10 Stories That Show Why Flourishing in Philadelphia is an Act of Resistance 

image above | Villa Africana Colobó Community Garden in Norris Square. Photo taken by Laura Duarte Bateman

“Flourishing” is probably not the word most of us would choose to describe 2025. Yet, over the past year, Generocity explored a wide variety of solutions aimed at helping Philadelphia do just that. Contrary to the idea of flourishing under optimal conditions, each story we covered rose from difficult realities. 

Before the 2025 Budget Reconciliation Law eliminated vital supports like SNAP benefits and health coverage, more than 30% of children in Philadelphia were already experiencing food insecurity, and 41% of Philadelphians relied on Medicaid. The challenges extend far beyond the region: nationally, 44% of workers earn less than a livable wage; in August, job growth was at its lowest point in 15 years, and press freedom has declined for the first time in a century.

So, how do we talk about flourishing at a time when rights are under attack, essential services are disappearing, and so many people can’t make ends meet?

These ten stories that show how Philadelphians draw from their past, lean on each other, and build full ecosystems of solutions, reveal that the point was never how we flourish, but that we flourish in spite of. In this context, flourishing is not just a condition. It’s an act of resistance.

In other words, Philadelphia doesn’t flourish because it gets to enjoy perfect conditions. It flourishes because its people take an active role in demanding and creating those conditions. Flourishing in Philadelphia is not passive: it’s a deliberate, collective effort. 

As the year, and the first installment of this series, comes to a close, we look back at the key lessons from the initiatives, organizations, and people who encompass Philadelphia’s grit; a key component of its ability to flourish. 

1. Where do solutions come from? The answer lies in the past

Solutions don’t emerge out of nowhere. They’re part of a larger context shaped by the people, movements, and struggles that came before. In Philadelphia, this lineage is especially clear when it comes to protecting immigrant rights, combating food insecurity, and producing community media. 

In the 1980s, as brutal dictatorships forced many Central Americans to flee their homes, U.S. interfaith groups mobilized to welcome refugees. Philadelphia became one of the strongest sanctuary hubs in the country, with eleven host congregations and organizations, supported by thirty-seven additional groups. Together, they offered meals, transportation, legal aid, housing connections, and community.

Woman holding a sign at the “Choose love” protest organized by New Sanctuary Movement on January 25, 2025. Photo taken by: Julián Ríos.

Today, that legacy lives on through organizations like New Sanctuary Movement and Juntos, which advocate for immigrant justice across the city. Their work evolves from the sanctuary efforts of past decades, and was spotlighted in the first article of this Flourishing series, Rapid Response Networks: A Community-Led Protection Against ICE Abuses.

Philadelphia has also long led the way in tackling hunger. In 1894, the Starr Centre Association, which provided home health care to Philadelphia’s African American and immigrant communities, began offering school lunches for one penny. By 1910, the Philadelphia School District adopted and expanded the initiative citywide. This local effort helped shape what would become the National School Lunch Program, which feeds nearly 30 million children annually nationwide. It also laid the groundwork for the wide range of public-private Philadelphia-based initiatives that continue to fight food insecurity today, and are protagonists of three of our Flourishing stories on food accessibility, affordability, and education. 

A last initiative worth mentioning that has strong roots in the past is Philadelphia’s vibrant community media scene. Today, the city has multiple spaces for producing your own media; hyperlocal news outlets focused on neighborhoods, as well as specific communities; an active zine scene; and efforts to archive all this media. When community media makers were asked why they believed Philly’s community media scene was so active, many pointed to its history. 

As Philadelphia-based journalist and scholar Linn Washington has noted, the city is home to the first Black counter-narrative published in the United States. It also birthed the first petition against slavery in 1688, and the country’s two oldest continuously published African American newspapers, The Christian Recorder (1852) and The Philadelphia Tribune (1884). For centuries, Philadelphia has been a place where people can dissent and share their opinion, as laid out in our most recent article of the series: Not For Profit, But For The People: The Power Of Community Media In Philadelphia.

2. Public–private partnerships or independent, under-the-radar solutions?

A recurring theme across the series was the idea of an ecosystem. In nature, ecosystems are networks of organisms interacting with each other and with their environment. In Philadelphia, solutions operate in the same way: individuals, organizations, and institutions working toward a shared goal, each contributing something distinct, yet interconnected.

