About

Our Vision

Hopeworks empowers youth to identify and Summer Surveyors develop their D.R.E.A.M.S. (Dynamic, Realizable Efforts to Attain and Maintain Success) and own their future.

Our Mission

We do this by enhancing the lives ­of inner-city Camden youth.  We expand the learning opportunities available to them, point the way to a future full of hope, and work together to create that future.  The heart of our program is technology training, which we provide in­ a safe, respectful, and celebratory atmosphere.  We train our youth in state-of-the art computer applications: Web site design, geographic information services (GIS), computer networking and repair, and video.

Through the Hopeworks program, we seek in particular:

  • To reduce the high school dropout rate for African-American and Hispanic youth in Camden, New Jersey.
  • To create hope for the future, good-paying jobs, business development, and educational opportunities for Camden’s young people: specifically for African-American and Hispanic youth between the ages of 17 and 25 who have dropped out of school.  Such a mission is essential because, in our city:
    • 8,000 young people have dropped out of high school.
    • At the two public high schools, the high school dropout rate is nearly 70%.
    • 34% of the city’s young people are unemployed.
    • Nearly 50% of the city’s young people live in poverty.

History

The pastoral teams of three Camden churches, two Lutheran and one Catholic, founded Hopeworks collaboratively.  We officially opened our doors to our first trainees in March 2000. Since then:

  • Nearly 1,000 youth from our target population have visited Hopeworks.
  • Trainees have gone on to get jobs, attend college, and earn GEDs.
  • Under the direction of our full-time Web site project director, our trainees have developed Web sites for more than 180 paying clients, mainly local, national, and international small businesses and non-profit organizations.
  • Our GIS business has served more than 60 clients, producing parcel maps, digitizing land use information, and creating online mapping functionality with Google Maps.
  • We have developed lasting partnerships with six different organizations (a mix of governmental, commercial, and faith-based organizations) that help us to accomplish our mission.