Every Murder Is a Tragedy. But Funding the Funeral Shouldn’t Be

This story is the second in a multimedia series on states’ victims’ compensation practices. In the first installment, a NationSwell original investigation found that thousands of families of murder victims are denied compensation due to a “contributory conduct” clause — essentially, local officials allege that the victim was responsible for his or her own murder. Read the full investigation here.
 
 

For Some Families of Murder Victims, Help Comes Only With a Fight

Tyrisha Robinson tenses up whenever she has to remember the day she ended her child’s life.
In April last year, her 23-year-old son, Tyree, was shot in the neck in a street shooting. Complications from his injury later landed him on life support at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, where his mother lived.
“I didn’t want him to suffer anymore,” she says. “So I watched my boy transition from life to death.”
After his funeral, Robinson filed for financial help through the victims’ compensation office in Delaware, the state where Tyree was shot. The disbursement of such funds is something that every state offers as a result of a 1984 law that made restitution available to those affected by violent crime. The amount granted to victims or their families varies by state. But to help recoup expenses that directly result from a crime, such as funeral and burial costs, crime-scene cleanup and lost wages, total reimbursement can range anywhere from $10,000 all the way up to $100,000.
Robinson asked for $6,000 to cover a portion of her son’s funeral and the loss of earnings from her job as a medical claims specialist. She was denied.
Delaware’s victims’ compensation board had ruled that she was ineligible for the money. Her son had violated his probation (Tyree had previously been in prison for selling drugs), and because of that, they said, he was partially responsible for his own death.
Robinson didn’t have thousands of dollars stashed away. The denial was not only a blow to what little savings she did have, but also to her dignity.
“Him violating his parole had nothing to do with him being shot, nor me burying him as a result of his injuries,” she says. “I just don’t feel it’s fair that they made this decision based on his [prior] actions.”
Though states’ compensation funds dole out millions of dollars each year, there is a litany of reasons why families of homicide victims can be turned away. One of the most controversial is based on what’s known as “contributory conduct,” which allows a state to deny funds to a victim’s family if homicide detectives find that the person killed was in some way responsible for their own death.  
And while a victim’s actions at the time of death can be helpful in catching the killer, rarely are they ever used in court as evidence for the perpetrator’s motive. Contrast that with claims to victims’ compensation funds, where the behavior of the deceased is a primary driver of whether a family member will receive money.
An investigation by NationSwell looked at county data in six states — Arizona, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas — which showed that thousands of families are denied compensation each year because of the contributory conduct clause. Many of them suspect that their race is a factor, but police and state officials flatly reject that assertion.
Regulators who process claims say they are just following federal law. But one victims’ services group in Philadelphia, the city with the highest number of compensation claims filed each year in Pennsylvania, is helping families navigate the system and fight for their right to fair treatment.

HELP COMES WITH A CATCH

When Congress first passed the Victims of Crime Act of 1984, it was an anomaly at a time when entitlement spending was being slashed by the Reagan administration. The allocation of federal funds to create state offices gave access to tens of millions of dollars to victims and victims’ rights organizations every year, primarily through restitution payments imposed on convicted offenders.
State offices, which are responsible for handling and managing claims, are reliant on federal grants to pay victims as well as fund victims’ advocate services. Delaware, where Tyree Robinson was shot, received over $6 million in federal grants last year, according to the national Office for Victims of Crime.
Nonprofits also rely heavily on federal grants to offer services for victims of various crimes, such as sex trafficking or mass shootings. In 2017, for example, $4 million in federal funds went to victims or their families of the 2015 San Bernardino, California, mass shooting that killed 14, not including the two shooters.
For mother-daughter team Victoria Greene and Chantay Love, who together run Every Murder Is Real Healing Center (EMIR) in Philadelphia, keeping their organization afloat means working with Pennsylvania’s Office of Victims’ Services.  
“We receive funding through that office,” Love, EMIR’s program director, says. “Which makes some of our advocacy, well, complicated. We want the state to create policies that allow victims to heal without judgment.”
The two are on the ground almost daily visiting the families of homicide victims — sometimes within hours of a murder — to try to get them into therapy, and also help them navigate the compensation process.
The latter is integral for hundreds of families in Philadelphia, where the gun murder rate increased 15.8 percent in 2017 despite a drop in overall shootings, according to police records shared with NationSwell. Of the nearly 1,400 murders recorded in the city since 2012, most have been of young black men. In 2015, they accounted for close to 60 percent of homicides.
Surviving family members overwhelmingly live in poor neighborhoods and often do not have the immediate resources to pay thousands of dollars for an unexpected funeral.

The headquarters of Every Murder Is Real Healing Center in Philadelphia.

