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Hopeworks News: May 2002
HOPEWORKS GIS TEAM MAKES TRACES INTO HISTORY Over the past 5 months, Hopeworks GIS trainee, Adrian Polo, led the GIS team of Manny, Ed, Danny, Frank, Rosibel, Anibal and Kyle in a monumental project to create the first ever digital map of the entire City of Camden. This map involved countless hours of work on the digitizing of each and every one of the over 33,000 parcels of land in the city. This base parcel map has an incredible number of uses. It will be the base map used by the team this summer to collect data on the existing conditions of each of the 33,000+ parcels of land in the city - an equally huge effort.
Congratulations to the entire GIS team!!!
SUCCESSFUL HOPE THROUGH SCHOOL PROGRAM COMPLETES ITS FIRST YEAR WITH OVER 40 YOUTH EARNING OVER $18,000!
The Hope Through School Program successfully completed its first year this month. Over 40 Camden youth participated in the project, with 14 youth achieving after-school jobs and earning over $18,000 dollars during the past school year. Youth holding jobs were required to be in school, achieve passing grades, and work a minimum of six hours per week at Hopeworks. Many youth were able to work substantially more hours during the year depending on their availability and our project schedule.
Five of these youth, Javier Colon, Frank Castillo, Ed Figueroa, Manny Perez and Jason Lee, have been offered summer jobs with Hopeworks. Javier will be an assistant trainer for next year's Hope Through School Program beginning this July. Frank, Ed, Manny and Jason all will be helping to run the summerGIS program.
Congratulations to all the youth who participated this year, and to Marcus Williams, this year's Hope Through School Program Director.
HOPEWORKS COMPLETES PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION DATABASE
PROJECT
Hopeworks recently completed an online database for the Philadelphia
Foundation's Summer Career Program. Each year, over 1,800 young people gain a valuable opportunity to learn about the world of work, their career and academic aspirations and make a difference in their communities by participating in internships with more than 900 progressive, community-minded employers.
The completed database project allows the various agencies, employers and youth to fill out applications, evaluations and employer forms via the Internet. This information is stored in an online database that allows the agencies to track, manage and report, via the Internet, on the 2000 plus youth that will hold jobs this summer.
 HERSHEY, PA & SAN DIEGO, CA
On May 22nd, 3 Hopeworks trainees and 2 staff attended the Pennsylvania GIS conference where
they gave a presentation on the work being done at Hopeworks. The Hershey conference was a great
opportunity for our youth to see how GIS is used throughout the state of Pennsylvania and also
provided an opportunity to connect with universities who offer GIS programs.
In early July, 4 trainees and 2 staff will head to San Diego, CA for the
national ESRI
conference. Hopeworks will be presenting a paper on its work with
GIS and youth.
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RECENT GRANTS
Hopeworks is excited to announce that we have received four major grants this past month.
First, Hopeworks received a Technology Enriched Community (TEC) grant of $20,750 from
Microsoft.  This grant will be used
to continue to develop our online training curriculum. Find out more about this grant
by clicking here.
 Our second grant was from the Juvenille Justice Delinquency
Prevention Act funds program of the State of New Jersey. This grant is for $20,000
and will go towards underwriting our summerGIS and Hope Through School Programs.
Combined, these two programs will make GIS and Web skills available to over 40 teen
youth.
Our third grant was received from the South Jersey Charitable Foundation. The grant is
for $20,000 and will be used to fund the Hope Through School Program during the coming
academic year. Through this grant, up to 15 high school youth will have after-school
jobs with Hopeworks.
 The fourth grant we recevied was from the Jaws Youth Fund.
Jaws is a youth fund started by former NFL quaterback Ron Jaworski in partnership with
the United Way of Camden County. Its mission is to support programs and services that
help at-risk youth. The $5,000 is to be used for training youth and placing them in jobs
using the skills that they have learned at Hopeworks.
All of us here at Hopeworks continue to be grateful for the on-going community support
that makes possible the many wonderful things that are happening with youth.
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GIS TEAM SURVEYS CENTERVILLE & LIBERTY PARK
 Ed Figueroa led a team of four Hopeworks trainees in a survey of over 1500 parcels
in the Centerville and Liberty Park neighborhoods in southern Camden. This survey was
completed for the Camden Housing Authority and included a presentation in front of several
(very impressed!) City Council members and Honorable Mayor Faison of Camden. The survey
of existing conditions, abandoned buildings, vacant lots, churches, schools, businesses,
street lights, street trees and other neighborhood assets will be used in a revitalization
effort for those neighborhoods.
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Odds Ends:
James Jones began a summer class at Camden County College in writing on May 28th.
Wafeeq Bowman began his
college career (the 6th Hopeworks trainee this year to do so!!) May 28th when he attended
Video Animation I. Nice job Wafeeq!
Congratulations to Dilson Caba and Jose Nunez who received Flash I and II training through our partnership with
New Horizons of Philadelphia.
Next week, Hopeworks will unveil its newly redesigned web site. Besides a new look,
there will be loads of new information about our programs, the "nuts and bolts" of
what happens here day to day and an easy to access listing our our services.
Stay Tuned!
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