PHENND Fellows Education Track

PHENND is in the tenth year of an innovative project which seeks to improve and expand the infrastructure for community partnership development across the School District of Philadelphia.

This year PHENND has placed six AmeriCorps VISTA members, full-time federally funded volunteers, in high-poverty public schools in Philadelphia and in key School District offices to serve as Community Partnership Coordinators. PHENND’s overall goal is to increase the capacity of schools to leverage community partnerships while also helping develop systems and policies that will foster better community partnership development at the District level. With the best practices learned from this program, PHENND is developing a replicable strategy for which there has already been considerable interest from School District leadership to bring to scale.

Some of the Fellows’ activities include convening monthly community partner meetings at the schools in order to facilitate communication between the schools and their partners, as well as among partners, to encourage collaboration. They are facilitating communication to the broader community through the creation and/or improvement of the schools’ websites, newsletters and other social media platforms which are made widely available to the entire school community including community partners, staff, students and their families. They are also meeting with the School Leadership regularly to discuss school needs and then cultivate existing or new partnerships to better address those needs.

The 2023-2024 participating schools are:

  • Mastbaum Vocational & Technical High School  (Kensington)
  • Parkway Center City Middle College High School (Center City)
  • YES Philly Accelerated High School (North Philadelphia)
  • The Workshop School (West Philadelphia)

along with VISTAs placed at the following School District offices:

  • Office of Strategic Partnerships
  • Office of Sustainability

In the news:

More resources:

This project is made possible by support from the Corporation for National and Community Service and the School District of Philadelphia.