“Families are living day-to-day simply trying to figure out how to keep food on the table,” says Love. “Once the tragedy of a homicide occurs, survivors are gasping for air. A funeral is not in the budget.”
Between 2010 and 2015, Pennsylvania’s Victims’ Compensation Assistance Program (VCAP) shelled out over $77 million to victims of all crimes, including assault and homicide. But, Love says, the problem is not with claims being paid, but in the hundreds of denials that are handed down each year.
Data provided by VCAP shows that the state issued 780 denials between 2012 and 2015 based on contributory conduct, making up 37 percent of total denials. And though that number is just over 2 percent of the tens of thousands of claims the office received within the same time span, families affected say it’s unfairly punishing them for crimes they had no part in. The system has lost its original purpose, they say, and now instead of helping victims’ families, it’s criminalizing them.
In an email exchange, VCAP manager Jeffrey Blystone said the office is only following the law and that determinations shouldn’t reflect on the family.
“A denial of a claim is in no way an attempt to further punish a family,” he said. “VCAP is governed by the Crime Victims Act, and the Act requires VCAP to determine whether the victim’s conduct contributed to the victim’s injuries. The Act also requires that VCAP’s award or denial be based upon that determination.”
But of the states studied by NationSwell, Pennsylvania doesn’t have the worst record when it comes to denying families’ claims for reimbursement. In neighboring New Jersey, 60 percent of all denials were due to contributory conduct in the same time period, according to data from the state’s Victims of Crime Compensation Office.
Other states have additional regulations that specify if a person committed a felony within a certain time period before their death, their family is also ineligible for reimbursement.
In Louisiana, for example, NationSwell found that nearly 70 percent of denials between 2010 and 2015 were based on contributory conduct, which included whether the victim had committed a felony in the five years prior to their death.
This, advocates argue, is obverse to the point of jail and prison.
“When you commit a crime and go to jail, you are paying for your crime in lost time of your life,” says Amy Albert, a lawyer who helps families in Jersey City, New Jersey, navigate the legal bureaucracy of reimbursement. “So to deny a family reimbursement despite the fact the [victim] had already served their time makes no sense. You’re punishing them twice.”
New York, however, has the lowest denial rates for contributory conduct, despite having more claims than most other states analyzed by NationSwell. Between 2010 and 2015, less than 2 percent of denials cited contributory conduct.
The state has a sliding scale for reimbursement when contributory conduct has been determined. The family of a person who trades gunfire on a New York street, for example, and then dies as a result would be ineligible for compensation. If that same person was involved in a bar fight, however, and traded insults but not punches, and then dies as a result of a beating, their family could get a small sum of money as opposed to nothing.
“The classic 100-percent conduct-contributing denial is where I point a gun at you, and you shoot me. I can’t claim to get compensation, because I caused you to shoot me,” says Elizabeth Cronin, director of New York’s Office of Victim Services.
“If a person is a known drug dealer and gets hit by a drunk driver, they’re still a victim. That has nothing to do with whether they’re a perpetrator in another kind of case,” she says. “It’s not fair to use that person’s history to eliminate their eligibility.”

RACE AS A FACTOR?

Many families interviewed by NationSwell allege that denials are happening primarily to families of color. But despite recent reporting, which anecdotally backs up that claim, NationSwell found no empirical evidence to support it.
A source at the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) — which oversees the Office of Victims’ Services — said that any perceived correlation is likely just a numbers game. For example, Philadelphia is the state’s largest city and also has the most homicides, which happen to primarily affect black men; a high number of compensation claims would logically result in a similarly high rate of denials within the group applying.
And Blystone, the VCAP manager for Pennsylvania, said that denials based on race are unlikely, as only half of all claimants opt to include their race on their application.
That logic aligns with NationSwell’s findings. According to county data in all six states analyzed, the largest percentage of denials are in counties with larger cities and higher crime rates, which would naturally result in more filed claims.  
In Texas, for example, both Bexar and Dallas counties encompass two of the state’s largest cities: San Antonio and Dallas. In 2015, the two counties had a higher rate of claim denials than other counties in the state at 29 and 25 percent, respectively. But they also had more violent crime that year compared to Texas counties with smaller populations.
There is, however, a noticeable relationship NationSwell found between the proportion of nonwhite residents and the average percentage of reimbursement denials. Lafourche Parish in Louisiana, for example, had a 23 percent nonwhite population, according to the 2010 census, and a 6 percent denial rate for the years between 2013 and 2015. In the same time period, Orleans Parish, which includes New Orleans, had a 69 percent nonwhite population and a 16 percent denial rate.
This was a consistent finding in all six states examined, using both public documents and records requested by NationSwell.

A NationSwell investigation found a relationship between a county’s percent of nonwhite residents and its percent of reimbursement requests denied.

