Hopeworks GIS Helps Clients Secure Grants Hopeworks GIS has been helping clients to write grant proposals.  There is nothing better than a good map to make one's case!  As Father Steve Planning, President of Arrupe Jesuit High School in Denver Colorado put it:  "GIS is a very useful tool to have when applying for funding. Our school was seeking $200,000 of CDBG funding through a complex grant application process. In order to qualify, we needed to show that we were drawing our students from eligible neighborhoods in Denver. All I wanted initially was to see where our students were in relation to CDBG neighborhoods. Hopeworks GIS went above and beyond, providing information I didn't know I needed but that turned out to be very useful for our grant application." Click here to see an example.   Hopeworks Summer Funding!! Traditionally, Hopeworks provides between 20-30 youth jobs each summer and summer programming to another 30 youth through the Hope Through School Program.  Help make this possible by sponsoring different parts of our summer program.  Typical costs during the summer are: $1,237 per Hope Through School Youth $2765 per summer job Last year alone, Hopeworks provided over $70,000 in youth salaries.  These jobs provide youth with valuable work experience, safe opportunities to learn, and create futures filled with hope.  If you are interested in supporting the Hopeworks summer programming, whether it be through sponsoring a job or supporting the Hope Through School Program please click here! Hopeworks Article Published!! Carol Thompson's "Hopeworks: Technology, Youth Organization, and Youth Identity," written with the assistance of Father Jeff and Ed Figueroa, will appear in a new book. Digital Generations, edited by David Buckingham and Rebekah Willett at the Institute of Education, University of London, will be published by Lawrence Earlbaum in 2006. The article represents the presentation that Carol and Father Jeff gave in London last summer. Hopeworks will also be the topic of Carol's upcoming dissertation (see article below!) Literacy Program Advances Midterms are approaching and our three youth in college are moving ahead.  Another four youth are preparing to enroll in Camden County and the Art Institute.   So far, Literacy has helped 17 trainees advance through an average of two to three grade levels in reading and math. Click on the graph to see the results! Green Bread at Hopeworks When St. Patrick's Day rolls around, it seems there's a wee bit o' the Irish in most of us.  Besides Eileen Cornwall's famous Irish Potatos and Kathleen Deitch's Irish Soda Bread, folks at Hopeworks were treated to Father Jeff's "Green Irish Bread."  Many a youth, and even a Hopeworks board member or two, embraced their long lost Irish roots by dining on this delicacy! Mark Ford Receives BEST Training Mark Ford recently completed BEST Training for facilitators.  The training was a new experience for him. Mark recounts, "I was placed in a room where everyone had been training youth for many years, and happened to be much older than myself. The purpose was to gain familiarity with the youth development approach and use this approach to explore, share, and learn new strategies for working with young people. It was a great experience for me to learn how to facilitate a BEST training, and also meet people from different youth organizations."  You can see a copy of Mark's own web site at www.markearlford.com. Hopeworks and NJ Juvenile Justice Commission Hopeworks and the Juvenile Justice Commission have a joint venture where JJC youth are trained in HTML 1 & 2, Internet Basics, and Photoshop. Youth also earn Microsoft Office Specialist certifications in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook. The group is split into a morning and afternoon session. The morning is devoted to accomplishing certifications in HTML, Internet Basics, and Photoshop. The afternoons are devoted to becoming a Microsoft Office Specialist in various areas. Joann Portnoy, JJC MOS instructor commented "I wanted to educate the youth in the world of computers and Hopeworks provides us with the training and environment necessary to help in the JJC youth I work with."  Welcome Thomas! Thomas Hellman, a German volunteer, has been helping at Hopeworks the past three weeks.  Thomas is on his break between semesters and has worked in Camden previously.  He contacted Hopeworks and asked for a mini-intership in grant writing and fundraising.  Needless to say, Hopeworks put him right to work.  Thomas has helped organize our spring mailing to over 5000 people!  He has also helped Kathleen with grant management.  Willkommen bei Hopeworks! Father Jeff Attends GeoTech Father Jeff attended the GeoTech conference at Bishop Dunn High School in Dallas, TX. The conference was an opportunity for educators to learn more about GIS and how to use it with youth. Father Jeff had a great time and made many good contacts Hopeworks Helps Teen Web site Begin Hopeworks youth recently helped a new youth venture to get off the ground!  Teen Zone is a new teen-run online newspaper involving public and private high school students from around the Philadelphia region. Sections of the paper include: @ School, Music & Entertainment, Free Board, Classified, Style, and Front Page. Hopeworks donated web services for the design, development and deployment of this site.  As Dan Lieberman, Teen Zone's founder said, "This is a really exciting time for the writers at Teen Zone and we all know that without the help of Hopeworks none of this would have been possible."  For more information, please contact Dan by clicking here. College Group Brings Color To Hopeworks While others spend their college Spring Break at home relaxing or in a warm climate the students from St. Joseph's College of Maine and the College of William and Mary in Virginia chose to spend their break volunteering their time at the Sarnelli House in Philadelphia and here at Hopeworks in Camden. The students were overjoyed to help Hopeworks renovate a room on the second floor that will soon be used as a lunchroom and a conference room. According to one of the volunteers, "The two day task of sanding the walls and repainting the entire room was simple compared to the amazing things that Hopeworks does each and every day for the youth in the area. They give struggling young students a wonderful opportunity to get themselves back on track and they give them hope for a bright future. They are the ones that have a made a difference and do God's work, not us; and to them we are extremely grateful!" Hopeworks Dissertation Carol Thompson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.  Two years ago she did research at Hopeworks, part of which formed the presentation she and Father Jeff made at the University of London in 2004. She is now doing her dissertation research at Hopeworks, continuing to study how trainees learn to use the new technologies they encounter there. Carol is also interested in how trainees work together with the new kind of Hopeworks philosophy of "Learning to Learn" and how they change their participation as they develop their own skills. "Thank You's" To So Many Veritas Campbell Soup Maryland Province Of The Society Of Jesus J2 Printing These groups, through their generous funding and equipment donations help make possible the good works at Hopeworks!