About

Kensington Voice is a community hub and newsroom serving the heart of Kensington in North Philadelphia. The stories we cover and events we attend generally take place between Cecil B. Moore Avenue and Tioga Street and between 6th Street and Aramingo Avenue. This includes the neighborhoods Fairhill, Harrowgate, Norris Square, and part of Port Richmond.

Miss Awilda’s Media Learning Lab at Kensington Voice is a public lab with iMac and MacBook computers, creative storytelling software, internet, and free printing. The media lab opened in late October 2022.

Since 2019, our newsroom has covered community events, programs, resources, and issues. We publish our bilingual content in English and Spanish through our website and monthly print newspaper. We deliver our monthly newspaper to community organizations for free each month. Sign up here.

Kensington Voice operates as a nonprofit organization under the fiscal sponsorship of the Federation of Neighborhood Centers (EIN: 23-1630073). 

Mission

At Kensington Voice, we believe that no person deserves to be left behind but that every person has a voice to change the systems that leave them there. We also believe the best way to promote system-wide change is by prioritizing the needs of individuals. 

Through everything we do, we aim to engage the people we serve in opportunities to exercise their voices. We do this to positively impact their attitudes and emotions, relationships, organizations, communities, and society. 

Our programs amplify individual experiences, needs, and perspectives, with an eternal commitment to anti-oppressive narrative ownership. Sometimes they take shape as first-person creative writing and photo voice projects, for which community members are compensated. Other times, they meet information needs, like Spanish language public health updates or resource guides about how and where to access resources that promote health and safety. We also offer public space for media making for adults and youth five days a week.

These programs, among others, reflect our overall goal to provide an equitable representation of our communities in media and promote self-actualization for community members, regardless of their circumstances.

Goals

We do our part to make a positive impact on the most foundational level of society — the individual. By positively impacting people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, we expect to contribute to systemic change that: 

• Decreases emotional pain (on the individual level)
• Decreases social isolation (on the relational level)
• Increases community cohesion (on the community level) 
• Increases social power (on the societal level) 

While policy change that results from something we publish is nice to have, when we make a positive impact on the quality of one individual’s life, we consider our mission accomplished.

Funding

Since our launch in 2019, we have received funding and other resources from the following sources: 

• The COVID-19 Prevention & Response Fund
• The COVID-19 Vaccine Outreach Grant Program
• Independence Public Media Foundation
• Kensington Community Resilience Fund
• Klein College of Media and Communication
• Lenfest Institute
• Public Health Management Corporation
• Resolve Philadelphia
• Scattergood Foundation

Office

3237 Amber Street, Unit 4-3-A, Philadelphia, PA 19134

Contact

Our business hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., except on federal holidays.

Phone: 215-346-6649
Email: editors@kensingtonvoice.com