To be clear, this does not prove race is a mitigating factor in deciding reimbursement claims, but it does raise eyebrows for people like Philadelphia civil rights lawyer Angus Love (no relation to Chantay Love of EMIR), who has worked on victims’ compensation cases with EMIR and is the executive director of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project. In his view, there’s simply too much of an anecdotal correlation between homicide reimbursement claims, black victims and the police who conclude that contributory conduct was in play.
“It seems to me that race is entering into the decision-making,” Love says. “I’ve seen too many articles about young black kids in the ghetto, and it’s simply assumed that they’re involved in illegal activities. To make a blanket response is a stereotype and not necessarily what the facts would dictate.”
But Capt. Sekou Kinebrew, commanding officer of the Philadelphia Police Department’s public affairs office, says homicide detectives have little to gain from assuming victims are involved in a crime when they are killed.
“You’re relying on the words of other people to solve a crime, and in the case of a homicide you rely on family cooperation. Why on earth would the detective do something to diminish that or sabotage their own efforts, especially when we know that the availability of [victims’ compensation] funds relies on this,” he tells NationSwell. “I just don’t see any benefit in a detective doing that.”

‘IN THE EYE OF THE SHITSTORM’

Regardless of fault, EMIR’s Love and Greene are actively trying to shift the narrative around homicide victims. That’s because they know firsthand how the bureaucracy of victims’ compensation, coupled with the acute trauma of losing a loved one, can affect a family.
In 1997, the two lost a brother and son, Emir Greene (from which their organization gets its name). His murder received front-page coverage in Philadelphia’s City Paper and launched the mother and daughter, along with Love’s sister, to take on the task of helping families that were going through the same process.
“One of the things we noticed immediately was families were not taking care of themselves,” says Love. “They forgot to eat, drink water, the basics. So we initially started as just trying to feed families.”
Though the murder rate in Philadelphia has gone down considerably since EMIR first formed, the number still hovers around 300 homicides a year, according to annual reports. EMIR responds to just about every one of them.
“Our first course of action is simple: Get families access to services, let them know we’re here and make sure they take one minute at a time and then 15 minutes at a time,” Love says.
When families call Love, which happens almost daily, she always ends the conversation with advice on self-care: breathing techniques, drinking enough water and eating enough food.
Over the past decade, EMIR has taken on more roles within Philadelphia, specifically by offering counseling and family services to children or parents. Their office has teen, children’s and family rooms where volunteers — almost all of whom have experienced a murder in their own families — offer support and lend a hand in working through trauma or grief.
The organization soon became seen as invaluable to the community — and to the police department.
“They are one of the first entities that touches families right in the wake of a tragedy. And they truly focus on the healing part,” says Kinebrew, who has worked side by side with EMIR on community-policing strategies. “They put themselves in the eye of the shitstorm.”

‘APPEAL, APPEAL AND APPEAL’

Beyond providing healing services, EMIR has advocated for victims’ rights for over a decade by helping families file reimbursement claims and pushing the state to remove the denial barrier for families touched by homicide.
“You have given the killer all the power in that situation, because not only have they taken away your loved one, but then [VCAP] legitimizes their death and victimizes you in the process,” Love argues.
Recently, the group successfully resolved a case with the help of Angus Love, the civil rights lawyer. In 2016, high school senior Zion Vaughan, 18, was gunned down near his home. The investigating officer wrote on the victims’ compensation claim filed by Zion’s grandfather, Thomas Vaughan, that the teen had been dealing drugs.
Vaughan was confused: How could they know if his grandson was selling drugs, when they hadn’t even found the person who killed him? How could they know he was doing something wrong, especially when he was shot in the back and could have been running away?
He refused to believe drugs were involved.
“I was shocked,” Vaughan says. “I can’t say that Zion didn’t do drugs, didn’t smoke reefer. But I know he wasn’t selling.”
Through appeals, Vaughan, with the help of EMIR, was able to get the decision reversed. This is uncommon in Pennsylvania, where only a handful of appeals has ever led to an administrative hearing and a reversal of an earlier decision, according to PCCD. Vaughan’s case, which determined that the police’s claim of drug involvement was unfounded and hearsay, was one of the first.
“It was such good news, because it’s the first time something like this has ever said that the police report should not have been used to deny Mr. Vaughan’s claim,” Love, the lawyer, says. “That’s a huge step for us.”
And it gives hope to the frustrated family members of victims, like Robinson, the mother whose son was fatally shot in Delaware, to keep on fighting. For families caught in a similar situation, she has a few words of advice.
“Do your research on why you were denied. Make sure you ask plenty of questions, and never give up,” she says. “Appeal, appeal and appeal.”

