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Hopeworks News: January 2007
| Father Jeff Receives Martin Luther King, Jr. Award |
 On Friday January 19, 2007, Father Jeff received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Medal from the Camden County Board of Chosen Freeholders. The event was held on the Campus of Camden County College in Blackwood, NJ. Freeholder Riletta L. Cream was the Master of Ceremonies for the evening. Freeholder Louis Capelli, Jr. nominated Father Jeff for the award, who recognized Jeff as one of New Jersey’s distinguished citizens. He was commended for his “Selfless devotion of countless hours to the betterment of society in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” Congratulations Father Jeff!
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| Hopeworks Goes Hollywood! |
 Hopeworks trainees are eagerly anticipating the launch of our new Digital Storytelling program. In this program, youth will work with Literacy Director to write a personal narrative on an experience in their lives. Next they will record pictures and images, digitize them and import them into a video editing environment. Youth will then record their voices and music to narrate their own digital story, incorporating the images they captured into an personal “Digital Story.” We hope to hold our first firm session in March and follow up with Hopeworks' first film festival in April.
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| Hopeworks On Tour! |
| Father Jeff, the GIS team and of course many of our youth made several presentations last month. Here are a few of the highlights: |
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Hopeworks Visits The Rotary Club |
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 Board member Skip Torrenson and his Rotary Club in Broomall, PA hosted Father Jeff at a breakfast meeting on December 14th. Father Jeff showed club members the Hopeworks video and answered questions about our youth, our businesses and the different ways that people are able to help us with our mission. |
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| Hopeworks Speaks At The Chophouse |
 , , and were invited by Jon Gonzalez to attend a wine tasting event at the Chop House in Marlton, NJ on December 18th. This was an excellent opportunity to present Hopeworks to the business community of Southern New Jersey. Although Jeff did a great job presenting Hopeworks, people were most impressed with Mario, especially because he told them how working at Hopeworks has allowed him to pay the entire cost of his college education. There were also many questions for Angel when he mentioned that he was majoring in video game design. The other attendees were genuinely excited by the professionalism and accomplishments of our youth! Thank you to Jon Gonzalez for the invitation. |
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| GIS Presents To Haddon Township |
 On December 20th, GIS Director and his GIS team, , and presented the results of their Haddon Township tree survey for the Haddon Township Environmental Commission at the Haddon Township library. They spoke about the planning process for the project, how they coordinated coverage of every assigned block and then how they plotted the data points onto the township map. There was lots of interest in the results and hopefully more survey work for our team in the future. Nice job GIS! |
| Nine Hopeworks Youth Start College! |
 College students have gone back to school for the Spring semester and Hopeworks’ youth are no exception. , , , and have been joined by , , , and . Hopeworks is very proud of our college youth. Our youth have expressed interest in a variety of majors including: Small Business Management, Psychology, Technical Management, and Game Design and Development. This semester, Hopeworks’ college youth are studying at the Camden City and Blackwood campuses of Camden County College as well as DeVry University in Philadelphia. The youth are excited about this semester and are eager to take on new challenges!
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| Hopeworks Begins Fun In The Sun |
 Hopeworks is kicking off its 2nd annual “Fun in the Sun” Subscription Drive on February 1st. The proceeds from the subscriptions last year empowered nine youth to earn summer jobs at Hopeworks and this year we are hoping to cover 25 youth jobs!! The fun kicks off in February and the lucky drawings are held every day in June. You can purchase more than one subscription and you can win more than once. It’s fun to sell subscriptions too and there are special drawings just for the sellers. Look for more information coming on our web site. Please join in the fun and purchase your subscription early! Remember, your generosity will help as many as twenty-five youth earn jobs at Hopeworks this summer.
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Hopeworks Celebrates It's Annual Christmas Party
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 Hopeworks staff and youth celebrated the Christmas season on Thursday, December 21st. This was an opportunity for our hard working staff and youth to relax, play games, and share food and sweets. Youth and staff competed against each other in a car racing video game. In the conference room, youth and staff played party  games including Apples to Apples and Taboo. The party culminated with Hopeworks' annual “Stealing Santa” game. Staff and youth all brought gifts that were traded around on this fun variation of “White Elephant” or “Yankee Swap.” This celebration was an excellent opportunity for Hopeworks members to celebrate their accomplishments, and relax and have fun.
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 Hopeworks youth and are leading Hopeworks in a new direction as a business. Together Manny and Angel recruit and hire other youth to download and install Symantec Software products such as Norton Internet Security. They track how the users go through the purchase and installation process and then report their results and evaluation to Lenny Alugas, the vice president of Symantec’s Worldwide Consumer Support Department. This information is collected by Symantec to improve the ease-of-use of Symantec software. Not only are Manny and Angel leading this next round of "use-cases," they are avid videogamers and embarking on their second semester at Camden County College.
Thanks to the support of so many of you, Hopeworks was able to take advantage of a great end-of-the-year sales offer from Dell. Thirteen new Dimension E521s were delivered and and put in long hours getting them all ready for our trainees to excel!  Thanks also to and all of the generous folks at the law offices of in Moorestown, NJ for donating a large conference table to us.
 Dr. John Foley of Foley Chiropractic has graciously agreed to provide onsite chiropractic care to Hopeworks' trainees. Dr. John will begin visiting Hopeworks on a weekly basis beginning in February. can attest that Dr. John is an adjustment magician! We are very grateful for this new and valuable service to our youth! Anyone in need of a good chiropractor should contact him at (856) 931-5555.
Congratulations to day trainee who has recently finished his personal web site. Upon completion of his production test, he hopes to move up to web production. Manny is also beginning his second semester at Camden County College.
will be attending Finance and Accounting for the Non-Financial Manager to be held at the at the University of Pennsylvania in late February.
Hopeworks would like to thank Todd Mariani for all his hard work as our web director. Todd has taken a new position with the Free Library of Philadelphia, and he and his wife are also expecting their first child! Good luck to Todd and thanks for everything!
Hopeworks staff will attend a Group Relations conference in Philadelphia.
Hopeworks begins it's Digital Storytelling Project.
pcwoodbury.com
Friends for Life Animal Sanctuary
Camden Diocese
ABC Financial Solutions
South Jersey Diving Association
St. Charles Borromeo
Camden Youth Drug Court
Eastparkside
Romero Center
Newburgh Ministries
Woodbury Presbyterian
NJRC
Our Lady of Good Council
DiCicco Builders
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