshops and summer programs are currently testing the game design curriculum for an anticipated fall launch. According to Welson Rossman, the nonprofit is also planning to expand its workshop offerings nationwide. 

Source: Tracey Welson Rossman, TechGirlz and Drexel University
Writer: Elise Vider

The Women in Natural Sciences (WINS) program at Drexel’s Academy of Natural Sciences has been going strong for 32 years, and now a special grant from the U.S. Department of State’s Museums Connect program is allowing a team of 15 Philly public high school girls to collaborate with 15 girls from Mongolia on a globe-spanning project.

For the last several months, the teens have been using online courses, Facebook and Skype to study climate change and its cultural impact. Then last week, four girls from the Mongolian side of the project, administered through the National Museum of Mongolia’s ROOTS program, had a whirlwind visit to Philadelphia. This July, five public high school girls from Philadelphia will reciprocate with their own two-week trip to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.

The climate change focus of the youth program is three-pronged, explains WINS manager Betsy Payne: "One is water, one is food, one is the cultural repercussions."

Currently, there are 60 girls in the WINS program citywide, but the Museums Connect dollars (administered by the American Alliance of Museums) allowed for just fifteen Mongolian girls and fifteen Philly girls. WINS sophomores and juniors were invited to apply for the program, and were selected based on a range of criteria.

"Even though it’s a one-year program, we’re hoping it has repercussions where they might be able to do more in the near future," says Payne of the age group she decided to target and applicants' dedication to the program’s offerings. The Academy was also "looking for the girls who hadn’t had other opportunities of major travel." 

The lucky travelers are George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science sophomore Faatimat Sylla; junior Geré Johnson from the Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School of Philadelphia; Harleen Gonzalez, a sophomore at Central High School; Academy at Palumbo sophomore Linda Gutierrez, and Philadelphia High School for Girls junior Ti’anna Cooper.

The project’s capstone, for both teams of girls, will be a final display based on what they’ve learned in their year of cross-continental collaboration. The form it will take will be up to the students, as long as it deals with climate change and cultural exchange: a short play, a museum activity, a presentation of specimens or something else the young women devise.  

The Mongolian students' U.S. trip was packed with classroom visits and science as well as some historic sight-seeing in Old City, cheesesteaks on South Street, a Lancaster farm visit, a tour of Washington, D.C. that included the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, and even some good old-fashioned retail therapy at the King of Prussia Mall.

By early fall, the two intercontinental teams will develop lessons and presentations about climate change that will be incorporated into the public programming at the Academy of Natural Sciences and the National Museum of Mongolia.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Betsy Payne, The Academy of Natural Sciences
 

Philadelphia’s DreamIt Athena, a new accelerator track aimed at female entrepreneurs, has announced its first cohort. The selected companies will take up residence at DreamIt Ventures HQ, housed at the Innovation Center @3401, through May. They will each receive $25,000 in seed money, along with female-centric guidance on raising capital, developing mentors and networks, and self-promoting.

"Female entrepreneurs face a level of scrutiny that places them at a disadvantage from the start," says Karen Griffith Gryga, DreamIt’s managing partner. "For all the talk about the unique challenges female founders face, there's been little action in how to solve such issues. DreamIt took the lead by being the first top-tier accelerator to solve the problem. We’re going beyond typical platforms of discussion and networking [and hope to] change the dynamic of what’s been the startup norm for far too long. 

"DreamIt Athena aims to make a significant difference by providing specific, dedicated resources that help remove the all-too-common barriers," she continues. "[That way] female founders can develop the required skill sets to build sustainable, competitive businesses. Without a doubt, we expect to see significant personal development and company milestones throughout the cycle."

The Athena companies are:

Captain Planner (Boston) streamlines the process of trip-planning by aggregating information on attractions, restaurants and events, while providing reviews and map-centric itineraries. 

Forecastr (Detroit) provides ready-made analytics and predictive recommendations specifically tailored for television executives available via the cloud. 

LIA Diagnostics (Philadelphia) is developing a flushable pregnancy test, helping women address the challenges surrounding privacy, usability and sustainability in current at-home diagnostics. 

Ohneka Farms (Mount Laurel, N.J.) is a social enterprise focusing on urban farming products and services. They are developing ROOT, a smart countertop planter that enables users to grow organic edible plants at home with minimal maintenance.
 
Roar For Good (Philadelphia) is a social impact company with the mission of reducing assaults against women through wearable technology, empowerment and education. The initial product line combines fashionable self-defense jewelry and mobile technology to reduce the incidences of assault against women. 