——

This story is the first in a multimedia series on states’ victims’ compensation practices. In the second installment, a NationSwell mini documentary further explores the issues families of victims face when applying for reimbursement. You can watch the video here.
Additional data reporting by Malorie Hughes. To read about how NationSwell found and queried the data for this story, visit our writer’s GitHub account, where you can also download the data sets.
A previous version of this story included incorrect population data for counties in Louisiana. We regret the error.

They’re Finding Hope for Their Future in Comic Books and Journal Entries

When Kevin Vaughn Jr., a 15-year-old from North Philadelphia, wrote a letter to victims of police brutality, he did so from a perspective that many in his community say they share. Namely, that being young and black in America is a raw deal.
“I am sorry you were treated as something less than human,” he wrote. “No matter who or what you are, you should be respected as a human, a citizen, and an American. … Use your experience to make a difference.”
The letter wasn’t intended to be read by anyone other than him and his classmates, a group of about a dozen teens from some of Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods. Vaughn Jr. wrote it for a writing workshop that encourages young people like him to record their thoughts and feelings in a journal — punctuation, spelling and grammar be damned. The point wasn’t to get a good grade; it was simply recording his experience that mattered.
Vaughn Jr. is taking part in Mighty Writers, a program that teaches writing skills to students between the ages of 7 and 17. The nonprofit works with about 2,500 kids annually, exposing them to everything from playwriting to comic book creation through after-school classes, night and weekend workshops, and summer sessions. Boosting literacy skills is crucial in a city like Philadelphia, where nearly half of the population lacks even the basic reading skills to hold down a job. The idea behind Mighty Writers is that kids who master writing also make better decisions, have higher self-esteem and achieve greater success as they enter adulthood.
The first step is getting them to think creatively, says Amy Banegas, program administrator for the North Philadelphia chapter of Mighty Writers. This summer, Banegas, a 14-year teaching veteran of North Philadelphia schools, is holding weeklong summer sessions at the Mighty Writers location just north of the city’s burgeoning Center City neighborhood. It’s the fourth writing center the nonprofit has opened since its founding in 2009.
Despite downtown Philadelphia’s booming economy, the local school system is flailing. The cash-strapped district, which educates about 130,000 students, has had a hard time retaining permanent teachers, resulting in dramatically low test scores across the city. To save money, the education department will reportedly begin closing three schools a year starting in 2019.
All of this is bad news in a city where nearly a quarter of the population can’t read or write beyond an eighth-grade level, according to a report by the National Center for Education Statistics in 2003, the most recent year information is available. 
“Literacy is horrible in North Philly, from kids to adults. And as parents, you can’t help your child read or write if you can’t do it yourself,” says Banegas, who sees many sophomores enter her program at a fourth-grade reading level. “It’s sad that it’s not shocking.”

Kevin Vaughn Jr., 15, puts his thoughts on paper during a Mighty Writers workshop.

Mighty Writers’ network of 400 volunteers, made up largely of filmmakers, musicians and journalists, attempts to combat that by providing structure through consistent writing exercises based on the issues that affect the kids who attend. In one recent session, for example, students learned how to channel their voices to become advocates for justice and equality.
Mighty Writers measures the impact of their program by assessing participants’ writing development using a tech platform. Additionally, the organization tracks students’ self-reporting on writing motivation and writing stamina over time. Education director Rachel Loeper says that she’s seen improvement among the students who attend.
There have been other city-based organizations that are similar to Mighty Writers. One is Writers Matter  at La Salle University, which focuses on middle schools students. Professor Robert Vogel created the program in 2005 and says writing classes like it are imperative in urban areas with large populations of low-income and special-needs students.
“The writing programs in most large cities are pretty minimal and don’t really address the adolescent issues these students experience. Schools there just aren’t as well-funded as they are in suburban and rural areas,” Vogel says. “It’s a whole different social-economic dynamic in inner cities. As a result, the resources aren’t that good, and the challenges are much greater.”
At the Mighty Writers summer workshop that NationSwell attended, the topic at hand was the state of “being unapologetically black.” Students discussed police violence against African-Americans — specifically the deaths that have dominated headlines over the past five years — and then wrote in their journals. That these kids would have strong feelings about cops isn’t a surprise. In 2015, a federal study found that 81 percent of police shootings in the city targeted black residents in North Philadelphia. Just last month, a policeman in North Philadelphia’s 15th precinct shot and killed an armed black man after he was stopped for recklessly riding a dirt bike.
“It’s not just a workshop,” says Banegas. “It’s about self-growth and connecting to community.”
Those are qualities that Vogel, who conducted a three-year study on the effectiveness of his Writers Matter program, says are necessary for future success.
“There’s an emotional and social impact, and a building of confidence among the children that is hard to measure, but we’ve been able to see [those positive results] through interviews with [participants],” he says. “These kinds of programs have an impact that goes beyond the academic.”
Vaughn Jr., the 15-year-old who penned a letter to victims of excessive police force, says he’s learned to appreciate the practice of keeping a journal since enrolling in Mighty Writers.
“I find value in it because it’s a great way to let you know what you’re thinking and feeling,” he says. “It’s just keeping note as to where you are as a person.”
Homepage photo by Joseph Darius Jaafari
Continue reading “They’re Finding Hope for Their Future in Comic Books and Journal Entries”

