Early in 2026 in the Oxford Circle neighborhood, 115 Philadelphians representing 15 different nationalities sat down to enjoy dinner at the first in a series of 21 events across seven diverse neighborhoods. The social impact project, called “Breaking Bread, Breaking Barriers” and conceived by president and CEO of The Welcoming Center (TWC) Anuj Gupta, rests
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On December 28, 2021 a private foundation signed a 30-year lease with the City of Philadelphia and took control of 350 acres of Philadelphia park land with an assessed value of $92.7 million. The rent? $1. To supporters of the agreement, it is nonetheless a good deal for the city. Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr., who
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For Christa Barfield, the entrance into agriculture was prompted by her exit from another industry. Before the success of FarmerJawn—Barfield’s ambitious and sprawling enterprise that includes farming at the historic Elkins Estate, running a CSA, being part of a development project in East Kensington, opening a garden shop in Germantown, selling herbal-infused teas and providing
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When Laverne Evans needed a red purse for her birthday outfit this past November, she knew exactly where to go. Evans, 28, made her way to I Spy, You Buy, a curated thrift store in Mount Airy, to see if owner Dolly Park had something in stock. “She told me to come back tomorrow,” Evans
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“Why should anyone consider farming as a livelihood these days?” Brennan Washington, the owner of Phoenix Gardens in Lawrenceville, Georgia, paused at the question, posed by Hannah Smith-Brubaker, the executive director of PASA, at the 2022 Sustainable Agriculture Conference in Lancaster in February. Then he laughed a little, and the audience, largely composed of farmers,
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Recently my family tried out a new card game, Aqua Marooned! We are big fans of old classics like Uno, and we try out new games from time to time, usually when they end up in the gift pile on birthdays or holidays. Aqua Marooned! showed up at the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center,
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“The only thing you absolutely have to know,” as Albert Einstein once said, “is the location of the library.” When it comes to Philadelphia’s public schools, Einstein’s dictum leaves most students hamstrung, as the district’s number of librarians has declined sharply in recent decades. “In 1991, the School District of Philadelphia had 176 paid librarians,”
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Consider this scenario: a person asks their partner to clean up the laundry in their shared bedroom. In doing this, the bedroom would be tidy. The person who put the request in has done everything to keep the bedroom tidy for themselves, and even goes so far as to be the consistent caretaker and cleaner
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I don’t know what was more depressing, the dead raccoon alongside Cardington Road at the edge of the freshly erected construction fencing, or the clearcut hillside it had died trying to reach. Cardington cuts through the Cobbs Creek and Karakung golf courses in West Philly, and two weeks ago both sides of the road were
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The FBI kept Hakim’s Bookstore, 210 S. 52nd Street, under surveillance for some time, sniffing around for subversion, says Yvonne Blake, 70. Daughter of Dawud Hakim, the store’s late founder, Blake recounts how her father had done the unthinkable in 1959 by opening an independent Black bookstore, five years before segregation would be outlawed in
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Before the chic boutiques and overpriced cafés arrive, the first sign of gentrification is often a slew of ubiquitous posters stapled to telephone poles reading, “We Buy Houses.” One is more than likely to find these illegally-placed advertisements in low-income parts of the city where desperation for fast cash can outweigh the benefit of long-term
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