Snacks April 2022 Q1

Tasty Bites:

1. Resolve is excited to welcome its new Board Treasurer, Sandy He, a CPA with 12+ years of professional experience. Sandy is bilingual in English and Chinese Mandarin and currently serves as the Accounting Director for the family office of Michael Forman, CEO of FS Investments.

2. Jean and Cassie were honored to be chosen as 2022 Al Día Women of Merit honorees in the non-profit category!! (Picture above)

One thing we’re super proud of:
Last month, we officially announced a new initiative: Shake the Table! STT is a 6-year journalism and community engagement initiative aiming to uncover the experiences of city residents with Philadelphia’s operating departments. This project will explore everything from 311 to Streets and L&I to DHS in the run-up to our 2023 local elections. STT will position these stories and challenges as key issues of importance for candidates running to be Philly’s next Mayor and class of City Council-members. We want to guarantee that the City’s incoming leadership offer concrete proposals for reforms to improve the City systems most frequently interacted with by residents. Resolve Philly and its 27 newsroom partners plan to create a new public record to archive Philadelphians’ experiences with frontline city departments, as well as statements, promises, and commitments made during campaigns. We will then track and evaluate the progress of elected officials using a publicly-accessible, digital accountability tool.

Phew, ok, that’s a lot. But don’t worry! We’re taking it step by step. We had a successful kick-off event last week, where we facilitated a public newsroom at The Discovery Center. Reporters and community members were able to discuss the journalism coverage of city government face to face. We plan to bring this show on the road. By hosting similar events in more neighborhoods, we will engage residents who have historically been excluded from sharing their opinions surrounding how the City operates. Please follow our new social handle @tableshakePHL to stay up to date on our plans! And major props to RP’s Director of Data and Special Initiatives, Julie Christie, who is spearheading this work and adapting to build this STT plane while flying it!

By The Numbers:

• 6: The number of newsrooms in our Indigenous Communities Coverage Cohort. For the past few months, our Reframe team has been working with newsrooms from the U.S. and Canada to discuss coverage of Indigenous communities and people. This initiative is funded, in part, by the Consulate General of Canada. Reframe partnered with Kelsie Kilawna of IndigiNews to hold a storytelling workshop for journalists. Those in attendance used stories from Kelsie’s upbringing to learn about applying appropriate cultural frames in a journalistic context. The workshop was met with resounding praise from the newsrooms involved, as they slowed down and considered editorial workflows that respect the needs of Indigenous people. Reframe has continued to support the newsrooms involved with additional training on accurate language and framing, as well as grants to compensate them for their time. All of this work will culminate in a public event later this month (stay tuned!) that will focus on integrating more of the practices we discussed into media organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada.

• 19: The total number of community members who made editorial contributions to our upcoming (free!) Equally Informed Philly community newsletter. Eight of those folks are Info Captains, and 6 are kids and teens in the Mighty Writers program. Keep your eyes peeled for that newsletter (below)! It’ll be hot off the press later this month.

Cover of the Spring 2022 issue of the Equally Informed Philly Community Newsletter.

Impact:

• In our December edition of Snacks, we shared the tremendous reporting of Steve Volk, Resolve’s Investigative Solutions Reporter, and Julie Christie, Resolve’s Director of Data and Special Projects, on the City’s siphoning of federal benefits from children in foster care. Last month, Councilmember Helen Gym announced legislation that would not only end this practice, but also mandate that the City put these funds into protected accounts for young people. The passage of this bill would make Philadelphia a national leader in this area. Here’s a quote from the release announcing the bill:
  
  “In December 2021, an investigation by Resolve Philly revealed nearly $5 million in foster youth’s federal benefits had been collected and put toward the City’s General Fund between 2016 and 2020. This practice has been challenged on grounds including the violation of due process and equal protection. Two other cities, Los Angeles and New York City, have recently taken steps to prohibit this practice — Gym’s legislation would enact among the strongest legislative protections in the country in conserving these federal benefits for foster youth.”
  
  We’ll be sure to keep you updated on the legislation’s progress.

Steve Volk and Julie Christie co-authored this piece that ran on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer on March 15, 2022. Click the image to read the full article.

ICYMI…

…STEVE VOLK IS A STONELEIGH FELLOW!

Many of you saw this when it was announced in February, but it warrants repeating often and with exuberance: Steve Volk is a Stoneleigh Fellow! We are incredibly proud of Steve, Resolve’s Investigative Solutions Reporter and the first ever journalist to receive this prestigious honor. Over the next three years, Steve will work to transform reporting on child welfare both in Philadelphia and nationally by deepening the media narrative, advancing solutions, and elevating the perspectives of those most impacted by the system. Among the various exciting elements of his fellowship, Steve will be building an innovative, replicable model for community-powered journalism by developing an advisory board composed of people directly impacted by the system. One more time from the rooftops: Go Steve!!

Eyes Peeled:

• This year is a big one for our Broke in Philly reporting collaborative, Resolve’s longest standing initiative. Broke in Philly (as a reporting project focused on economic mobility) was given a 5-year lifespan by our 27 local newsroom partners. Somehow, we’re already at year four! What comes next, you ask? Well, for the next 9 months, our wildly talented Sr. Collaborations Editor, Gene Sonn, will be supporting our newsroom partners in determining the future of the reporting collaborative, since it’s truly theirs for the shaping. Resolve is renowned internationally as a pioneer in the collaborative journalism space. We can’t wait to continue using our creativity, intentionality, and core values of equity, community, and transparency to break new ground in the local news collaboration space.