Profile: Sean Vereen

As speaker of the senate — the second most powerful person in student government at the University of Rochester in New York — Sean Vereen had already been working hard on behalf of his fellow classmates during the 1998-1999 school year.
But after a number of racial incidents, including issues with campus security and a perceived lack of support for minority student life, Vereen, now a NationSwell Council member, decided that he needed to assume a more vocal role.  “Eight of us got together and said that what was happening on campus was wrong,” he says. “We spent most of the fall and into the winter organizing a protest.”
Their goal? To gain more support for minority students.
Eventually, the planning meetings grew to 60 to 70 attendees. Their opinions led to the creation of a formal list of concerns among the University’s students of color.
As tension remained high on campus, Vereen recalls the president pulled him aside and said, “Look, if there’s something really bad happening, you can call my secretary to set up a meeting and I will clear my schedule within a day.”
So Vereen took advantage of the invitation, he recounted recently with a small chuckle. “I called a meeting with the president, but I didn’t tell him I was going to come with other people.”
Inspired by a scene in the movie, “Malcolm X,” the students dressed up in their finest clothes and peacefully marched in a single file line to the university president’s office. Remaining silent, they filled the hallways and did homework as local media documented the sit-in.
Meanwhile, Vereen and some of his fellow protesters negotiated with the president for an increase in the number of minority students recruited, the hiring of a more diverse faculty and staff and the creation of a diversity mission statement.
Once an agreement was reached, cheerful minority students then led a campus-wide march and rally in the student center that included celebratory singing of “We Shall Overcome.”
Vereen remembers those college days as a time when he learned the power of organizing and the necessity of collaborative work.
“We spent all this time putting the protest together and all of us brought something to the table. Some people were able to get a ton of friends to show up, others were good speakers. Someone like me had the connection with student government and knew the administration really well,” says Vereen.
Dr. Sean Vereen is the president of Steppingstone Scholars, an organization that works with families and schools to provide support for talented underserved students in the Philadelphia area. He is the former associate dean of opportunity and access at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

One on One With the Police

Ikeem H., a 23-year-old from North Philadelphia, grew up selling dope to pay for food and clothes. One day, when police “blitzed” a well-known corner for dealing, he ended up in cuffs. Marked with a criminal record, Ikeem asked that his last name not be used to protect his privacy. He says officers routinely pinned drugs on him. They told him to shut up and tossed him in patrol cars.
“They messed up my life,” Ikeem reflects. “And I honestly would never forgive ’em. So, I don’t even really like talking with cops.”
At least, that’s what he said before sitting down to share pizza and chat with officers attending a meet-up hosted by a Pennsylvania nonprofit which focuses on rebuilding trust between police departments and minority youth. The organization, Pennsylvania Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC), trains Philadelphia cops to empathize with inner-city youth. Its seminars aren’t a certain fix to rebuilding trust between police and the communities they serve, but data collected from DMC and other case studies around the country, suggest they are making a difference.

To rebuild trust, the Pennsylvania Disproportionate Minority Contact gets Philadelphia cops and inner-city youth in the same room.

These open conversations are happening across the country. In New Jersey’s suburbs, a teen asked a detective, “Do you guys think we’re good kids?” Cops shared tips about dealing with online harassment and dating violence in Seattle. Orlando participants role-played a traffic stop before reviewing citizens’ rights during the encounter.
Ikeem volunteered to attend the Philly meet-up. Within hours, he gained a new understanding for police officers’ duties. “It’s more we can do on our side, ya know: hear ’em out first, know that they doin’ [their] job,” he says, explaining that cops often aren’t looking to make arrests; rather, they’re sent to unfamiliar locations to respond to 9-1-1 calls.
These types of meet-ups, which are formally known as “facilitated dialogue,” also appear to be associated with a drop in crime. After forums in a Boston public housing complex, violent crime in that neighborhood decreased substantially, dropping 31 percent between 2009 and 2010. Drug offenses also plunged 57 percent over a three-year period.
Nationally, the number of juvenile arrests decreased 50 percent from 2005 to 2014. Researchers believe that these forums may be a contributing factor for the drop in crime.
Meet-ups are designed to breakdown negative perceptions of both cops and kids. Stereotypes can get in the way of keeping communities safe, says Rhonda McKitten, who helped develop and expand DMC’s program across Philadelphia and into Connecticut and Florida. Police “don’t have the relationships that are going to help them get information,” McKitten says. “And young people … are not going to be able to go to them when they need help.”
But lucky for law enforcement, it’s easy to spread the impact of these meetings. After a decade of watching the interactions, Jay Paris, director of Youth Link, an organization that runs similar programs in Boston, estimates that only about four dozen kids need to attend the forums to rebuild trust with the police in a specific neighborhood.
Sometimes, the payoff can be even greater. Ryan Rivera, a North Philly twenty-something who’s attended multiple DMC forums over the years, has a new life goal: “To become a Philadelphia police officer.”
 

