Philadelphia Community Empowerment Through Soccer
Community Advancement Through Soccer
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Soccer can be crucial to laying the foundation of a positive future and should be accessible to all people without any regard to socio-economic status. The communities we serve too often face barriers that hinder their participation in soccer, including fees, limited opportunities, lack of facilities, transportation, and discrimination. Knowing this, we eliminate barriers to participation by going to where youth already are and make all our programs either free or pay-what-you-can. We also: *Bring together youth from all backgrounds and incorporate academic enrichment, health & nutrition education, mentorship, and violence prevention into all our programs. *Grow our own coaches, mentors, and leaders from our teens, young adults, and parents. *Advocate for our youth and families and we work to connect them to community resources and opportunities. In all we do, we work to maximize the positive impact we have on the lives of our players, their families, and the community.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Soccer Athletes Value Education (SAVE)
Our SAVE program pursues every opportunity to encourage and support our players to achieve their full potential in life. Read more to see the many ways we incorporate SAVE into all we do!
*During Practices:
We check in with players about their school day as part of the Soccer For Success curriculum. Our players know that academics come first!
*Before and After Games:
We engage players at our SAVE area with a variety of educational activities, led by experienced educators and teens who aspire to be teachers.
*Books For All!:
We have free books for players and parents to take home. For many of our children, the books we give them are the only ones they have. At our end of season celebration, we go all out with new and used books for all!
After-School Programs
We partner with schools, recreation centers, community organizations, and service providers to run free-of-charge after-school soccer programs. We utilize the U.S. Soccer Foundation’s Soccer for Success® curriculum that uses soccer as a tool to address children's health issues and behavior issues, while promoting healthy lifestyles in urban underserved communities.
Children in our after-school programs get access to our recreational and competitive teams. They get free, high-quality books.
Teen Leadership Initiative
Kensington Soccer Club has designed the Teen Leadership Initiative program to offer teens an opportunity to build job skills and leadership while lifting the whole community. By investing in our teens as coaches, we provide positive role models for our younger children, we create a community atmosphere that values and celebrates lifting each other up instead of tearing each other down, and we develop our own expert coaches and mentors who will continue as coaches and community leaders long after graduating high school.
Competitive Travel Soccer
We believe that competitive soccer opportunities should be inclusive. For those children who want to challenge themselves and are ready for the competition, we have travel teams from u8 to u19 for boys and girls. We rely on donations and lots of volunteer time and energy to make sure no child is ever excluded. Our "pay what you can" system means each family decides what they're able to contribute with full scholarships for anyone who needs it. We also often provide transportation for children who need it.
Community Festival Soccer Clinics
We want to support and be a part of everything positive that's happening in the community. We also want every child to have a chance to play soccer and feel welcome to join our teams. So our teen and young adult interns and our adult volunteers run fun, open soccer clinics at every community event possible. With your support, we can reach even more events and give away more balls and shirts to children so they feel a part of our community.
Resources For Our Youth and Families
We work to provide or connect our youth and families with resources and opportunities whenever possible.
Youth Recreational Soccer
We offer large fall and spring recreational programs for neighborhood children, who are invited to learn soccer basics with an ultimate goal of providing safe spaces and increased exercise. Our “pay what you can” policy for all our youth programs means that they are affordable for everyone.
In addition to our fall and spring programs, we host winter recreational programs at several venues in the neighborhoods we serve. Children get free, high-quality books as part of our Soccer Athletes Value Education program.
Young adult soccer
Our older teen and young adult league teams offer multiple competitive levels of play; many also focus strongly on conflict resolution and violence prevention.
We have experienced coaches who are committed to offering a variety of levels of competition and adjust training and practices to those levels.
We also have a teen indoor soccer league that we run ourselves, in the winter. And we sponsored several soccer tournaments and participated in several more.
Where we work
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Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Philadelphia Community Empowerment Through Soccer
Board of directorsas of 02/15/2024
Jennifer Nieves
Chris Munden
David Hicks
Joe Valentin
Yadelies Prieto
Carly Najera
Felicia Bryant-Dawson
Jana Curtis
Zachary Wallace
Kristen “Shilo” Shalosky
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
Equity strategies
Last updated: 10/29/2020GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.