Philly ASAP’s After School Directory to Become a Philly 311 Widget

The After School Programs wiki

Last summer, Philly 311 held a contest calling for civic developers and community activists to submit ideas for a new widget on the Philly311 mobile app, which provides a way for community members to report neighborhood issues directly into the city government work order systems from their smartphone.

Chris Alfano, CTO at Jarvus and Code for Philly organizer, won the widget contest with his idea for an app that would list after school activities available to youth.

The After School Program Widget will likely be available in the Philly 311 app later in July, according to Tim Wisniewski, the new Chief Data Officer for the City of Philadelphia. He added that the City still had to work out a few final details with its partners before the widget could be released.

Alfano had previously created an after school activities wiki at TechCamp Philadelphia, but the city didn’t want to use information from a wiki for the widget.

Instead, the widget will use data from Philly ASAP’s after school resource directory. Philly ASAP (After School Activities Partnerships), has provided an after school resource guide for 10 years and has over 900 listings.

Philly ASAP’s directory is available on their website and is distributed in print by the Philadelphia Daily News in September. The widget will also help the directory reach even more parents, youth and caretakers.

“We’re really trying to blanket the city as much as possible with this resource in different formats,” said Justin Ennis, executive director of Philly ASAP.

In the future, the app will pull together data from other resources in addition to Philly ASAP.

“Hopefully it’ll be the go to place for anyone running a program for youth to get their stuff listed in there so parents can find it,” Alfano added.

Additional Summer Program Guides

The Out-of-School Time Resource Center at the University of Pennsylvania has created an OSTRC SUMMER SURVIVAL KIT. It shares some of the best of its existing resources, according to OSTRC Project Coordinator John Price III. The resource is available both in print and online.

In addition, the City of Philadelphia provides a directory of summer youth programs on its website.