Take the city budget, for example. There are three main organizations that push for a more participatory process, and while they share education as a central strategy, each approaches the work differently: Alliance for a Just Philadelphia does so through policy advocacy, People’s Budget Office of the Mural Arts Philadelphia integrates artistic engagement, and Committee of Seventy prioritizes creating accessible public information. Together, they form a unique ecosystem of civic participation, described in Your City Your Budget? Philly’s Fights for a Budget that Reflects the People.

The same is true in the fight against food insecurity, though on an even larger scale. The issue is so expansive that it required three separate stories.

Within this ecosystem, a key lesson emerged about what makes public–private partnerships (PPPs) effective: clear, complementary roles.

“It can’t just be charitable funding and grants. It can’t only be large government grants either,” explained Mignon Verdell, Community Engagement Manager at The Food Trust, in our third story on food insecurity. 

A corner store in Philadelphia participating in The Food Trust’s Healthy Corner Store Initiative, which helps store owners stock and sell healthy foods. Photo courtesy of: The Food Trust

Strong partnerships depend on:

• Organizations identifying community needs and piloting solutions
• Local governments providing the infrastructure and funding to scale them
• Federal agencies identifying effective solutions and building national programs from that groundwork.

State Representative Dan Frankel (D–Allegheny, 23rd District) echoed this point in response to expected healthcare cuts under the 2025 Budget Reconciliation Law. His summer co-sponsorship memo emphasized the need to properly resource community organizations. For Cuts to Healthcare Are on the Horizon: Will Pennsylvania be Ready?, he shared:

“We must make sure that they’re properly resourced in order to be able to assist this very vulnerable population, which in many cases may not have access to computers, may have certain disabilities, which make it more of a challenge to do the paperwork and to deal with a system that is designed to keep as many people off of Medicaid as possible.”

Despite the PPP model showing positive results in the past, the limitations of these partnerships also became blatantly clear this year. Initiatives that depend on public and private alignment are now suffering the consequences of federal cuts. As Share Food Program Executive Director George Matysik put it, “We’ve gone from a war on poverty to a war on poor people.”

By contrast, independent, under-the-radar solutions, such as Philadelphia’s community media or community gardens, operate outside public and private influence. In some ways, this independence has shielded them from recent cuts, largely because they never received substantial support to begin with.

Mural at Cesar Andreú Iglesias Community Garden that reads “the land belongs to those who work it” in Spanish. Photo taken by Laura Duarte Bateman

“These gardens… we already started from a negative position, we’re already behind the wall,” said  Iglesias Community Garden member Michael G.M., in conversation with Generocity, noting that the lack of institutional support predates the current administration.

This raises an important question:

Which approach is more effective: working within public–private partnerships that require alignment and shared commitment, or staying independent, with fewer resources but greater autonomy?

This series seems to suggest that both are essential. Each fills gaps the other cannot. Both face challenges that the other can help mitigate. And together, they form a broader ecosystem of solutions that are shaping the city’s present and future.

3. Want solutions? Get communities together

One of the clearest themes across this series is that initiatives that succeed tend to understand one simple but overlooked truth: people need each other. 

The same is true in the opposite sense, as revealed by the article Job Seekers Need More Than Jobs: Addressing the Grief of Unemployment. Many job assistance programs offer limited services, such as resume workshops, that don’t respond to the diverse needs of job seekers and ignore their emotional and physical needs during these difficult times.

Mary*, one of the job seekers interviewed, offered a possible solution. What helped her most was not a formal program, but being in community:

“You know who’s helpful? That lady who told me about the daycare that’s open. That lady who taught me, okay, if I can’t get clothes from here, I can go there. That’s what’s helpful.”

A similar dynamic emerged in the story on participatory budgeting. Community advocate Erme Maula emphasized that when residents gather in shared spaces, they gain not only information but also motivation and connection.

Erme Maula facilitating a Peoples Budget Office 101 Workshop on April 23, 2025 at Taller Puertorriqueño. Photo taken by Emily Hildenbrand.

“As community members we don’t always have spaces to meet people we don’t know,” she said. “This work can connect you to other people in the room who might be engaged in things you didn’t realize until that moment, you might be interested in.”

