You ask Mantua resident Gwen Morris about the current and future needs of her neighborhood, be prepared to listen.
As secretary of the Mantua Civic Association, she’s not only an engaged member of her community, but one who believes her particular part of Philadelphia has qualities and needs unlike many others. As such, she’s a vocal and adamant advocate.
And one thing she knows is that Mantua — along with neighboring Powelton Village — needed a place for residents to get the help they might need but not know how to find.
With the June 12 ribbon cutting at Drexel’s Dana and David Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships at 35th and Spring Garden streets, she believes that place might have arrived.
“This may be a center that can help bring a number of organizations together for the purpose of increasing participation all over the community,” she says.
The center was officially established in October 2012 with a $10 million gift from Dana and David Dornsife. Dana Dornsife earned her bachelor’s degree in business from Drexel and is the founder of the Lazarex Cancer Foundation. She serves as the foundation’s president and CEO.
David Dornsife is chairman of the Herrick Corp., the West Coast’s largest steel fabricator and contractor.
In conceiving of the center as a venue for urban outreach, Drexel hoped to model it after rural extension programs, offering free educational programs to the community.
The Dornsifes were inspired to make the gift because of the project’s “potential to serve as a model for urban outreach by universities nationwide,” said Dana Dornsife in announcing the contribution. “I’m proud of my alma mater and I look forward to seeing Drexel’s impact on the Powelton Village and Mantua neighborhoods.”
Just the center’s location, Morris notes, serves as a bridge between Mantua and Powelton, which have sometimes maintained an uneasy relationship over the years.
“It’s really ideal to bring the community together in a more neutral way,” she says. “This represents a cross-section of the community.”
In more tangible ways, Morris has already witnessed the benefits of the Dornsife Center’s computer center — noting how it helps many of the area’s older residents become computer literate — and community activities centered there.
Along with supporting the healthy eating, digital access and children’s science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs at the center, as a longtime resident and homeowner, Morris wants to see more focus on estate planning for older residents to allow for a smoother transfer of title to a homeowner’s heirs.
“We have an aging homeowner population who may or may not have children, who might not having a living spouse, who need to be educated about the importance of estate planning and what a will means to your survivors,” she says, noting that without proper planning, a home’s ownership often is disputed and is left to decay, which in turn brings down the entire block.
“The word is spreading about Dornsife as a resource,” she says.