A search for real estate under $200,000 in Philadelphia yields mostly fixer-uppers and condominiums. Marc Rowell’s mission with Deep Green Retrofit, launched in 2021, is to develop energy efficient, move-in ready housing for working-class families, putting affordability and sustainability ahead of personal profit. Growing up in public housing in North Philadelphia, Rowell came to believe
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By Dawn Kane and Bernard Brown It has been nearly 380 years since blueback herring have been able to swim up Cobbs Creek beyond what is now Woodland Avenue. Back in 1645, New Sweden’s governor, Johan Björnsson Printz, built a gristmill on the waterway the Lenape call Karakung. Water-powered mills generally rely on a dam
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As a kid, Wyatt Piazza connected with the natural world by helping his dad out in the family vegetable garden. He holds dear the memories of foraging with him in the woods of Vermont during summer vacations. In his work as a chef today, Piazza creates vegetable-forward recipes for Kiddo, the restaurant he and his
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Imagine in the span of a year being badly injured in a car accident, suffering the loss of family members and discovering you are pregnant. After this happened to one Philadelphia woman, she was told she had been accepted into a study of how guaranteed income impacts quality of life. The gift of $500 a
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Large landscaping projects, especially with increased local rainfall caused by climate change, require erosion-control planning. A search for products yields an array of mesh options designed to hold soil in place until plant roots can take over, but many can present an entanglement hazard to wildlife. The Philadelphia Metro Wildlife Center handles dozens of such
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Amani Lee, a senior at The U School, hadn’t given gardening much thought until this year. As part of her school’s horticultural program, she’s now researching crops in Ukraine, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. She is learning what the people in these countries grow and eat, and the stories behind their famous dishes. Under
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In a women’s recovery home for addiction, a volunteer offered to wash Rhonda Richardson’s laundry for her. After seeing that Richardson owned only a few worn pieces of clothing, the woman gave her a voucher for free clothes from The Wardrobe. Little did Richardson know, she’d find both confidence-boosting outfits and a support group at
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Samuel Velasquez operates La Marqueza Philly, a colorful Mexican food truck near the Community College of Philadelphia. Before the City’s plastic bag ban, his customers received their orders in disposable plastic bags. These days, unless those customers offer up their own reusable bags, their orders come in paper bags. As a step towards mitigating the
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The nine students sitting before their teacher, Andre Coles, differ in age, physical abilities, gender and race, but they come together to grow and build community through the Roots2Rise yoga program. With soft music playing in the background, program director Coles welcomes all. “Sometimes the world seems very unstable,” Coles says in a gentle tone
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Regina Asmutis-Silvia cannot forget the gaze of a humpback whale stranded on a beach in Chatham, Massachusetts. With fellow members of an International Wildlife Coalition team, she worked to dig under the whale to relieve the pressure of its body-weight on vital organs. They hoped the high tide would carry the whale back to sea,
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