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 …

A heavenly aroma spills outs from a bubbling pot of potato squash soup in the basement of the Cavalry Church. Claire Smith quickly turns down the burner and goes back to preparing three large trays of savory brussel sprouts.

Paul Divido and Anna Jacobs take turns kneading dough to turn into luscious cinnamon buns. In an hour’s time the three volunteers have created a veritable feast to feed up to 80 people. All the food used was salvaged from grocery stores and bakeries across the city that would have otherwise been thrown in the garbage.

For the past 10 …

Imagine risking your life for the country you love by joining the military. After serving your time overseas, you come back healthy and uninjured, with a job lined up and waiting for you.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for many veterans who have served our country. The reality is that some soldiers returning to the United States have a tough time readjusting and are shocked to …

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 …

Some of the children of Heavenly Hall Day Care center know their ABCs. Others choose to defer the alphabet to focus on the basic motor skills needed to connect food to fork, fork to mouth. The play area, a messy toy-land of kitchen sets and building blocks, bursts with the high energy of young children impatiently waiting to sing along to the stereo in the corner. By any observation, the center, located just south of Girard Avenue in Mantua, is a pleasant and relaxed business in an area stung by the current economic climate.

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Preston Barnette loves his job. As the head chef at Calcutta House, a non-profit organization that provides housing and support services for people living with AIDS in the Philadelphia and Delaware Valley area, he is always smiling at his residents every morning when he serves them breakfast. And the 18 residents in Calcutta House’s 16th Street and Girard Avenue location usually smile back. But lately, the lack of a state budget from July until early October loomed …

It’s a Wednesday and cold, too cold for October. The weather is gray. It matches the cement stairs on the corner of Third street and Lehigh Avenue. People line the stairwell leading to a sturdy door in the basement of an old warehouse. The door is marked with a small blue sign that reads, “Prevention Point Philadelphia.” Everyone is waiting patiently for the doors to open at noon.

Prevention Point hosts Philadelphia’s only legal syringe exchange program. The program began as an underground, grassroots organization based primarily …

“It looks nice, but they’re still shooting like it’s Iraq out here,” said Shawn Govan when asked about all the new and rehabbed housing being built in the Ludlow neighborhood. This statement was promptly shot full of holes itself by several other residents of the area. Still, there is a kernel of truth in Shawn’s statement. It is not the statement itself, but what his making the statement says about the neighborhood.

By and large those who live and work in Ludlow …

The doors of the basement swing open revealing the church’s activities center. Motivational posters dot the walls surrounding a small basketball court. A semi-circle of metal folding chairs sits off in the far corner. On any given night the sounds of a friendly basketball game or the lively chatter of a community meeting would replace the silence. This Friday, Pastor Margaret Powell hopes that the walls of the basement at Solid Rock United …

Computer access can be taken for granted by Blackberry-wielding e-mailers, but for many people, getting to a computer is not so effortless. Libraries, community and recreation centers play a primary function,

giving residents in urban neighborhoods access the Internet as well as many other services.
In Brewerytown, residents have been able to utilize the resources and collective knowledge found within the Brewerytown Community Development Corp. President James Carter plays an integral role in keeping …