Overbrook: Panthers’ Basketball Program Hopes To Reclaim Storied Past
The significance isn’t lost on Cyri Coates. Every time the senior on the Overbrook High School basketball team walks into the school’s Wilt Chamberlain Memorial Gym, he sees the images of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer around the gym. He sees the red and orange banner representing Chamberlain’s retired No. 5 jersey hanging on […]
West Philadelphia: Local organizations tackle food insecurity
Every Tuesday and Saturday, Kinji Ridley parks his car and unloads boxes of groceries from the trunk, handing them over to volunteers who set them up on benches and picnic tables. A line of dozens of West Philadelphia residents forms and they each pick out bags of food, assembly-line style, before dispersing and going their separate […]
Belmont: Entrepreneur Jennell Moody Hopes To Inspire City’s Youth
When she was 14 years old, Jennell Moody (above) started braiding her neighbors’ hair on the front steps of her mother’s North Philadelphia home. Word of her skills spread through word of mouth, and Moody eventually turned her hairstyling into a small business, charging $10 for the neighborhood girls to come get their hair done. […]
Spruce Hill: Neighbors in Little Osage Come Together for Disaster Relief
Carlos Pérez Sámano wasn’t sure why his phone kept losing service on Sept. 19, but when he returned home from Center City and connected to the wifi, he was bombarded with text messages. “Everyone was saying, ‘I’m OK. I’m OK. I’m OK,’” Pérez Sámano said. “And I was like, what happened?” There had been a […]
Powelton Village: Connecting West Philly’s Community Leaders
Ryan Draving’s goal is to seek out leaders in West Philadelphia and bring them together. He was part of a group which helped more than two dozen organizations in West Philly put on the West Philadelphia Community Action Fair last April. Draving, a senior partner at Manayunk-based consultancy Muhlenhaupt + Company, LLC, grew up in Jenkintown and […]