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From its Camden headquarters, Hopeworks has trained and found jobs for 1,000 web designers, GIS analysts, and other budding professionals — most of them young people of color — since 2000.
The nonprofit organization expects to double the number of young people it can help following the addition of a new training center in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. The facility on J Street just off Kensington Avenue is set to open in December, thanks in large part to a $600,000 grant from GreenLight Fund Philadelphia.
“What we’re most excited about is the opportunity to help ambitious young people get ready to transform Philly,” said Hopeworks executive director Dan Rhoton. “We’re trying to help more young people qualify for entry-level jobs that pay a living wage, while also helping employers who need to fill those jobs.”
Felicia Rinier, executive director of the Philadelphia office of GreenLight, a Boston-based philanthropy that funds innovative, results-focused nonprofits in 11 cities nationwide, was moved by Hopeworks’ mission and enthused about what it can bring to Philadelphia.
“Hopeworks has energy and passion for the work they do. They’ve built partnerships with big companies like Comcast and have sustained such a positive presence in Camden for so long,” she said.
“Now they get to open their doors in another city.”
Opening doors has been at the heart of Hopeworks’ mission since it launched on North Camden’s State Street with a few PCs and a single server in 2000.
The nonprofit was established by three neighborhood churches and led by Father Jeff Putthoff, a Jesuit priest who set up small businesses within the organization. These firms continue to sell technical services to local clients as well as provide paid, in-house internships for Hopeworks trainees.
“We are not a company that has interns,” Putthoff told an interviewer in 2011. “We are a youth-development program that has companies.”
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