Hopeworks and Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC) Support a Healthier Camden through Sidewalk Inventory Project

Camden, NJ – July 22, 2021 – Hopeworks, a nonprofit and social enterprise dedicated to providing a positive, healing environment that propels young people to build strong futures, and Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), today announced the completion of their sidewalk inventory project in Camden.

The goal of this project was to support a healthy Camden, specifically focusing on addressing pedestrian infrastructure that enables City of Camden residents to access healthy amenities such as healthcare providers, healthy food retail, fitness facilities, and clean open space.

“As an organization, we value our partnership with DVRPC and are proud of the support we were able to provide to the Pedestrian Portal project to make sidewalks in the Camden community safer,” said Luis Olivieri, GIS Director at Hopeworks. “This project is a great example of how two innovative community partners came together to make improvements within their own community, while creating a positive social impact.”

As part of its efforts, the GIS team at Hopeworks walked the Parkside, Waterfront South, and North Camden neighborhoods validating the data DVRPC had generated previously. The GIS team walked the areas finding additional places to map than what DVRPC had created through analyzing aerial imagery at the regional scale.

“Through partnering with Hopeworks, we were able to provide a hands-on experience to the students and help them build on and improve their technical skills for their future endeavors,” said Kim Korejko, Manager of Data Coordination at DVRPC. “This partnership allowed us to work with members of the community to gain those local level insights of the overall walking environment in Camden and help us better understand the large regional dataset we created and how local governments might be able to use it to prioritize accessibility issues in the area.”

Hopeworks and DVRPC were able to complete this project through the help of Campbell’s Soup Company, specifically its Healthy Communities Initiative.

For more information about Hopeworks, please visit www.hopeworks.org and follow Hopeworks on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. For more information about DVRPC’s Pedestrian Portal and the regional sidewalk dataset, please visit www.walk.dvrpc.org/.

About Hopeworks

Hopeworks is a social enterprise that uses technology, healing, and entrepreneurship to transform lives. Hopeworks’ unique mix of training, trauma-informed care, and real-world experience is what leads to extraordinary results. The approach, combined with high-demand, high-wage technical training and paid work experience is helping to build a workforce that can not only get the job, but keep it, transforming their lives and the lives of their families.

To provide this experience, Hopeworks runs real businesses, providing technology solutions for businesses in web design and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and trauma-informed solutions through training and consulting services with the Youth Healing Team. These businesses help generate over 125 youth jobs a year, and lead to high-wage, permanent opportunities for youth in a growing tech industry.

Hopeworks’ unique combination has led to extraordinary results, with over 85% of youth associates earning high-wage jobs at the end of their work experience with Hopeworks, and a 12-month retention rate of almost 90% at those jobs.

About Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission

DVRPC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization for a diverse nine-county region in two states: Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; and Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, and Mercer in New Jersey.

DVRPC’s vision for the Greater Philadelphia Region is a prosperous, innovative, equitable, resilient, and sustainable region that increases mobility choices by investing in a safe and modern transportation system; that protects and preserves our natural resources while creating healthy communities; and that fosters greater opportunities for all.

DVRPC’s mission is to achieve this vision by convening the widest array of partners to inform and facilitate data-driven decision-making. We are engaged across the region, and strive to be leaders and innovators, exploring new ideas and creating best practices.