Community development, environmental restoration, and educational reform must go hand in hand.
We seek partnerships among advocates for each in order to combine forces and resources. We believe that youth have a crucial role to play in this process. This conviction comes from three decades of work in low-income communities on projects that simultaneously address issues of poverty, race, deteriorated neighborhoods, polluted water, and troubled schools.
WPLP
West Philadelphia Landscape Project
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Mill Creek Neighborhood Tours
Eighth graders at Sulzberger Middle School provided tours of their neighborhood and its history in spring 1998 as part of Anne Spirn's course, Power of Place.

Welcome To Our Neighborhood

Students in Mr. Campbell's eighth-grade created a journey through their Mill Creek and Parkside neighborhoods. Each group of students took part of the larger neighborhood: Market Street, Haverford Avenue, Cathedral, Lancaster Avenue, and Parkside. They presented the history and present of the neighborhood in the form of poetry, stories, and drawings.

Here is Fatima Williams's story of her Parkside neighborhood.

A Sunny day
By: Fatima Wiliams

You are

Hoping for a light rain or showers,
And the sun to grow all the flowers.
On the path through a sunny day.
The dazzling sun shining high.
The clouds are going away, saying goodbye.
But a harsh storm here and there,
Then you look for the sunshine in the air.
You are waiting for the sun, so the kids can play.
Then you have your joy on a sunny day.