In the Public Interest

By Paige Wolf

The report’s author, Jen Devor, works as director of partnerships for Campus Philly, an economic development organization focused on retaining college students to the city. With a retention rate of 67 percent, Philadelphia is leading the country in this pursuit. 

Devor has become well known in her Point Breeze neighborhood as a passionate public school advocate. When she, her husband and now 5-year-old daughter moved there in 2010, they consistently heard negative things about public schools, like the local G.W. Childs.

“I started to ask the kids more about their school, their teachers, curriculum, the books they were reading, and the perception and reality did not add up,” she says.

Devor concedes that, yes, the school is strapped for resources and that Philadelphia is still desperately in need of a fair funding model.

“But the kids, teachers and surrounding community were making the most with what they had and graduating really great, smart kids,” she says.

Devor teamed up with other neighbors who were also interested in supporting the school, including Megan Rosenbach, who founded Neighbors Investing in Childs Elementary (NICE) in 2012. NICE has provided grant writing and assistance to bring new partnerships to the school, secured $115,000 for capital renovations, restored the school’s historic auditorium and laid the groundwork for a play space project on the school’s roof.

In a neighborhood like Point Breeze, where there is tension around gentrification, Devor has found it rewarding to find common goals and interests that unite the community.

“In my neighborhood almost everyone cares about public education, either because they are a product of the school district, currently have family members attending a public school or want to send their children to the school around the corner from their houses.”

Devor says organizing neighbors in favor of her catchment school has been successful, but there are so many schools across the city that could benefit from this type of support.

“I started to become more aware of what legislation could be created to make real change, along with identifying which politicians were in support of public education and which ones stood in the way,” she says.

 To mobilize voters, she became a Democratic committeeperson in 2014. She says seeing the election process at a neighborhood level has been incredibly interesting, and she has witnessed how empowered voters can be when they hold their elected officials accountable.

Devor credits motherhood with positively influencing how she approaches solving political problems. 

“Being a mother informs my work through understanding what kids need to thrive from first-hand experience,” she says. “It encourages me to innovate and to be more creative through the unique perspective of my daughter and the community she is developing through school and the neighborhood.” 

“When it comes to politics, it’s important to remember that kids are constituents, too,” Devor says. “Just because they can’t vote doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be represented and served.” 

Paige Wolf is the author of “Spit That Out!: The Overly Informed Parent’s Guide to Raising Healthy Kids in the Age of Environmental Guilt.” Follow @paigewolf on Twitter.

An Inclusion Revolution

By Paige Wolf

Several years ago, Chinatown resident Anna Perng was grappling with her child’s autism diagnosis. For friends of hers in similar situations who had language barriers, access to information was even more challenging to find. When people started asking her for help, she became involved with a support group and decided to serve on the Philadelphia Autism Project committee.

“Raising my kids has made me aware of barriers, both physical and programmatic, which are rooted in the historic segregation of disabled people,” Perng says. 

She was a member of the Philadelphia Autism Project, which, in 2015, established a continuum of care for families who needed services for their children with disabilities. 

At their workshops, they provided families with translated documents and language interpretation. This effort evolved into the Temple University Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Project, which offers families access, opportunities and community support. 

This March, Perng helped organize Philadelphia’s first Disability Inclusion Summit. Parks and Recreation Commissioner Kathryn Ott Lovell, Rebuild Executive Director Nicole Westerman, and other community leaders met with 150 disability rights advocates and residents.

“At the summit, a Chinatown resident who used a wheelchair spoke about how he can’t participate in activities with his 8-year-old son,” Perng says. “No matter our age, our race or our Zip code, we had one message: We need an inclusion revolution.”

Perng continued advocating for the Chinatown community and became aware of Rebuild, the city-led initiative to invest in parks and recreation centers. Her excitement was dimmed when a map of approved sites eligible for the money was published.

“There was a map with this huge spray of dots across the whole city, but Chinatown remained a blank space,” Perng says. Chinatown doesn’t have any parks or recreation centers to improve.

When she saw that local news organization PlanPhilly was asking readers to vote on a Rebuild question they wanted investigated, Perng organized people to “upvote” her question: What can the city do about neighborhoods like Chinatown that didn’t have rec centers at all?

