All by Rachel Carp

The View From Here: Recent College Grads at Home

The View From Here: Recent College Grads at Home

Rachel Carp
Essay

As recent college graduates, my Strath Haven High School classmates and I had very different visions for 2020 than the pandemic-ravaged world we live in now. We pictured ourselves moving into new apartments in new cities, turning over new leaves and sipping the sweet nectar of adult independence. We pictured ourselves heading to Target for professional blazers and slacks to dress-to-impress at our real adult jobs. But, as things have turned out, our “new apartments” look awfully similar to our childhood bedrooms, and we can get by just fine without the slacks.

Cory Long: Making a Change in Chester

Cory Long: Making a Change in Chester

Rachel Carp

Inspired by his then 9-year-old daughter, and undergoing a spiritual awakening, Cory Long founded Team MAC — a grassroots mentoring program — in 2004. MAC stands for “making a change,” and over the last 16 years the program has evolved into an effective and far-reaching nonprofit, now called Making a Change Group (MAC Group). Its goal is to mitigate the challenges of growing up in a city with high rates of crime, poverty, unemployment, and underemployment. Through mentoring sessions that focus primarily on social and emotional learning, Long and his team aim to prove to Chester’s youth that they are more than a reflection of the troubled city where they’re growing up.