Fun with GIS 312: Special Achievement in GIS: Hopeworks
What value is recognition? For the schools, districts, states, and organizations that have earned a "Special Achievement in GIS" award from Esri as part of our annual User Conference, it has meant affirmation. Users have done what people who know GIS deem admirable. Not just working hard, but leading the way … blazing a trail … making a difference. Esri teams get to nominate one organization per year, so the "SAG Award," as it is lovingly called, means a lot.
When you see your name in lights, and look around at thousands of GIS professionals who understand hard work, have done the hours of study, and have given always a measure of extra effort, there is just a moment of humble exhilaration … but it morphs quickly into inspiration … for the next improvement, around the next project, to overcome the next challenge. And, for the 2022 SAG Awardee for Schools, the next life to change.
Hopeworks is a remarkable organization in Camden, New Jersey, which is a community with more needs and hurdles than opportunities and resources. Hopeworks helps students build skills, adjust mindsets, acquire knowledge, discover capacity. The staff teaches, supports, expects, documents, challenges, encourages, listens, and shares.
"With a focus on skill development, real-world job experience, and trauma-informed care, Hopeworks propels young adults into long-term living wage careers that put them on the path for healing and financial stability." - the Hopeworks webpage
Hopeworks helps young people grow. Part of their opportunity is GIS. Students … young adults … interns … get exposed to GIS and can choose to focus on it, then grow their own talents and benefit the community at the same time. In 2002, a handful of Hopeworks students completed in four months what no collection of adults had been able to accomplish, ever: building a digital parcel map of the city, which opens up all manner of community benefits. The 2003 Esri User Conference crowd witnessed their story. Twenty years later, the Hopeworks GIS team has expanded. The technology is worlds different, the youth are more numerous, the challenges have multiplied, but the mindset remains: galvanize the talent, energy, and capacity of youth, captivate them with the power of GIS and other technologies, mix in life skills, teamwork, responsibility, and help them grow toward interviews, internships, jobs, careers, and building the community.
Oh … and, in the process, make sure the GIS work is absolutely rock solid … in data creation, data management, analysis, presentation. As Hopeworks youth get good and can start to see a future for themselves, they in turn also need to help teach newcomers, monitor them, and help them get good too. Good enough to help Hopeworks earn a Special Achievement Award for 2022. The individuals, the team, the organization, and the story are truly inspiring!