Her question won. Reporter Malcolm Burnley ended up writing a story, interviewing representatives at Rebuild and City Hall, as well as giving voice to Perng and residents. Perng noted that Franklin Square, which is privately run, was the only green space available to residents and hundreds of children who attend Head Start and pre-K count programs.

Perng shared the PlanPhilly article with Councilman Mark Squilla, who represents Chinatown, and asked whether Franklin Square could be considered for Rebuild. 

“I pointed out that the historical lack of investment in Chinatown is not anyone’s fault, but we are now in a position to correct this injustice,” Perng says. “We can make a difference for residents and for hundreds of Head Start children from around the city.”

Squilla invited Perng to meet with Rebuild and Franklin Square, and, over the past year, they have worked together to address these issues. 

Perng says she credits Lovell and Westerman for not only listening, but taking action on these concerns and planning a follow-up meeting with the community.

“I’d like to see residents and advocates serve on a community advisory board with voting power over the coming years,” Perng says, “to ensure residents aren’t displaced and these benefits aren’t erased in 10 years.”

Paige Wolf is the author of “Spit That Out!: The Overly Informed Parent’s Guide to Raising Healthy Kids in the Age of Environmental Guilt.” Follow @paigewolf on Twitter. 

Lactation Station Procrastination

By Paige Wolf

When I was nursing my second child, I decided to leave her at home and take a one-day trip to Baltimore for a large conference. There was no way I was lugging around a massive electronic pumping system, so I carried along a largely ineffective hand pump and occasionally tried to seek shelter in the expo center restrooms.

It was the worst.

I had to sit on a toilet in a public restroom and try to express enough milk as to not feel burdened by the weight of bowling balls that, to make matters worse, were leaking through my dress.

Local mom Lacey Kohlmoos experienced similar frustration in the summer of 2017 when she took an Amtrak train from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia to Union Station in Washington, D.C., for a work event. Because she usually worked from home and didn’t know better, she assumed it would be easy to find a place to pump.

“At that point I needed to pump every two to three hours to keep up my milk supply and avoid leaking, aching breasts and mastitis,” she says. “But when I asked the information desk ladies if there were any lactation facilities in Union Station, they looked at me like I was crazy.”

She said they first suggested pumping in the public bathroom, which was crowded, dirty and didn’t have an electrical outlet. She ended up leaving the station, finding a nearby Starbucks and pumping in the individual bathroom. In the 15 minutes it took for her to express her milk, she recalls that there must have been at least 10 knocks on the door.

“The whole experience was embarrassing, stressful and rage-inducing,” Kohlmoos says. “But I thought, just like so many other new moms, that’s just the way it is.”

But she knew it didn’t have to be that way.

As the online organizing strategist at Care2, Kohlmoos was already working with everyday people to turn their petitions into full-fledged, winning campaigns. But it wasn’t until a few months later when she was inspired by all the social media posts for Breastfeeding Awareness Month  (August) that she decided to do something. So she created a petition on care2.com demanding that Amtrak provide lactation facilities at Union Station in D.C.  

“Because it’s my job to help other activists, I had a lot of resources at my fingertips that others may not have access to or may not realize they have access to,” she says. “I was able to send out an email to Care2’s members urging them to sign the petition, post to Care2’s Facebook page and get our PR firm to put out a press release.”

But while Kohlmoos had access to some additional internal tools, anyone can create a successful petition on sites like
care2.com—and thousands of people have. Kohlmoos says she got an overwhelming amount of support from lactating working moms.

“I’ve heard countless pumping horror stories since I started the petition,” she says. “One woman told me that the logistical nightmare of figuring out how to pump while traveling by train was so great that she just decided not to go on a trip to New York with her friends.”

She connected with fellow frustrated local mom Samantha Matlin and asked her to start a petition calling for lactation facilities in 30th Street Station.

After gathering more than 50,000 signatures between the two Care2 petitions and getting some press attention from D.C. and Philly outlets, she emailed Amtrak’s communications manager to ask her for a meeting to discuss getting lactation facilities at the two stations. When she didn’t hear back, she invited all of the petition signers to join her in a Twitterstorm targeting Amtrak, which generated more than 2,000 tweets within 24 hours demanding lactation facilities and linking to the petition. 

