On Saturday night at the beautiful sprawling property that is “The Lighthouse” in North Philadelphia; students, faculty, and education advocates gathered for We Love Philly’s 3rd Annual Casino Night Gala. We Love Philly itself is a unique academic alternative to the traditional high school experience, focused on working with students to prepare them for life after the classroom and oftentimes helping them support their families in the process.
“For the last 4-5 months our young people in collaboration with our staff have been planning this event,” the founder of We Love Philly Carlos Aponte explains. “This is a collaboration between the people we serve and our staff to raise money for programming. We have State certified pre-apprenticeship programs in digital marketing and cyber security and apprenticeship programs in digital marketing. So this whole event was actually built into the curriculum for our apprentices and this is the result.”
More than one hundred attendees were dressed to the nines as local musicians performed and dealers led games like roulette, blackjack, and hold em. There was an impressive silent auction inventory with nearly a dozen highly-valuable pieces of Philadelphia sports memorabilia.
The students were in charge of a five thousand dollar budget for the event, with a goal of raising twenty-thousand dollars and according to Aponte before the event had even started We Love Philly was almost at their goal.
What will be done with the money? “This money goes directly into our young people’s pockets, through our programs, our young people get paid an hourly wage,” Aponte explains. “In about a year we serve about 100 pre-apprentices and we put close to $400,000 in their pockets through our programs.”
Students who want to focus on photography took pictures at the event, students worked the door, and after the “casino” closes students will be in charge of creating videos and content of the event.
“We Love Philly has about a 95% high school graduation rate, we target young people in schools all around the city who are in danger of not graduating. About 85% of our young people are doing something after they graduate high school, either entering our apprentice-ship programs, going to college, continuing some workforce development program.”
Aponte and We Love Philly’s approach to education is unique, there is a focus on the student’s lives beyond the classroom and an emphasis on social-emotional development that cab help young people well into adulthood. There are currently 40 young people enrolled in We Love Philly’s pre-apprenticeship programs, and five full-time apprentices.
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