KENSINGTON – Every Sunday, young people show up nearly an hour before the Philly Bridge & Jawn, called PB&J, program begins just to secure a spot for an evening of cooking, connecting, and getting paid for it. After almost a year of operating in Kensington, the space can hold 15 young people aged 12 to 19, all under the guidance of the program’s only employee, Bryan Belknap.
Belknap, who has been running the program since late 2023, has since collaborated with other local programs in Kensington in order to expand its access. In October, the program worked with Fab Youth Philly to help 20 young people train for a food handler permit. Soon after, PB&J led a mental health series in partnership with Lakeside Global and NKCDC’s Nourish program for a total of 150 young people over five days. Belknap has hopes of hiring another employee and expanding the program to be open five days a week so as to not have to turn away teens each week.
“My program is not the only program that fills up around here. If you create a safe space, and a welcoming space for teens in Kensington, you shouldn’t have trouble drawing them in,” Belknap said.
While Belknap currently advertises on Instagram, it seems that the most successful way of promoting the program has been through flyers, according to several of the young people at the program. Through passing out flyers at community events held at the McPherson Square Library, to handing them out to kids on their way to SEPTA stations before school, Belknap takes a community-based approach to reaching the kids.
For some of the young people, PB&J is not the first community program they have been a part of. One attendee, Jeylian, previously joined the non-profit Congreso de Latinos Unidos, in which she had opportunities to travel through their summer program. She first became aware of the program when Belknap handed her a flyer about a month ago–and she continues to bring her younger cousin, Imani, with her to the weekly program.
“I like the fact that we can roam free. We kinda can do what we want, but not always, and I like that about it. Not to mention we get paid for it too,” Jeylian said.
Belknap’s experience working at the McPherson Square Library for eight years has led many of his program approaches for young people to be trauma informed. From integrating “sneaky literacy” into the written cooking instructions, to encouraging kids to cook, socialize, and plan for the future of PB&J–which Belknap considers theirs as much as his–the program seeks to support the youth in the area. One method that Belknap emphasizes is through paying the young people.
“We really insist on paying our young people and addressing food insecurity because we’re living in an area of generational poverty. We don’t want to add more real financial burdens that our teens are struggling with, and food insecurity,” Belknap said.
In Upper Kensington, which includes areas that are in close proximity to where PB&J operates, 60.3% of children face poverty–over 20% more than the average across Philadelphia. And, with the Parker Adminstration’s decision this year to enforce the criminalization of homelessness through increasing the presence of police in the community, as well as enacting large-scale bouts of displacing people from their encampments in Kensington, many have debated the long-term impact of this kind of force.
One PB&J attendee, Aliyah, said that although she is wary of the area, she continues to come because the program is close to her house. Several other young people said that if they did not attend this program, they would otherwise be at home. And, although some of the young people did not point to the social aspect as a reason to come, they have become more comfortable with meeting others over time.
“I think the social aspect is nice. This is my first time coming to a program completely by myself–I usually bring other people. So, I’m still kinda getting a feel for it, but I think it’s nice,” Ishmael, a 17 year old attendee at the PB&J program, said.
As of now, Belknap and the young people at PB&J are working together to create an application-based leadership program, in which teens of a certain age can train to oversee some of the various kitchen stations.
With a greater availability of funding after a year, the possibility of expanding the hours, as well as the involvement of community members, becomes more and more apparent. PB&J has received aid from grants, fundraisers, and even one local business. In addition, the program receives aid from the City’s approval of the Scattergood Foundation’s Kensington Community Resilience Fund, which is said to emphasize youth development.
Despite the disconnect from being directly of the City, as how, say, the Free Library of Philadelphia is categorized, Belknap finds that local programs allow for a tailored experience to meet the individual needs of young people in the Kensington area.
“The system’s not ready for complex needs,” Belknap said.
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