As the Mayor’s Office of Civic Engagement and Volunteer Service (MOCEVS) dives into work for the year ahead, we want to take a moment and reflect on what we achieved, together, in 2022. Our Annual Report highlights how our team focused on centering equity in our work, how we connected with our communities, how we engaged and served our AmeriCorps members, and how we trained our partners.

Over the past year, our team continued to prioritize removing barriers and promoting active civic and volunteer participation among Philadelphians. We are proud to share a summary of these efforts:

  • Our 70 Serve Philadelphia VISTA Corps members who served in 2022 worked across 30 City departments on capacity-building projects focused on food security, workforce development, access to healthcare, education, access to housing, and access to benefits.
  • Our Community Resource Corps AmeriCorps members completed their first cohort, in which they served 22,767 hours and engaged over 3,000 residents across Philadelphia.
    MOCEVS helped create the Equitable Community Engagement Toolkit, a tool that used community input to create a standard of practice for engaging communities while centering equity, accessibility, and trauma-informed care.
  • MOCEVS launched the AmeriCorps Financial Empowerment Services designed to provide long-term member support to all Philadelphia-based AmeriCorps members. This includes an Assistance Fund, which was created to support members experiencing unexpected challenges that would threaten their ability to remain in service.
  • We continued to expand the Mayor’s Volunteer portal, supporting over 2,000 Philadelphians connect with local volunteer opportunities.
  • We trained over 240 community leaders through our Civic Engagement Academy program and over 250 volunteer managing staff through our Volunteer Support Program.
  • And we supported 33 City departments and over 540 City staff with data and outreach topics training.

Read the full MOCEVS 2022 Annual Report here.

 

A dedication to our friend and colleague, Justin.

MOCEVS’ 2022 Annual Report is dedicated to our colleague and friend, Justin A. McCleary (May 21, 1985 – December 14, 2022).

Justin was a special person with whom we had the pleasure of working alongside while he served as the Outreach and Recruitment Coordinator for the Serve Philadelphia VISTA Program in our office.

In 2023, we will continue to honor the work Justin carried forward and continue to serve our AmeriCorps members, partners, and community members with sincerity and a focus on equity and trauma-informed care.

To honor Justin’s commitment to reducing barriers and increasing access to national service, we created the Justin McCleary Memorial Fund. Donations to this fund will go directly towards the AmeriCorps Financial Assistance Fund to provide emergency financial support to Serve Philadelphia VISTA members.

You can donate to the Justin McCleary Memorial Fund here.