By Andrew Guckes, The Jewish Exponent
For more than a decade, Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Greater Philadelphia has helped provide young people in Philly with the skills and knowledge they need to enter the workforce as part of its Helping Hands Summer Work Readiness Experience program.
This year’s edition, held for a total of six weeks over the summer, was different — not in its intention or execution, but in its reach. JFCS was able to nearly triple the number of youths that took part in 2026.
Tanesha Gordon-Bethea, program manager of community prevention services at JFCS, said the usual number of 20 or 25 students taking part ballooned to more than 50 thanks to increased interest and reach.
“This year, the application went citywide, and we had over 160 applicants. And out of the 160 applicants, we were tasked with picking 52, and that was just due to grant requirements and restrictions on how many that will be covered under funding. So we had 52 that we took in, and we also retained all 52 students who enrolled through the entire six weeks this year,” Gordon-Bethea said.
That increased reach can be credited in part to JEVS Human Services, as well as other funders in the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services and the Hamilton Family Foundation.
The application for this year’s edition of the Helping Hands program was opened to students across the whole city, specifically to “priority populations,” Gordon-Bethea said: those in DHS, those aged 12 or 13 looking for employment and others.
The program helps students learn trades like carpentry, flooring, underwater welding and more. They earn OSHA certifications and attend workshops on things like resume writing, interviewing and self-advocacy. They also participate in service-learning opportunities with JFCS, such as sorting donated items that are a part of the organization’s Our Closet In Your Neighborhood program.
Denise Crosby, director of parenting and community prevention services, said the community partnerships JFCS has built have opened the door for more hands-on learning experiences, which is just what the students who have taken part in the program have been interested in.
“While we have had a really successful summer work ready experience for our youth in past years, we were receiving input from them and [they were] saying that they wanted to have additional opportunities for more hands-on exposures. Our previous efforts have really been more around building soft skills, and being able to obtain these additional partnerships has allowed us to be able to get the kids exactly what they have advocated for for themselves, which is those more hands-on vocational exposure experiences,” Crosby said.
Participants didn’t just learn skills in a hands-on way, they got to apply them, too. Students with Helping Hands worked in daycares, law offices, hair salons and barbershops, warehouses and more.
“This year we were able to provide off-site experiences where youth would be able to take what they’ve learned out of the classroom and apply it in the real world. So we had more than half of our students placed at businesses around the city,” Gordon-Bethea said. “So they were able to really apply what it is that they’ve learned.”
Jewish Family and Children’s Service is rooted in Jewish values. Those values drive its work, and Crosby said JFCS is proud to be helping the community in an even broader way than it has been able to in the past.
“Certainly the main [goal] is to enrich the lives of the people we serve, to build community, and also to be able to meet those concrete needs in the way of empowering ability, championing educational endeavors, and also … provide a platform in which our youth, in particular, can [reach the] vast opportunities that await them as they grow and learn about themselves,” she said.
For now, the program is in a great spot as the summer wraps up. Gordon-Bethea said the ultimate hope is that the Helping Hands Summer Work Readiness Experience program won’t be limited to certain months of the year. One day, she said, the goal is to make it a year-round endeavor.