Local residents convened Sunday afternoon at the Sedgwick Theater for the first annual Community Café. The event, co-sponsored by Neighborhood Networks and MARCHinG for Change, created a forum for people in the community to express their opinions on matters such as health care and safety and to suggest ways of promoting change.

Café organizers reached out to community leaders doing significant work within their fields to moderate a series of roundtables. “There are …

The doors of the Germantown Courier, which began in the historic community in 1936, were slammed shut last February. Unfortunately, there was little the staff could do prevent or deter its folding.

In 1998 the newspapers, the Courier and its sister paper, the Mt. Airy Times Express, were bought by the Journal Register Corp.

“They bought as many local newspapers as they could acquire over a short period of time expecting that they could probably save some money on the production end through centralized production,” said Jim Foster, publisher of the Germantown Chronicle.  “Conceptually that may not have been a …

It’s almost hard to imagine bustling Germantown Avenue being the foggy, smoke-filled scene revolution that it was in 1777. Yet on Oct. 3, muskets again were ablaze and thundering canons shook the nearly 1,000 people estimated to be in attendance to witness the reenactment of the Battle of Germantown at Cliveden.

“It is a long-standing tradition in our historic community,” said Executive Director David W. Young Cliveden’s Board of Trustees. “Going back to a reenactment in 1927 when people dressed up in their ancestors’ uniforms. It is also one of the funnest (and loudest) events in Philadelphia’s historic …

Syed Alam opens his Germantown store Rahman Body Oils, Beads and Variety every morning just as he has for the past 13 years he has owned it.  In some ways, nothing much has changed over the years at the store.  In other ways, everything changed last year.  Alam used to run the store with his son, Fakhur Uddin.   Then one day last August, Uddin was gone.

It’s raining outside but new customers still come in every few minutes.  It’s a …

They come in broken and addicted. Twelve months later, they leave as happy, productive members of society.  Teen Challenge, a faith-based rehabilitation program in Germantown, is providing a place where lives are completely turned around.  But there are no twelve steps to overcoming your addiction here.  In fact, little focus is placed on the addiction at all.  The source of the transformation is God and his Word.  And the men and women making their way through the program give testament that it really does work.

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Making quality of life for people in prison easier isn’t exactly at the top of many people’s to-do lists. In fact, it probably wouldn’t even be a consideration to many people.

However, a recent …

When John Blaufuss checked himself into the Germantown Teen Challenge Initiative years ago, he was hoping that the program would be the help he needed to get his life in order and not be dependant on drugs and alcohol anymore.
Two decades later, he can confidently say the program was a success for him. …

If your looking for fun and to learn a new skill, than The Philadelphia School of Circus Arts may be the place for you. But note, that while the high-flying tricks on the rope looks fun, it is also a lot of work. Jonathan Perry, one of the juggling instructors, says being able to pull the weight of your body takes more than just arms. Your core needs to be fit. There are no physical requirements to take one of the class and the instructors will work with you and at your pace …

Big striped tents. Jugglers and acrobats. Cotton candy, sparkly costumes and magic tricks. Some of us are lucky enough to have childhood memories of circus visits. There was something so elusive about those performers. But thanks to the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts located in Germantown, circus performing no longer has to be something unrealistic and unreachable. OK, so the school doesn’t have tents or cotton candy, but it does offer unicycle classes and …