How We Help
The Initiatives
Through their involvement in specially-designed service initiatives, Germination Project Fellows have the unique opportunity to work alongside leaders from a variety of prominent forward-thinking organizations, companies and academic institutions. Fellows gain invaluable experience working to identify, understand and develop strategies to key issues and problems that impact the lives of Philadelphians and the world at large.
Literacy Initiative
The next generation of our regions’ leaders needs strong academic skills to succeed, yet thousands of students lack the basic literacy skills necessary to graduate from high school. Recognizing that disparity, the Germination Project Fellows undertook a literacy initiative to launch the immediate action necessary to equip all Philadelphia students with the literacy tools they need to succeed. In partnership with Achieve Now, the Fellows developed literacy curriculum whose content and delivery method were research-based, data-driven and geared toward systematically moving students to grade level reading. Over the course of an academic year, the Fellows coached elementary school students to reading fluency, giving them the opportunity to pay it forward.
Healthcare Access Initiative
For too many low-income Philadelphians, the abundant medical service facilities and resources that this city boasts are out of reach, whether due to geographic and transportation barriers or prohibitions of cost. The Germination Project’s Healthcare Access Initiative is an ongoing, dynamic program of education, community awareness and intervention, through which Fellows are empowered by the institutional expertise of Penn Medicine, Temple University Hospital, Jefferson University, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHoP) and the American Heart Association (AHA) to engage directly with both top medical research faculty and Philadelphia’s most underserved communities. with local healthcare systems to establish a mobile health clinic (MHC) targeting Philadelphia’s most underserved communities. Since the launch of the Healthcare Access Initiative, Germination Project Fellows have partnered with AHA to provide life-saving CPR training to underserved communities around Philadelphia, and even traveled to Harrisburg to lobby the state legislature to make CPR training a high school graduation requirement. The Fellows have also worked with CHoP to develop targeted educational programs on healthy eating practices to combat childhood obesity, heart disease, and other serious diet-related health issues in Philadelphia. Individual Fellows have completed internships with leading medical researchers like Jefferson’s Dr. Lorraine Iacovetti, exploring groundbreaking treatments for neurodegenerative disease. And as Philadelphia emerges as a leading hub of med tech and applied medical artificial intelligence, Fellows will continue to work alongside the pioneers in the field, both learning and gaining experience they might soon integrate into their own professional careers.
