Originally published at Generocity

12 people of color leading the social impact charge in Philadelphia

(Courtesy photo)

5. Sheila Ireland — Workforce Development (May)

Ireland heads up University City District’s West Philadelphia Skills Initiative, a training program that connects unemployed West Philadelphians to local employers, and Green City Works, its landscaping employment program that employs a handful of returning citizens.

Both are meant to tackle the “devastating opportunity divide” in the area — home to both the job-rich Penn and Drexel, and to neighborhoods with higher rates of unemployment and poverty than the city averages, Ireland wrote in an email.

The nonprofit’s VP of workforce solutions wants to see more collaboration in the workforce development sector.

“I have a lot of respect for what Philadelphia’s workforce development providers have been able to accomplish,” Ireland said. “However, I would love to see more partnerships, more coordination of effort and a layered approach to providing services to the people we serve. Often we operate in a vacuum and our participants are unable to develop an appropriately sequenced chain of services to get their needs met effectively.”

— Julie Zeglen