Check out this video to see the projects from our inaugural year in action, along with celebrity shout-outs for participating students.

Students in Ms. Luther's Senior Natural Resource Management class collaborated with North Light Community Center in Manayunk to replace 4 of their deteriorating wooded garden beds with garden beds that will last.

Vocatio’s students were motivated to assist seniors in the Young at Heart program. Through surveys, they discovered seniors' interest in candle making. Our project incorporated candle-making and shared lunches, fostering engagement and understanding. This initiative has sparked a continuous collaboration between our students and the local senior community.

During the Vietnam War, 64 heroes who attended Edison High School made the ultimate sacrifice. They fought for our country and gave their lives, and we want to honor them with a memorial bench. The bench has been placed by the garden for community members to use including Veterans who visit the school often and participate in a ceremony that honors our heroes every May.

Our students chose to do their community service at the PA S.P.C.A. The LINC students were educated about animal cruelty/neglect and learned how the S.P.C.A. staff rescues, provides medical care, rehabilitates, and prepares animals to be adopted into loving families. Also, our students toured the facility, made pet toys, and purchased and delivered donated supplies.

For this year-long service project, the Crefeld School has partnered with Bethesda Project (BP), a nonprofit that provides emergency shelter, housing, and support services to those experiencing homelessness. Art students are putting their passion to work for the service of others. Students are creating original artwork to decorate BP's 15 permanent, temporary, and emergency housing sites while also learning about homelessness in Philadelphia.

Strawberry Mansion High School has a bad reputation and can't seem to shake it. We want to change that, and in order to do that, we have to make sure the outside looks as beautiful as the inside. We are planting fruits and vegetables to create a sustainable community garden, planting flowers, and cleaning the front of the school, which will create a positive image.

Alexa Rhodes started Helping the Homeless Backpacks while attending our school in 2019. She has positively impacted the homeless community in Philadelphia by leveraging the resources from her 10th-grade Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership Capstone class. She secured donations from individuals and corporate partners and assembled thousands of backpacks during her time at SCH. Our project extended her work and delivered more backpacks to homeless Philadelphians.

We completed a two-part project to help our community. We purchased items to provide winter care bags for the houseless people in our community to keep them safe and warm in the winter. We also did a spring community clean-up to remove trash and hazardous items around our school to keep the area safe.

Students revitalized the overgrown, trash-filled Fisher Park Bandstand by cleaning, cutting vegetation, refurbishing the stone, creating a mosaic for installation, and installing a dog waste system near the bandstand to keep the park grass suitable for sitting and playing. Hopeful neighbors even asked for electricity! Working with local elementary students and community groups, we involved the neighborhood by offering free yard clean-ups in the spring.

High School Students from Simon Gratz created a coloring book focusing on the themes of Social Emotional Learning for elementary school students in their community. High schoolers saw a need for themes such as self-acceptance, self-care, and building positive relationships to be presented to the younger children in a way that was representative of their community, age-appropriate, and fun.

Our beautification is a set of benches for students waiting for the school bus. Often the students have to stand outside in all kinds of weather for a long time without somewhere to sit. We want our students to be comfortable while they wait to go home. Alana McNally and Chase Heard, students at Roxborough, took the lead on this project.

Our project was based on our strengths. As a performing arts school, every student participates in a major such as choir, theater, band, ballet, fine arts, or STEM. Our advanced theater students decided to take on this project and sing carols in Sister Cities Park to share their talents with Philadelphia.

"Giving Hope and Feeding Hearts" was a mobile distribution effort to provide food, hygiene products, blankets and clothing items to those in need. We focused on the 6 block radius around our school building to help those in our immediate community, and we found being mobile allowed us to distribute more than if we were in one spot.

Our student-led initiative, Brotherly Bags, donates bookbags to Philadephia's foster care youth. The bookbags include self-care products, school supplies, stuffed animals, flashlights, and blankets. This project aims to provide comfort and support, instilling a sense of care and belonging in these young individuals. By focusing on the needs of foster youth in Philadelphia, we promote well-being, security, and build a more compassionate community.

The Paul Robeson High School's Chapter of the National Honor Society had a toy drive. We collected toys for the entire K-2nd grades at Hamilton Elementary School. We gave them out and had a special morning with their students, including snacks and reading stories. Every student received a present. They all opened their presents together and held them up for everyone.

Beta members at Northeast High School hosted legacy projects, including a Winter Toy Drive for children at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children and a Spring Cleanup Day, both for the third year in a row. Our big projects and smaller ones through the year are designed to foster community and inclusivity within the larger school community and to give back to the local community.

The goal of the project was to promote the need for youth sports to combat the problematic issue of gun violence plaguing our community. The project embellished this idea by focusing on two aspects: How gun violence has hindered our community and how we have religiously normalized gun violence behaviors.