This Innovative Library Program Is Helping Underserved Kids Tap Into Their Creative Potential

Walk into a North Philadelphia library, and you’ll be greeted by an unusual sight. While adult patrons surf the Web and whisper in hushed voices, adolescents giddily piece together sticks and balls to make structures that snake across the room. Grownups leave with books under their arms; kids carry out hand-sewn wallets, colorful birdhouses and wands tipped with glowing LED lights.
Maker Jawn, a year-round Free Library of Philadelphia initiative funded by an NBCUniversal 21st Century Solutions grant, opens branches’ underutilized spaces to middle school students to experiment with hands-on creation. The program began in 2011 as a way to fill a gap in the city’s public school education. Noticing that arts and music classes were being slashed in favor of test-prep memorization, the library stepped in to supplement project-based creative arts learning. The term maker jawn comes from the learning environments known as Makerspaces, in which participants experiment with creative technology, and from the slang word jawn, which originated in Philly’s hip-hop scene and can take on the meaning of any noun in a sentence. The Free Library of Philadelphia chose it for the program’s title to suggest the range of work that youngsters could create, where nothing is off-limits.
Supplied with iPads, power tools, a 3-D printer, hot-glue guns, paint and buckets of marbles, buttons and other knick-knacks, the preteen participants are given free rein to build what they please. To an outsider, it might seem the kids are just messing around, making arts and crafts from leftover junk. But for many of its young devotees, the program is a welcome change from the confines of a school day shaped by strict, rote learning and a respite from some of the hardships of life in an impoverished neighborhood. The mentors who run Maker Jawn’s daily lessons see that the kids are tapping into their creativity, maybe for the first time, and building up diminished self-confidence.
“People who are always told what to do can be overwhelmed at first when you say, ‘Here’s the material. Go for it,’” says Sarah Winchowsky, the project coordinator, of working with the kids. “But by giving them avenues to branch out, they flourish.”
Case in point: Musa Andrews, who wanted to make a sci-fi gangster film in the library’s back room. Andrews was just 13 years old when he began scripting “Godbrothers, Part I,” a time-warped flick with scenes set in prison, space, heaven and hell. Two years later, after crafting props and costumes, recording an original song, shooting in front of a green screen and a belabored editing process, Andrews presented a 22-minute film. Sixty people gathered for the premiere. Andrews has since taken video-production classes and gotten involved with filmmaking groups downtown.
“This is a place to assert some agency over the physical world,” says Goda Trakumaite, a Lithuanian artist who’s been a Maker Mentor for nearly three years. “Self-esteem comes with that. ‘I never used a hammer before, and today I built a bird-house. Tomorrow I want to learn more.’ That feeling of being capable and powerful is the coolest thing that I think kids gain over time in the program.”
To that end, all ideas are encouraged, says Trakumaite. “It’s rare for these kids to be in a place where they’re in charge, and where an adult functions more as support rather than an authority figure,” she says, adding that in the library, you rarely hear a “no” or “don’t do that.”
The freedom to tinker with new materials, to try things out and to fail, is particularly important in low-income neighborhoods. For the primarily black and Hispanic population in North Philadelphia, students who don’t perform well in school often believe they’ve been written off. “There is a cycle that perpetuates itself, of violence and poverty, that leads to self-deprecation,” says Winchowsky. “The kids will say, ‘I’m a failure,’ and then they’re then unlikely to try again.” Every child has inherent talent, she adds, and it would be a shame if a kid never discovered it simply because he or she was too scared to try.
Beyond personal development, Maker Jawn also squeezes in academic enrichment. “Our goal is to have them learning without realizing it,” explains Winchowsky. That can happen when a mentor, for example, subtly schools the kids in thermodynamics while demonstrating how to make a lava lamp from old soda bottles, water, oil and dye. Or when building a self-moving robot — in one instance, a rudimentary, solar-powered motor attached to four wheels became a lesson in circuitry and photovoltaic cells.
And sometimes the education is behavioral too. One 10-year-old troublemaker who poked her classmates and cursed under her breath for her first 18 months of visits did an about-face when one library branch put on a fashion show. “She was in her element,” Winchowsky recalls. “She was engaged and had a purpose.” Mentors stopped reprimanding her; instead, they applauded her suggestions during the four months of prep for the big night.
On the whole, the program offers a different vision for what role libraries might serve in the future. Upending its traditional role as warehouses for printed books, the Free Library of Philadelphia is pushing a broader definition of knowledge that includes artistic experimentation and digital literacy. To some adults, “the library is supposed to be a quiet place for studying or reading a book. But that’s not just what it is about anymore,” notes Winchowsky. While physical pages might be disappearing into the cloud, the library’s physical space is more important than ever as the site for interactions, making it akin to a community center. “I feel that Maker Jawn has a place in this new library model because it’s a space to share ideas,” she says. “That’s what I see libraries moving toward: They’re becoming less about the books and more about hands-on information sharing.”
Maker Jawn is transforming libraries into more freewheeling, open spaces. The kids leaving with kites, cereal-box castles and solar-powered robots aren’t just walking away with cool new toys. Over the course of a couple hours, they’ve been tinkering with a new, stronger sense of self.
Maker Jawn is a recipient of the 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. 

