Hope Fellow (Coordinator), City of Phila.

The Hope Fellow (Coordinator) will be responsible for managing external community relationships with violence prevention leaders and community-based organizations for A Hope That Lights The Way, a 1-year grant-funded project.

More about the Hope project:

The Mayor’s Office of Public Engagement exists to provide a pathway to visibility and well-being for our most vulnerable and dispossessed residents, including youth and young adults, and Black men and boys, women and girls. A Hope That Lights The Way will produce a multi-media documentary that uses ethnographic research and narrative analysis to depict the need and ongoing work of forging and protecting hope for Black men and boys – and the communities that love them – in Philadelphia.

Narrative is a primary meaning-making tool for human beings. In Towards a Poetics of Fiction, Hardy writes, “For we dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate and love by narrative. In order to really live, we make up stories about ourselves and others, about the personal as well as the social past and future.”

For too long, Black men and boys have been center stage regarding gun violence in Philadelphia and most of our efforts as City government have been reactive and short term.  The Hope project will disrupt this persistent narrative by amplifying, strengthening, and documenting the strategies of hope used by Black men and boys in our City.  By turning a light towards those who do the important work of helping people develop and maintain hope, this project seeks to record relevant data that will help the City make critical decisions about how to engage residents as we tread a path forward.

Further, narratives shape public policy and public actions. Narrative research suggests that by intentionally constructing narratives using methodologies such as the Narrative Policy Framework, we can ensure that the lived experiences of Black men and boys are fully understood, and that policy goals that promote the wellbeing of Black men and boys are met.

Essential Functions

The successful Hope Fellow (Coordinator) will:

• In collaboration with the Hope Fellow (Manager), support the design and implementation of the Hope That Lights the Way project vision, as outlined in the grant proposal
• Build on existing City relationships, grantees and others who have been identified as violence prevention leaders, as well as explore and develop new relationships with neighborhood and grassroots level change agents
• Organize and facilitate partnerships with groups and residents to engage them in focus groups and story-telling activities to capture project data and content
• Attend and support project events and meetings as needed

Learn more and apply.