Workforce Development

The West Philadelphia Skills Initiative

MORE THAN TEN YEARS after its formation, our West Philadelphia Skills Initiative (WPSI) workforce development subsidiary continues to impact the lives of Philadelphia residents seeking quality employment, with an average starting wage for program graduates of $18.20, our highest yet. We renewed partnerships with West Philadelphia anchors Penn Medicine and CHOP, extended beyond our borders to collaborate again with SEPTA and Philly Shipyard, Inc, and developed new training partnerships with Tasty Baking and an exciting new collaboration with the Wistar Institute, PIDC’s Navy Yard, and Iovance Biotherapeutics, and others to train residents for roles as biomedical technicians. The Iovance job training program earned a Workforce Champion award from BioBuzz for working to meet the talent needs in the growing cell and gene therapy sector. In October of 2022, we marked ten years of WPSI with an anniversary celebration featuring past leaders, awards given to alumni, and a short film highlighting the career and life trajectories of three program graduates. Since WPSI’s formation in 2011, our career-driven program has served over 1,600 local residents, connecting talented individuals to high-quality opportunities with the city’s premier employers for total combined earnings of nearly $90 million.

Green City Works

GREEN CITY WORKS (GCW) is UCD’s landscaping social enterprise, launched to create quality jobs for community residents. GCW’s 15 employees earn an average wage of more than $19, receive full benefits, and are retained year-round. Our portfolio includes over 6 million square feet of green space throughout Philadelphia, and we provide landscaping, construction, mowing, and other services to over 35 Philadelphia institutions and businesses. In 2022, GCW continued their work to install cooling infrastructure in Philadelphia’s Hunting Park neighborhood, one of the city’s warmest neighborhoods. We partnered with the Enterprise Center and Wells Fargo on a beautification project on the 52 nd Street corridor in advance of this year’s Juneteenth parade, installing 70 brightly colored planters from Market Street south to Malcolm X Park, plus a thorough cleanup of the park. We also added new parks and public spaces to our portfolio, including South Philadelphia’s FDR Park, and the Woodlands. Unlike many social ventures launched with the mission of providing job opportunities for individuals who have faced barriers to employment, Green City Works has been on a rapid growth trajectory, which we believe points to the potential for additional enterprises fueled by anchor institution spending.