HEART OF KENSINGTON
A national health crisis hits a Philadelphia neighborhood hard, and calls for a new plan
Once the largest textile district in the world, the Heart of Kensington community helped Philadelphia earn the moniker “Workshop of the World.” In the 1950’s factories started closing, jobs began disappearing and the neighborhood was sent into a long decline that still reverberates today through sustained poverty and unemployment. In recent years the growing opioid epidemic has exacerbated Kensington’s long standing problems. Last year, Philadelphia’s overdose rate was three times that of the gun homicide rate in Chicago—and Kensington is at the epicenter of this crisis in Philadelphia. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of this public health crisis and its impact on the neighborhood.
Kensington has serious, deeply-rooted and multi-dimensional challenges. For each of these challenges, there are also opportunities - assets upon which we can build and partnerships we can strengthen. Leveraging these assets, however, requires an approach that identifies ways to begin to heal the community from the trauma it has long experienced.
A framework for trauma informed community development.
Trauma refers to extreme stress that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope. It can be a single event, a series of events, or a chronic condition such as childhood neglect or domestic violence. It is also produced by structural violence, such as segregation, food and housing insecurity, and poverty, which are systemic problems faced by millions of children and adults. Trauma affects individuals, families, and communities by disrupting healthy development, adversely affecting relationships, and contributing to mental health issues including substance abuse, domestic violence, and child abuse.
In recent years, there has been a shift from understanding trauma solely at the individual level to also include collective trauma. Community trauma is not just the aggregate of individuals in a neighborhood who have experienced trauma from exposures to violence. There are manifestations, or symptoms, of community trauma at the community level. The symptoms of community trauma are present in the socio-cultural, economic and the physical/ built environments. A community can be described as having several interrelated components: the social-cultural environment (the people); the physical/built environment (the place), including infrastructure and public services; and the opportunities afforded in the economic and educational environment which is made up of the local economy and educational institutions (equitable opportunity)
Our approach
Rather than focusing on how trauma can disrupt a person’s life, we chose a strengths-based approach, which focuses on how communities can come together to become safer, healthier, and more resilient. Resilience is the capacity to overcome adversity, to believe that some better future might exist, even when no other possibilities are immediately apparent.
Participatory planning was central to the process where we engaged early and often, forged partnerships and built an atmosphere of trust. In the plan, the goals, strategies and tactics are designed to improve social connection, promote civic engagement and increase access to resources. Heart of Kensington Collective Impact 2022 represents a call to action and an opportunity for those who live, work, worship, play, and learn here to imagine and work towards a better future.
To build a collective response to the many challenges faced, a ground-up approach is needed, formulated and led by the community and its residents. The plan includes the identification of "focus zones" to help target action and community involvement.
“The Heart of Kensington is a safe, healthy and clean community. Neighbors feel connected to one another, take shared responsibility for the neighborhood, feel empowered to make change in their environment and envision a positive future for themselves and their children.”
