As a kid growing up in North Philadelphia, Aniage Brown always dreamed of a career where he could help people. “I wanted to be a firefighter,” says Brown, now 26. “But telling that to your parents in Philadelphia? It definitely freaks them out.”
Brown graduated from One Bright Ray Community High School, then found himself in a series of dead-end jobs at companies like Burlington Coat Factory and Amazon. Every day, he’d wake up wanting to call in sick. “I reached a point when I was 21 where I realized that I couldn’t keep doing jobs like this for the rest of my life,” he says.
That’s when his brother encouraged him to go to Hopeworks, the Camden-based nonprofit that trains folks for careers in fields with a demand for employees, and then matches them with jobs. The organization, which is celebrating 25 years in 2025 and recently opened a new, 4,000-square foot facility in Kensington, first put itself on the regional workforce development map with tech programs, offering training in 21st-century skills like website development, drone services and more.
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