Called Philly Fellows, it placed service-minded fresh graduates with local nonprofit organizations, and it has done a fine job of keeping that talent on hand: Half of its 86 alums still work in the city, and one - Justin Ennis - has risen to be executive director of the agency where he began, the After School Activities Partnerships.
At first, it wasn't so easy to persuade 20-somethings who'd come to Philadelphia for college to consider staying in town and working for a salary that puts them just above the poverty level.
Now the Philly Fellows has its pick of candidates.
So many collegians were looking to stay in Philadelphia last year, for pay of just over $12,000, that the organization had to refine the way it was recruiting. "We were getting too many kids who were just looking for something to do," cofounder Tim Ifill said. The latest batch of 16 fellows was culled from 136 applications.
Adrienne Webb is typical of those the program prizes, a Bryn Mawr grad from Pittsburgh who completed three internships in the area before starting in July as a Philly Fellow. Twice, she worked with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. And she helped poor people in Norristown fill out their tax forms.
Jobs did not come knocking for her peers this spring. "Quite a few students I know who graduated went straight home and didn't have a job waiting. Some went to grad school. A very small group went into the workforce."
Most of the fellows I spoke with studied liberal arts at places like Penn, Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford. Rob Hanlon studied accounting at Villanova.
Becoming a fellow carried some risk - a lot of his friends had lined up jobs that paid much better.
"I wanted to figure out how to use my business sense to help other people," the San Diego native says. He's assisting small businesses with the Fairmount Community Development Corp.