Artificial Intelligence Protects First Responders, How Birth Control Is Stopping the Spread of Disease and More

This NASA-Developed A.I. Could Help Save Firefighters’ Lives, Smithsonian Magazine
Disorienting scenes where a single move can be deadly is a common experience for both space rovers and firefighters. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which built an artificial intelligence system for navigating unfamiliar landscapes, is sharing its technology with fire departments — warning first responders about hazards they might not notice in the smoke and flames.

Man v. Rat: Could the Long War Soon Be Over? The Guardian
A New York City subway rat carries a host of dangerous contagions, and its reproductive capacity — up to 15,000 offspring in a year — spread disease through city sewers and alleyways. A biotech startup in Flagstaff, Ariz., has developed a humane way to deal with Gotham’s infestation where rat poison has failed: birth control.
Generational Poverty: Trying to Solve Philly’s Most Enduring Problem, Philadelphia Magazine
Can Mattie McQueen, an unemployed 52-year-old raising three grandchildren in a largely unfurnished apartment, escape the destitution that’s dogged her ancestors since the postbellum years? One Philadelphia nonprofit is using what’s being called a “two- generation” model to assuage her financial stresses to make space for the children’s learning.
 

What Wives of Veterans Can Learn from Female Soldiers, How Doctors Are Saving the Lives of Gunshot Victims Before the Trigger Is Ever Pulled and More

 
What Army Wives Need to Understand About Female Soldiers, The Washington Post
Much is said about bridging the military-civilian divide, but as writer (and wife of a veteran) Lily Burana realizes, there’s also a distance between the women who proudly sport the uniform and those who are married to someone wearing it. Knowing that the military is full of inspirational females — including those now serving in the Ranger division — Burana set out to build a bridge the only way she knew how: by sitting down to lunch and having a chat.
Are Doctors the Key to Ending Philly Gun Violence? Philadelphia Magazine
Renowned for providing lifesaving medical treatment to kids, doctors from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia are focusing their efforts on reducing the cycle of youth violence that plagues the City of Brotherly Love. The hospital’s Violence Intervention Program (VIP) grew out of internal discussions about the Sandy Hill Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., and a shocking report from the city government, which found that 5,051 Philadelphia youth were shot or murdered between 2006 and 2012. It’s difficult to know for sure if the screenings, bully prevention lessons and intensive counseling sessions, which make up VIP, is reducing the number of gunshot victims, but the outlook is hopeful, considering most participants say they desire to be a normal teenager, not one packing heat.
The Power of Vision in Urban Governance, Governing
Every politician may have the goal of being dubbed a “visionary leader,” but Indianapolis’s former four-term mayor, Bill Hudnut, actually was. In order to bring forth the Midwestern city’s potential, Hudnut enlisted help from Indianapolis business and philanthrophic leaders and economic development experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Together, these heavy-hitters combined their strengths, collaborating on a plan that eventually brought $1 billion to the local economy — proving that collective vision and use of community assets is key to long-term impact.

Meet the Doctors Building an Innovative, Holistic Bridge to Healthy Living

What if you were able to cure a disease before someone even caught it? Now imagine doing that on a larger scale — for an entire community of people who lack access to medical resources, including basic supplies like bandages for even the most minor of injuries. What would health care look like if you could eliminate the problem at its source?
Dr. Steve Larson, co-founder of the nonprofit medical clinic Puentes de Salud, or “Bridges of Health,” believes he has the answer. For the past decade, he’s been using a holistic approach that includes medical care, education classes and social services to solve the healthcare woes of Philadelphia’s rapidly growing Latino immigrant population. “The answer is not waiting for the next trauma,” says Larson. “The answer is to keep it from ever happening.”
Watch the video above to see how Puentes de Salud partners with local health organizations, medical schools and private donors to provide its patients comprehensive treatment.
 