Insects are disappearing from our planet, about 80% decline in the last few decades and without them our food web collapses. We are increasing the native plant populations in our communities and around our school with a focus on pollinators. This will help our communities become more visually pleasing, cool them down, and help our ecosystems.

This project involved our High school Students creating a "community" in our neighborhood—a safe haven if you will. Students cooked and prepared an American-style meal for Ukrainian Refugee children new to American culture. Students then made educational resources and took bags with flashcards, books, washboards, and everyday needs. We created everlasting bonds. This was a three-day project.

Collaborating with Lutheran Settlement House ( a senior day center), our Digital Media Production project spotlighted seniors' lives via film and photography. For three months, students collaborated with seniors, documenting their rich experiences and cherished memories. The grand finale, The Beauty of Time Art Exhibit, on March 7th, showcased their poignant narratives through captivating visual storytelling.

Our Beautiful City Project created a hanging garden in front of Furness overtop of an already existing raised bed garden. This space connects students, teachers, and community members by growing nourishing vegetables, fruits, and herbs. This beautification project helps the community and students, who can take home the fresh produce. It's a place that nourishes both body and Soul.

November 18th, a week before the Thanksgiving holiday, Greater Hope provided Thanksgiving meals to our neighbors in hopes that no one went hungry during that time. The high school students purchased the food and graciously prepared the baskets for each family.

Our project aimed to create toiletry kits with essential items such as soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, a comb, lotion, etc., for community members who use local food pantries in the Germantown Community. The kits are essential items for those on the go or those with few resources and a limited income.

Breathing life into Kensington, our project converted barren and hazardous lots into vibrant community gardens, addressing food insecurity and fostering safety. With the dedication of over 40 Central students and Klean Kensington teens, we sculpted havens of hope—places for rejuvenation, learning, and unity. Offering fresh produce, workshops, and recreation, our endeavor empowered residents, leaving an enduring mark on the community's vitality.

Philly Literacy Mentor Project empowers and prepares eighth—and ninth-grade students, known as Literacy Mentors, to teach early elementary students literacy lessons. Sankofa Freedom Academy's literacy mentors created a curriculum and trained other literacy mentors from four Philadelphia schools to become educators at their school's Drop Everything and Read Day Event.

Our Community Service Club has a triad of projects aimed to help better connect and revitalize the Nicetown neighborhood of North Philadelphia. Our team cleans up trash around the Broad and Erie intersection. We also built a community library for students in the area, and we have constructed a community garden/meeting space for local events. Our upperclassmen mentor younger students to ensure these projects flourish.

The DreamEscape Library is a student-run library at Kensington Health Sciences Academy, equipped with a mobile Magic cart, website, and online catalog. It supplies over 400 (and counting!) teen-specific books that aim to improve students' literacy and love for reading.

Living in Philadelphia, we have always been aware of those in need. To provide for our community, we collaborated with a local nonprofit ministry. This volunteer opportunity has expanded beyond the National Honor Society and is now available to every FLC student.

The Kindness Club at First Philadelphia Preparatory Charter School is always looking for ways to make the world a better place. Developing pollinator gardens within our community offers the potential to enhance the biodiversity of our ecosystem, promote sustainability, and provide educational opportunities.

This project is an interactive workshop for current 8th graders to guide them on the expectations of high school. Current high schoolers will share their experiences to help the 8th graders thrive in a high school setting and adjust to their new environments and surroundings during this transitional period. Participants will enjoy interactive activities to help them focus on individual goals and accomplishments.

The Cardiac Helpers of Philadelphia are a group of students from Boys' Latin of Philadelphia High School who serve the community by providing Hands-Only CPR training and education about cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the city. The students travel to priority neighborhoods and provide fun and engaging HOCPR training in schools and at community events to students and staff across the city.

The students at Benjamin Franklin High School are passionate about helping our community. We collected feminine products and hygiene care to donate to a shelter in our community. We collected shirts, pants, socks, underwear, pads, tampons, wipes, etc. We learned about Pink Tax and discussed the importance of women's rights to equal health care.

Grubs for Good is a student-ran operation that explores giving back to the community through agriculture. By reducing food waste through composting and community gardening, Grubs for Good is also minimizing food insecurity through our partnership with the nonprofit organization, Caring for Friends.

Collaboration between the Palumbo Medical Club, school nurse, Palumbo Recreation Center, and Palumbo Media Club to provide first aid kits and basic training to over 50 students at the Palumbo Recreation after-school program that serves the K-5 community in South Philadelphia. We put the meaning back in the community by tapping into ours to make this happen!

Lincoln C.A.R.E.S. is a school collaborative (students/staff) that has three parts. Lincoln’s Community Pantry provides access to basic necessities (toiletries, food, clothing, etc) for students and our surrounding community on a weekly basis. Lincoln’s Loving Lounge offers family workshops on healthy eating and family resources. And Lincoln’s Loving Lockers provides “support hubs” of clothing, hygiene bags, and snack packs for our 280+ students experiencing housing insecurity.