Community ties also strengthen democracy. Maurice Sampson II and Michael Kleiner, Democratic committeepersons in Mt. Airy, attribute their division’s high voter turnout to one practice: being neighbors first.

“You want to see a lot of people turn out to vote in Philly?” Sampson asked. “You have to be neighbors.”
Sampson and Kleiner spend most of their time knocking on neighbors’ doors, socializing at block parties, and strengthening relationships, not just during election season. “That’s where the talking happens,” Sampson added.

For organizations, deep community presence is equally essential. At The Welcome Table at St. James School, years of consistent engagement in Allegheny West are what laid the groundwork for launching a guaranteed income program this fall.

“You spend a lot of time engaging with neighbors and you start hearing the same themes over and over,” said director Paul Barrett. Those repeated conversations revealed the urgent needs that the program now addresses.

Across these stories solutions emerge when communities have space to connect. When people meet one another, share experiences, exchange resources, and build trust, initiatives become more responsive, more participatory, and more effective. And just as importantly, new solutions begin to grow- not from institutions alone, but from the community itself.

Developments to look out for in 2026

As we wrap up what it meant for Philadelphia to “flourish” in 2025, here are key developments to keep an eye on in the coming year, each connected to the initiatives highlighted throughout the series:

• The Food and Nutrition Task Force was created in February 2025 with the goal of creating an integrated citywide strategy to strengthen food systems and reach those most in need. It is expected to deliver its recommendations to the Council President in early 2026.

• The 2026 city budget process: After low participation in 2025 – driven not by a lack of public interest but by limited engagement opportunities offered by the city – advocates are watching closely to see whether next year’s process becomes more accessible, transparent, and participatory.

• Momentum for open primaries: The push to repeal Pennsylvania’s closed primary system has gained significant momentum in recent years. In 2024, a bipartisan majority in the House advanced an open primaries bill, and in May 2025, the House State Government Committee approved another. Keep track of this intended shift in 2026. 

• Rep. Dan Frankel’s Protect Pennsylvanians’ Medicaid Access Act: This proposal seeks to safeguard vulnerable populations from the fallout of cuts triggered by the 2025 Budget Reconciliation Law. When we spoke with Frankel, the framework for the legislation was just being formed. Next steps included gathering input from community health organizations and the Department of Human Services.

• The Welcome Table’s Guaranteed Income Pilot: Beginning in January 2026, The Welcome Table in Allegheny West will start distributing cash assistance through its guaranteed income initiative. The outcomes of this pilot will be important to follow as guaranteed income models continue gaining traction nationwide.

A common challenge many organizations shared throughout the series is that their work often goes unseen and their resources underutilized. That’s why we’ve created a resource bank featuring every organization we mention in the Flourishing series. We hope you’ll follow, support, and turn to them whenever you need their assistance.

Immigrant Rights

• New Sanctuary Movement (Philadelphia)
• Juntos (Philadelphia)
• California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice (California)
• Catholic Legal Immigration Network (National)
• NorCal Resist (California) 

Food Justice 

• Philabundance 
• Food Not Bombs 
• Share Food Program 
• South Philly Community Fridge 
• Cesar Andreú Iglesias Community Garden 
• The Food Trust 
• South Philly Food Co-Op 
• Farm Philly- Philadelphia Parks and Recreation
• Vetri Community Partnership
• Free Library Culinary Literacy Center 

Participatory City Budget

• Alliance for a Just Philadelphia
• Committee of Seventy 
• People’s Budget Office

Voting 

• Committee of Seventy 
• Changing the Conversation Together (CTC)

Healthcare

• Pennsylvania Health Access Network 
• Liberty Resources Inc. 
• Mental Health Partnerships 
• The Arc of Philadelphia

Navigating Unemployment 

• Wealth and Works Futures Lab 
• Phunemployment 
• New Start Career Network- Heldrich Center for Workforce Development 
• Philly’s Unemployment Writing Series 

Guaranteed Income 

• Center for Guaranteed Income Research- University of Pennsylvania
• PHL Housing+
• Philly Joy Bank
• Xiente Prosperity Project
• St James School Guaranteed Income Pilot

Community Media 

• Germantown Info Hub
• Voz Colectiva- 2PuntosPlatform
• The Philly Download
• PhillyCAM
• Termite TV Collective
• Scribe Video Center
• The Soapbox