Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY)
Shelly Yanoff, Executive Director
Karen Young, Public Affairs Coordinator
Bonnie Raines, Campaign for Kids Coordinator
7 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, Pa. 19103
(215) 563-5848
(215) 563-9442 fax
E-mail: ppccy@aol.com

An estimated 162,000 children between the ages of 6 and 12 live in Philadelphia, and 89,000 of them -- well over half -- have no adult at home after school. Even when school, church and civic after-school programs and other family members are taken into account, it’s estimated that at least 50,000 of those youngsters don’t have a safe alternative to the streets until Mom comes home.

As Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth points out in the compelling advocacy material for its innovative Campaign for Kids: “When kids are left alone after school, bad things can happen.”

This small but effective city-based organization has been watching out for the welfare of Philly’s kids since 1980, when it emerged from a study by the city’s Health and Welfare Council, which saw a need for a central body to advocate for children across a range of issues such as schools, foster care, health and juvenile justice. PCCY functions somewhat like a Children’s Defense Fund on a local level, Shelly Yanoff says; “We do studies about children’s issues, report our findings, and ‘speak truth to power on behalf of kids.’ ”

PCCY has consistently sought to frame children’s issues in ways that the public can easily understand, “putting a face on the numbers” while at the same time keeping track of the numbers in a competent, thorough fashion. “We look at problems, do studies, make recommendations, and try to get our recommendations implemented,” she said. The focus is primarily on the city of Philadelphia and its local government, although PCCY does get involved to some extent in advocacy at the state level, and, in coalition with other groups that take the lead, at the federal policy level.

One of PCCY’s first efforts focused on homeless children, a literally “invisible” population. By visiting local shelters where children were housed, the organization drew public attention to a population that most Philadelphians didn’t know existed, and made substantial strides toward improving the public schools’ handling of homeless pupils and their families. At the state level, early projects focused on ensuring increased and consistent funding for child-welfare programs.

Most of PCCY’s work, as stated, takes the form of studies, reports and advocacy. However, it has taken on two direct-service projects:

The first of these, Child Health Watch, establishes PCCY as an advocate for childrens’ health care, providing information and support to community organizations working on this issue. Through extensive publicity and education campaigns, PCCY works to reverse a drop in the numbers of youngsters receiving quality health care in Philadelphia and ensuring that families eligible for health-care assistance get it ... a surprising number of children lack health care simply because their families don’t realize that help is available.

PCCY’s second direct-service program, the Campaign for Kids, began three years ago when the organization consciously asked, “Is there an issue that can make a real difference in kids’ lives, one that people can see and recognize as a need for everyone (not just poor people)? The answer was clear: After-school care.

Beginning, as usual, with a comprehensive and thorough study, PCCY came up with the figures cited above: 89,000 youngsters of elementary-school age have no adult at home after school, and a significant majority of them have no place to go but the streets. The idea behind Campaign for Kids is not to raise a lot of money but to seek change by involving the community widely. “What we wanted to do was get people looking around in their own community,” Yanoff said, “looking at what there was for kids to do after school. We’re not looking for a major funding stream to plop services all over; we wanted the community to look and say, ‘We need this, so what can we do to start solving the problem?’ ”

The approach has included a lot of excellent information and promotional material, from posters (“When kids are left alone after school, bad things can happen”) to studies and reports outlining the problem in clear, compelling statistics (“Home Alone, After-School Care in Philadelphia”); to significant policy studies aimed at policy makers and opinion leaders (“Watching Out for Children in Changing Times”) and a powerful brochure that shows both the faces and the numbers of children in poverty (“The Bottom Line Is ... Children”).

In addition to the publicity and advocacy piece, moreover, the Campaign for Kids works directly with community organizations throughout Philadelphia, in its affluent neighborhoods as well as its poor ones, distributing a little money (from a $40,000 pool) and a lot of advice and technical assistance to encourage neighborhood groups to identify potential sites for afterschool programs, be they schools, churches, civic clubs or community centers, muster volunteers to staff them, arrange for food through USDA programs, and thus to get kids off the streets. Said Karen Young, PCCY’s public-affairs expert, “We need to communicate that it’s a problem, that it’s everybody’s problem, and that we can DO something about it.”

The program’s goal is to add after-school opportunities for 1,000 more youngsters every year; and so far, they’ve been keeping up with that challenge. They’ve succeeded in persuading city government to add $700,000 to the new city budget for the Department of Recreation to develop after-school programs, and they’ve got charming, inspiring anecdotes coming in from all over town, such as the older gentleman who’s volunteered to start chess clubs for youngsters at after-school centers, a program that’s gaining vast popularity. They’re also pushing “Play Streets,” a summer program in which entire city blocks are closed to traffic during the day, with educational and recreational programs and nutritious USDA meals brought in.

The Campaign for Kids has a staff of 2 (out of PCCY’s total staff of 13) and a budget of $200,000 (out of PCCY’s $765,000); the organization works out of modern offices in the downtown office building of Metro United Way.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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