One of Kohlmoos’ colleagues happened to have a connection with Mamava, a company that makes and installs lactation pods in public places, so she requested a meeting. Mamava loved the petition and jumped on board the campaign.

As Kohlmoos was putting pressure on Amtrak to get lactation facilities, Mamava was reaching out to them about placing an order for some pods. And while Amtrak never responded to Kohlmoos and Matlin directly, they did respond to Mamava and told them that they would like to buy some pods—expected to be installed in Philly, Baltimore, Chicago and New York City this year.

It was a fortuitous chain of events, but not an uncommon success story. Viral petitions often lead to media attention and connect the movement with corporations, nonprofits and other influential parties who want to help turn the issue into action.

You don’t have to be a “petition expert” to get the ball rolling—Care2 even offers a free online “activist university” to give you the tools to spread your message and get it into the hands of the right changemakers. Thanks to Kohlmoos and thousands of action moms who shared her petition and spread the word, nursing moms should soon be able to travel with one less inconvenience. 

A Resourceful Grandmom Cleans Up

Photo: PlanPhilly

By Paige Wolf

In 2005, Judith Robinson was fed up with the litter and illegal dumping plaguing her North Philadelphia neighborhood. A real estate broker and grandmother of two, Robinson refused to accept the status quo of garbage-filled lots, and she took her concerns to community meetings—as well as into her own hands.

First, she noticed groups of teenagers hanging around near her office, so she offered them money out of her own pocket to clean up areas along the major commercial corridor of Susquehanna Avenue. 

“We created a team of youth,” she says. “Using our own resources, initially, we purchased a rolling trash can, brooms, and shovels and sent the youth to clean up.”

And that was the birth of Susquehanna Clean Up/Pick Up, which has spent more than a decade bringing issues of recycling, waste management, land use and climate change to North Philly residents. 

Realizing that prevention was key to addressing the litter problem, Robinson guided SCUPU to partner with Keep Philadelphia Beautiful and the city to provide recycling bins for the entire neighborhood. Robinson and her team helped resident take advantage of Recycle Bank, which offers financial incentives for recycling. 

SCUPU has provided forums on the green jobs economy, solar panels, stormwater management and energy workshops. In 2009, SCUPU partnered with the state and received a grant to reimburse the organization for its efforts against illegal dumping. It also partnered with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society for the LandCare program, which focuses on cleaning and greening vacant parcels. 

In 2010 SCUPU received its first grant among many that would go toward providing environmental justice education in urban settings. 

Robinson was alarmed when construction of a new Temple Student Health and Wellness Center left large dirt piles to blow in the wind, raising environmental and health concerns. She held a community meeting about the construction, but turnout was low. So she posted a photo of the dirt pile on her Facebook page, where she often writes “Temple Tuesday” posts to point out the effects of university construction in the neighborhood. She received a call from Temple News, where she was able to share her concerns with a wider audience.

“There are some major environmental justice problems going on where our community is disrespected,” Robinson says. “We can’t stop buildings from being built, but we can speak up about how things are being built and how we are being affected.”

The construction dirt was finally removed when the center was complete, but Robinson still keeps a close eye on the university’s plans to construct a new stadium.

A recent mini-grant from the Franklin Institute’s Climate & Urban Systems Partnership will help SCUPU plant trees in the area and remove existing ones that negatively affect properties. She has community members signed up to learn to be “tree tenders” and will also hold forums with the water department on stormwater management and science education at an open-space classroom in a local park.

“It’s actually easier now with the strange weather to talk about climate change without seeming like a kook,” she says. 

As a longtime “action mom,” Robinson credits motherhood for teaching her to be patient with herself and others. She also credits her maternal instincts for helping her to manage time, money and resources. 

She has made a little go a long way. “Pinching pennies is an art form,” she says. 

Paige Wolf is the author of “Spit That Out!: The Overly Informed Parent’s Guide to Raising Healthy Kids in the Age of Environmental Guilt.