Leslie Benoliel, president, Entrepreneur WorksĪs the longtime president of Entrepreneur Works, Leslie Benoliel helps to provide important financial and technical assistance to small businesses in the City of Philadelphia, many of them owned by people of color.ĭuring the pandemic, when many of those businesses were unable to qualify for federal small business relief, the organization, under Benoliel’s leadership, offered loans and grants and restructured programming to address the COVID emergency restrictions. It continues to be his focus - he recently opened HealthSpark Foundation‘s “ Community of Practice” gathering with a screening and discussion of the film created by CCATE’s latest youth filmmaking class.Īrango also serves as a lecturer at the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. That meant access to arts and culture, and the opportunity to find and raise their voices. Ten years later, the success of the nonprofit dedicated to promoting education, art, culture among the Latinx community is - like its social services-centered Norristown neighbor, ACLAMO - a point of pride for Latinxs far beyond Montgomery County.Īrango trained as an anthropologist, and has worked as a journalist and a visual artist, but with CCATE he has said his intention was to ensure that Latinx children had access to what would drive academic success. He founded the Centro de Cultura, Arte, Trabajo y Educación (CCATE) in Norristown in 2010, in an effort to address that lack. Obed Arango, a descendant of the famed, early-20th century Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, moved to the Blue Bell area in the early 2000s and saw a rapidly growing Latinx immigrant population without organizations in place to help them thrive in their new home.
Obed Arango, founder and executive director, CCATE
Here, then, are 45 people, nominated by Generocity’s community members, shouted out to us directly by their peers and colleagues, and curated by the newsroom for our inaugural RealLIST Impact:ġ. And, yes, we can easily think of another 20 or so we’d like to add to the list - but they’ll have to keep until next year. Some of them are well-known and work for orgs whose names we all recognize others are less visible, flying under the radar even when their service is crucial to the communities they serve. We’ve always thought it would be great to do something similar at Generocity.įrom the largest foundation to the smallest grassroots org, we all know people who are working to solve problems, build solutions (sometimes from scratch and against all odds) and whose impact is very real.
One thing that hasn’t? People in the nonprofit sector have had outsized impact on the quality of life in the Greater Philadelphia area.įor years our sister site, Technical.ly, has compiled RealLISTs of the committed and influential folks in the tech community.