The Running Program That’s Pulled 1,300 People Out of Homelessness

At 5:45 a.m., on a recent Friday morning, a group of about 20 homeless guys warmed up in a parking lot across the street from three shelters in East Harlem. In a circle, they did jumping jacks, twisted their torsos and touched their toes. Fifteen minutes later, they huddled up, chanted the Serenity Prayer (“God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change….”) and took off running. As they criss-crossed the bridges between Manhattan and the Bronx during their four-mile trek, the sun’s strengthening rays — bright but not yet burning — reflected off the windows of nearby towering apartment buildings. The streets were nearly empty, and quiet, a rarity in The City That Never Sleeps.
Ryan [last name omitted] began jogging with the group, known as Back on My Feet, seven months ago. Never a runner, he always wondered what the big deal about it was. Ask him today, however, and he’ll tell you it’s “so natural, almost spiritual.” Moreover, running strengthens him and teaches him consistency. Less than a year after first hitting the pavement, Ryan completed a half-marathon and is studying to be a certified substance abuse counselor. As he looped around 138th Street onto the Madison Avenue Bridge, he thought he’d be ready for the NYC marathon a couple months away.
[ph]
Back on My Feet is a program that uses running to help the homeless get their lives back on track. In addition to connecting participants with housing and jobs, Back on My Feet is founded on the notion that running can change a person’s self-image. Early morning exercise, three days a week, provides an outlet for pent-up emotions and starts to change the way someone thinks about hard work.
If the concept seems hokey or contrived, the program’s numbers show that’s not the case. Back on My Feet’s program has reached 5,200 homeless individuals. They show up voluntarily for four out of every five runs — an 82.8 percent attendance rate. More than 1,900 have obtained employment, and 1,300 have moved into independent housing.
[ph]
Back on My Feet began in Philadelphia in 2007, on one of Anne Mahlum’s morning runs. A 26-year-old social entrepreneur with short bleach-blond hair, Mahlum started running a decade earlier, at age 16, to help cope with her father’s serious gambling addiction. Running as a teen in the City of Brotherly Love, she continually passed by a group of homeless men outside the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission, near City Hall’s century-old white tower. In May 2007, she began to develop a friendship with them. By July, they started running with her.
Inspired, Mahlum convinced the Rescue Mission’s staff to let her form an official running club for men in the shelter. At first, nine guys signed up. In exchange, each received a brand-new, donated pair of running shoes, clothes and socks. Mahlum had only one requirement: Each person had to sign a “dedication contract,” committing them to showing up on time for a run every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, respecting themselves and supporting their teammates.
[ph]
The rules were simple, but that was the point. “If we can change the way people see themselves, can we change the direction of their lives?” Mahlum asked. In her mind, running could function as a metaphor for getting one’s life back on track after experiencing homelessness. It takes the fear that someone who’s experienced homelessness feels about words like “housing,” “employment” and “sobriety” and turns that emotion into something manageable. Running teaches that every step forward takes you closer to that finish line, but also that you don’t get to the end unless you cross every mile marker along the route. Waking up so early every morning — whether the thermometer’s bubbling over or when it’s frozen solid — instills discipline and responsibility in the participants. They’re two valuable concepts, but both are hard to teach in the abstract. They need to be lived to be experienced.
After officially obtaining tax-exempt status, Mahlum’s running club grew into a nationwide organization with 50 employees and a $6.5 million operating budget. Today, Back on My Feet has more than 50 chapters in 11 cities. Since the group began recording miles in January 2009, its residential members have run more than 462,000 miles.
[ph]
Jerry, another person who participated in Friday’s outing, used to run with a chapter on the Upper West Side a couple years back and still occasionally runs with the East Harlem group as an alumni member. A few years ago, while receiving assistance from the Fortune Society, a nonprofit focused on supporting successful reentry from prison, he signed up for Back on My Feet’s program. Jerry, who asked that his last name not be used, says he showed up for his first run bitter about his disappointments and distrustful of other people. He didn’t understand why everyone in this group kept trying to hug him or why they kept saying that no one runs alone. The first mile was painful: He felt out of breath, partially because of medication he was taking and partially, he worried, because he was permanently out of shape.
But Jerry stuck with it. Despite a criminal record that meant certain employers never called him back, he landed a job as a doorman and an apartment in Harlem. He credits Back on My Feet with preparing him for success. Today, he’ll tell you that you don’t sprint at the start of a marathon, and you don’t try to win first place either. There’s accomplishment enough, he says, in finishing.
[ph]