The Athena companies will work alongside these other startups at DreamIt:

Bungalow Insurance (San Diego) is building the first online, independent, renters’ insurance platform to improve insurance experiences for millennials. 
  
Commit Analytics (King of Prussia) optimizes human performance using machine learning algorithms to design data-driven solutions for athletes and health-conscious consumers. 
 
IglooHome (Singapore) is developing smart home technologies that offer Airbnb hosts a novel way to welcome guests; they focus on convenience, safety and cost savings. 
 
LocoRobo (Philadelphia) is a non-profit robotics company whose mission is to provide educational and scientific training using high-quality robotics platforms, promoting STEM education and workforce development. 
 
Whose Your Landlord (Elliott City, Maryland) is a website and mobile app enabling renters to rate their landlords and housing complexes, and giving them the ability to find their next home. 

Source: Karen Griffith Gryga, DreamIt Ventures
Writer: Elise Vider
 

Teacher and educational entrepreneur Melissa Page thinks Philly is "a little bit behind the curve," linguistically speaking. Until now, our city did not have any Spanish-language immersion preschools. Page is changing that with the launch of Mi Casita this month, a new 4,600-square foot preschool at 1415 Fairmount Avenue.

When it comes to language acquisition, "the earlier you can get it the better," she insists. "Early childhood education in a second language doesn’t exist in Philadelphia, and it’s so much harder to learn a second language the older you get." 

Page learned Spanish at age five and went on earn her Bachelor’s degree in Spanish as well as Master’s degrees in education and business; she has traveled widely in Mexico, Spain and Latin America. Page then worked for Telemundo before spending five years as a Spanish and French teacher at South Philadelphia’s Girard Academic Music Program High School.

Mi Casita's staff -- part of a 1:6 teacher/student ratio -- are mostly native Spanish speakers and will offer an intensive all-Spanish curriculum (serving ages 18 months to five years) including play-led literacy, arts and math skills. The teachers will have ongoing career development through a partnership with the Waldorf School of Philadelphia.

"It’s more than just speaking Spanish every day," explains Page. It’s about "developing students academically, emotionally [and] socially through a really rigorous curriculum."

Promoting the social, cognitive and career benefits of early bilingual education are a big part of Page’s life mission, and she says the school’s inaugural winter 2015 session is already booked with about 30 families from all over Greater Philadelphia.

Cultural appreciation is part of what the school will offer, but it’s bigger than simply teaching Spanish. It’s about the value of having a second language from an early age, especially the one that is the most commonly spoken in the U.S. after English. And the school welcomes kids of all backgrounds.

"We are an amazing melting pot," expains the founder, with everyone from Main Line families to students whose parents hail from countries in Asia and South America.  

The school is opening with two classrooms this month; five classrooms are planned for a fall 2015 session.

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Melissa Page, Mi Casita
 

In November, Flying Kite brought you the announcement of the latest round of Startup PHL grant and seed-fund recipients, and all of the chosen CEOs were men. DreamIt Ventures’ Archna Sahay was in the audience, and she can tell you that this scene is all too common in the tech and venture capital world.

In October, Sahay was tapped to head a new accelerator at DreamIt Ventures: DreamIt Athena. She says there have been virtual, online-based accelerators or temporary "ad hoc" accelerators dedicated to women with big business dreams, but Athena is the world’s first permanent top-tier accelerator focused especially on women entrepreneurs.

The deadline for Athena’s first round of applications -- which Sahay predicted would draw up to 500 applicants from across the country -- was December 8. A $491,930 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development made the new program possible (there is already enough funding for a second round of the accelerator).

A minimum of four slots will be open for the Philly-based program, which will run from February through May of 2015 at the DreamIt headquarters at Innovation Center @3401 (a collaborative space run by Drexel and the University City Science Center).

Remember that saying about history being written by the winners? Born in India, raised in Virginia, and now a Philly resident with a decade in the finance world under her belt, Sahay has her own twist on that one.

"The future is being determined by those who are funding it," she says, and right now, most of those people are white men.
And there’s nothing wrong with white men, she insists. She appreciates all her colleagues.

"It’s not about dissing anybody. It’s celebrating diversity and celebrating the differences,” she continues. "We also have to recognize that the infrastructure has to be different to support and nurture and grow this diverse talent."

Sahay cites a recent Babson College study finding that in 2013, just 18 percent of all venture capital-funded businesses had a woman on the executive team, and less than three percent of those had a female CEO. And despite this under-representation in venture capital boardrooms, U.S. women are founding businesses at one and a half times the national average. That said, they receive less than 10 percent of the funding, delivering 12 percent more revenue with a third less capital than their male peers.

