A dozen years ago, Dan Rhoton was walking down a street in North Philly when he heard someone calling: “Mr. Rhoton! Mr. Rhoton!”
He turned and saw Marcus, a student who’d graduated a year before from St. Gabriel’s Hall, a juvenile detention facility in Audubon where Rhoton had taught math for 15 years. Rhoton describes himself as looking like “a wimpy version of Harry Potter, with a squeaky voice,” but he’d connected with Marcus and his other challenging students. Now Marcus left a group of guys on a corner and came running up to say hello. Suddenly, the victory of seeing him finish high school seemed utterly hollow: A kid who’d done everything Rhoton had demanded of him, Marcus hadn’t found a job after graduating. He was a teenager with a rap sheet, and he was back on the streets — back, Rhoton saw immediately, to selling drugs in North Philly.
Which started Rhoton on something of a trek. First, he went back to St. Gabriel’s that day, a Saturday, and started pulling files on other recent graduates, calling them, messaging them on Facebook, digging into what they were up to now. Rhoton quickly discovered that there were a lot of Marcuses out there, that an alarming number of them were also jobless and getting into trouble once again.
View the full article here.
The nonprofit provides paid training, career support and real work to help 17- to-26-year-olds move into full-time jobs averaging $43K a year. In a bright room at Hopeworks Kensington, young adults sit at computers learning to code, build websites and prepare for careers many once thought were out of reach. Some come in unsure of […]
The Rutgers Camden Campus Center was transformed into a high-energy hub of professional development last week as Hopeworks hosted its third annual HOPE Summit. Headlined by Truist Bank, the event served as a critical bridge between young adults in the region and some of the most influential employers in the Greater Philadelphia area. The summit is a cornerstone of […]
Headlined by Truist Bank, the event removed access barriers to career readiness, connecting Camden, NJ – March 16, 2026 – On Thursday, March 12, Hopeworks, a social enterprise dedicated toempowering young adults to establish living wage careers, hosted its third annual HOPE Summit at theRutgers Camden Campus Center. Headlined by sponsor Truist Bank, the summit […]
