The Strawberry Mansion area of Philadelphia is an area with the highest gun violence rate in the city. Many of our students live in this area and have experienced the impact of gun violence in their lives either through being witness to, or direct/indirect victims of gun violence.

The 11th grade students organized a day of social awareness around gun violence where they collaborated on ideas for the event via shared documents on Google classroom, agreed collaboratively on the events, then chose an event that they would then create and execute on their own for our May 6th Gun Violence Awareness Day. This project originated in Mrs. Anderson’s English class and was a collaboration between Mr. Perkins, Music Arts teacher and Chef McLean, Culinary Arts teacher.

Our Gun Violence Day of Awareness also included a student-led panel discussion in which our Music Arts students set up the sound system. The questions for the panel were developed collaboratively by our student moderators. Our panel guests were Ms. Blunt, (Community Activist), Mr. K. Johnson Alumni of Strawberry Mansion (EMT Firefighter), Sergeant Johnson Alumni of Strawberry Mansion, (Philadelphia Police Department) and Mr. Radee Hammett (Ceasefire Philadelphia).

The event ended with a Chat and Chew reception, catered by our 11th grade culinary students, along with lots of Black student joy.