And, vitally important to Sahay, the study also found that venture capital firms with women partners are three times more likely to invest in women CEOs.

The tech-focused DreamIt Athena accelerator will connect participants to a national slate of mentors, speakers, investors and managers, and offer free workspace at the DreamIt headquarters.

"We’re really trying to get more women on that investing side of the table," explains Sahay. It’s valuable "to see someone [who] looks like you, and maybe is five years ahead of you in the game," and to learn how they achieved success.

"I think that’s really powerful."

Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Source: Archna Sahay, DreamIt Ventures
 

The Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians -- an organization that helps recent immigrants with job-placement assistance and English-language classes, among other services -- has received $692,000 from the Knight Foundation and The Barra Foundation to launch the Immigrant Professionals Career Pathways Program.
 
According to Welcoming Center Director of Outreach Amanda Bergson-Shilcock, the new program represents a sea change for the nonprofit, which was founded 11 years ago by a physical therapist who had immigrated to Pennsylvania from Ireland. Incredibly, it took her three full years to become professionally relicensed in the Keystone State.   
 
And so while The Welcoming Center was technically launched to help immigrants who have legal work authorization find jobs of any sort, "it's always been a dream of ours to not just serve people looking for their first American job," explains Bergson-Shilcock, "but people who are looking to rejoin their profession in the U.S."  
 
"It's one thing to get your foot in the door [as a recent immigrant] and be working for $9 or $10 an hour," she adds. "It's another thing to get your first professional job with a white collar salary."
 
With that philosophy in mind, The Center's new program will work not only to help immigrant professionals reestablish their industry credentials in Pennsylvania. It will also offer them a range of new services that Bergson-Shilcock likens to an a la carte menu for striving newcomers. Test-prep classes for licensing exams will probably be an option. Immigrants who need assistance having their university transcripts transferred to Pennsylvania schools will also find help through the program.
 
Ultimately, "[the] program is really about giving people the tools they need to fill in whatever gaps they have, so they can transition to a professional-level career," says Bergson-Shilcock. "That's the mission."

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Amanda Bergson-Shilcock, Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians
 

It's hard to believe, but Philadelphia's First Person Arts Festival -- a twelve-day-long theater gala known as "the only festival in the world dedicated to memoir and documentary art" -- is about to enter its thirteenth year.
 
The festival will run November 4 through 15 at four separate venues throughout the city; a portion of the schedule was released last week. The true-life stories shared onstage will come not just from prominent local performers, but also from a number of bold-name celebrities.
 
Actor Kathryn Erbe of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, for instance, will take part in an onstage reading of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day’s Journey into Night," culminating in a frank audience discussion of themes germane to the play's content. Yowei Shaw, who produces the year-old FPA podcast, will present a live performance. The Obie Award-winning playwright Dael Orlandersmith will stage a reading of her recent memoir, and celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson will host a dinner featuring recipes from his latest cookbook.

In short, as FPA executive director Jamie Brunson puts it, "There’s no other festival out there quite like it."
 
When Vicki Solot founded FPA in 2000, "she saw the rising interest in memoir and documentary art as a way to foster appreciation among diverse communities for our shared experiences," explains Brunson. Throughout FPA's history, "the festival has always had [a sense of] consciousness about it," she adds.
 
Visit the FPA website for scheduling updates -- Brunson promises a few surprises as the festival date draws nearer -- and to purchase tickets once they become available.
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Jamie J. Brunson, First Person Arts

Many low-income Philadelphia neighborhood are spotted with Latin- and Asian-owned corner stores; often, they can feel disconnected from the surrounding community. An upcoming collaboration between the Asian Arts Initiative and Amber Art and Design seeks to address that divide.
 
Titled "Corner Store (Take-Out Stories)," the multi-disciplinary art project takes an up-close-and-personal look at this racially and culturally charged aspect of urban living -- namely, the ubiquitous immigrant-owned corner store and its prevalence in largely black communities.  
 
"We use art to look in a deeper manner at a lot of social issues," says Amber Art's Keir Johnston, who adds that because immigrant-owned corner stores are the reality of commerce in many marginalized communities, there's an extreme social dynamic that takes place within them daily.
 
And yet, as Amber Art's Ernel Martinez explains, due to "an underlying tension that's been building for many decades" between black communities and the immigrants who serve them, the opportunity for social interaction between cultural groups is often an afterthought.      
 
Running June 6 through August 22 at Asian Arts Initiative (1219 Vine Street), "Corner Store" is a multimedia exhibition featuring video interviews with corner-store owners, still photos and mixed-media work. Pop-up performances will take place in mock corner-store structures where handmade currency and merchandise will trade hands. And ultimately, the artists hope, a dialogue will begin to emerge within the city's real-life corner stores.  

