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Hopeworks program has helped Camden youth succeed for 15 years

It took Mark Ford four tries to finish high school in Camden in 2002. His parents were drug users, and he lived with his aunt for much of his childhood. He was expelled once and dropped out twice before he managed to graduate.

It took Mark Ford four tries to finish high school in Camden in 2002. His parents were drug users, and he lived with his aunt for much of his childhood. He was expelled once and dropped out twice before he managed to graduate.

His job right out of high school, stocking shelves at the local Pathmark supermarket, often gave him just 12 hours of work a week, and paychecks amounting to less than $50. His grandfather took him to Hopeworks 'N Camden, then a relatively new nonprofit serving teens and young adults by training them in computer skills and information technology and preparing them for higher education.

Thirteen years later, Ford owns the EZO Technology Group, a Philadelphia company he started in college. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and three children. He made it, he said, thanks largely to Hopeworks.

"It's fair to say I wouldn't be where I am now," said Ford, 31.

He was one of many who gathered Friday for a party in Camden's Kroc Community Center to talk about their successes, and to celebrate 15 years since Hopeworks started in Camden.

The Rev. Jeff Putthoff, the group's founder and executive director, said he never measured the program's impact with milestones. He thinks about the people they helped and the people they couldn't reach.

"Fifteen years in Camden is a long time," he said in an interview last week. "Fifteen years is a long time in a world that suffers greatly. . . . There's an immediacy here that is real. And that hasn't changed in 15 years."

Based in North Camden, Hopeworks now assists about 300 city kids a year, ages 14 to 23, with high-tech job training and other programs. It has a small residential home and also works with other local organizations on treating the trauma associated with poverty, violence, and other social problems Camden residents face.

From the beginning, Hopeworks has produced successes: Former students now hold jobs working for organizations that include Google.

But three years ago, Putthoff and others leading Hopeworks started talking about what they could do better. The programs were functioning well, and kids who went by the program's rules were flourishing. But they questioned whether they could be doing more to help those who showed up late, mouthed off, or sabotaged potential job opportunities.

Many of the young people who come to Hopeworks are homeless, severely neglected, or have suffered violence and abuse, said Dan Rhoton, chief impact director. A teenager who can't get to training on time may be homeless and crashing on a cousin's couch, for example, and in return has agreed to take the cousin's child to school in the mornings. A young woman who responds aggressively to polite greetings from men may be a victim of sexual abuse seeking to protect herself from unwanted attention.

"There were so many people we were not helping," Rhoton said. "We took stock of ourselves and we realized we needed to be asking those kids, why were they late? Why were they being rude? The problem was, they've developed patterns that help them survive, but patterns that may stop them from thriving."

Once the staff at Hopeworks started paying close attention to those learned behaviors, Putthoff said, they saw kids responding differently, opening up and talking about their struggles.

"When we look at the amount of stress and work it takes to get some of our youth to our door, it's courageous," he said. "It's heroic. And we don't always say it that way. We say, 'It would be good if you stayed in school.' We don't always recognize the depth of their challenges."

For Ford, the trouble was focusing on school when he had little to no family support and an unstable home. But he excelled in Web development courses, he said, and Putthoff helped him apply to college.

After graduating from Peirce College, Ford worked in IT support and accounting before making his company his full-time job five years ago. He now has three full-time employees working on IT consulting, telecom services, and security.

"In the beginning, we were just a computer repair company," Ford said. "And we just kept adding on to it."