"One of the major points of this project is to collect the stories from one community and share them with another," explains Johnston.

Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Keir Johnston and Ernel Martinez, Amber Art and Design
  

If you're a regular subway commuter, you've probably spotted one of the poster-sized Comcast advertisements touting Internet Essentials, the company's heavily discounted broadband Internet service for low-income Philadelphians.
 
From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on April 26, as part of Comcast's 13th annual day of employee community service, the multimedia juggernaut will attempt to take its broadband-for-all philosophy one step further by hosting an entirely free computer education event, the Digital Resources Fair, in a temporary pop-up location at 3846 Lancaster Avenue in West Philly's Mantua neighborhood. 
 
According to Bob Smith, Comcast's VP of Community Investment, the company has been hosting digital literacy classes for low-income locals throughout the city for years now. The upcoming Digital Resource Fair is an opportunity for Comcast, along with volunteers from the People's Emergency Center (PEC), which is co-hosting the event, to bundle together a series of basic computer and Internet education workshops with one-on-one assistance from specially-trained volunteers.  
 
"The backbone of the day," explains Smith, will involve a number of "short, very easy to succeed at workshops" on topics that include search engines and email, and finding and applying for jobs online. Attendees will also learn where low-cost computers are available for purchase, and how to access free and low-cost Internet service throughout the city.  
 
Smith points out that the Digital Resources Fair is a no-strings-attached event. No appointments are required and participants need not be Comcast customers.

"Relevancy has been a big barrier to Internet connections for a lot of low-income families," he says. "What we're trying to do is help people understand that there's something in it for them when they sign up for the Internet."  
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Bob Smith, Comcast; Tan Vu, People's Emergency Center

Thirteen percent of Philadelphia's population is now of Hispanic or Latino descent -- that's nearly 200,000 people within the city limits alone. The organizers of the third annual Filadelfia Latin American Film Festival (FLAFF) -- the only annual festival of its sort in the Greater Philadelphia area -- have released the scheduled lineup for this three-day event, which runs April 25-27 at The University of the Arts, the Kimmel Center and International House Philadelphia. This year's films represent a diverse range of Latin countries and include full-length features, documentaries, shorts and even a family-friendly animated film from Uruguay.

Standouts include Cesar's Last Fast, a film about a one-man hunger strike held by Cesar Chavez in an effort to shine a light on the negative effects of pesticides, and Yo, Indocumentada, an exploration of the Venezuelan transgender community.    
 
According to FLAFF co-organizer Beatriz Vieira, "part of what we want to do [with FLAFF] is to make sure the audiences are being built very, very carefully." To that end, a fair amount of community engagement has been baked into the festival, she says, "to make sure [it] has a lot of relevance for the region."
 
For example, a student member of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians will discuss the struggles of learning to read and write as an adult following the screening of Las Analfabetas, a Chilean film about a middle-aged illiterate woman. FLAFF is also partnering with The Food Trust and Fair Food; representatives from both groups will discuss their work with the audience after the screening of Cesar's Last Fast.   
 
Click here to view film trailers or purchase tickets.
 
Writer: Dan Eldridge
Source: Beatriz Vieira, FLAFF

 

South Philly's Chris DiCapua is a Spanish teacher by trade and a board member at the Passyunk Square Civic Association (PSCA). With a Nicaraguan partner and a passion for the city's Hispanic community, he's also proven to be an important cross-cultural connector. 

"A lot of times, as is really common with most immigrant groups, I feel like the [South Philly Latino] population tends to stick together," says DiCapua. "There's very little contact outside of their own community."

In an effort to breach that cultural divide, DiCapua has used his PSCA affiliation to institute a number of Hispanic outreach endeavors. He started by introducing himself to business owners in the Italian Market and he raised the funds necessary to translate the PSCA's newsletter into Spanish. Last fall, DiCapua and PSCA kicked off a trial-run of low-cost ESL (English as a Second Language) classes for local Spanish speakers.  
  
The second installment of the English classes, which are entirely volunteer-taught, is currently nearing the end of its five-week run. For interested students who aren't able to attend in person, the volunteer teachers also host a weekly ESL class online on the local Philatinos Radio station.
 
The details for the next five-week ESL session aren't set in stone, but DiCapua insists tat "we're definitely planning to continue in the very near future. And hopefully, we're going to do it as long as there's interest."  
 
For information about future classes, email [email protected] or call 267-467-4307.

Writer: Dan Eldrige
Source: Chris DiCapua, Passyunk Square Civic Association