Mayor Hepkins’ Launches Project “You’re Worthy” To Aid Yeadon/Southwest Philly Residents by Van Stone frontpagenews1@yahoo.com (267) 293-9201

Mayor Hepkins’ Launches Project “You’re Worthy” To Aid Yeadon/Southwest Philly Residents by Van Stone frontpagenews1@yahoo.com (267) 293-9201   

Just this week, Mayor Rohan K. Hepkins noticed several types of nuisance crimes happening along the Church Lane downtown Yeadon Borough business strip southwest between Baltimore Avenue, through Whitby Avenue to 63^rd and Cobbs Creek Parkway.   What he noticed was that there were many youths loitering for what appeared to be drug selling crimes, bullying behaviors towards traveling immigrants, and open bottle alcohol drinking disturbing business owners of shops and stores, to name a few.

Therefore Mayor Hepkins is introducing a two year experiment that would work as a Borough wide platform base that he has called the “You’re Worthy Project” to mobilize improved quality of life in Southwest Yeadon and with Southwest and West Philadelphia.  Service will once again be on the broad shoulders of a community and city government partnership program. And the program will be free. “Of course the project may expand deeper in both Delco and Philly if full potential is reached,” says the mayor.

The free programs consist of a “Mayor Letter of Invitation” program. The mayor will send a letter. The special letter will be meant as a gift from Mayor Hepkins — the mayor known for his conservative, sturdy  empowerment ideas— for all  concerned citizens throughout the Delaware and Philadelphia county areas. Mayor Hepkins, who is of Jamaican ancestry, will invite organizations and/or individuals having each invitee’s home countries and native neighboring volunteering experiences and career linkages to Yeadon Borough Hall having both Yeadon and the City of Philadelphia priorities in mind.

Mayor Rohan has created the You’re Worthy Project as an experimental Yeadon Borough government service program.  The project for action in Delaware County and the Philadelphia County areas is to promote equitable, participatory, and sustainable self-help development through volunteering means. The project welcomes volunteering from all citizens who are of both American-immigration status and native Philadelphian and Delaware County status.  

The idea is to award both Yeadon Borough and Southwest and West City of Philadelphia interested residents as well as others of Philadelphia County and Delaware County with support highlighting city nuisance crimes, crime reduction, housing, employment, public schools concerns, and even clean-ups. Black-Native Americans, African Americans, and American -Immigrants (from Caribbean, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, to China, Asia, and African Countries, etc.) will meet with the Mayor Hepkins to discuss the need to unite awareness and bridge the gap between suburbs and inner city life.

Such partnerships between mayor of cites and professional organizations and professional individuals are hardly new on the West coast, but have a new beginning, sort of, in recent years with this mayor of Yeadon Borough. 

Mayor Hepkins has been increasingly eager to find new positive reception of public safety and immigrant relations channels for his You’re Worthy project.   Hepkins has high hopes of gaining new sustainable residents for what he now considers “Big Yeadon,” as more people have been buying homes in other counties to get away from both Yeadon and Philly because of out of control taxes, troublesome schools, increased nuisances, and dumping grounds.

“Dumping also breeds crime, infestation and blight and this is a major problem,” Mayor Hepkins says.  “The national and state policies in housing, education, transportation and infrastructure are geared towards big cities,” he said. Some main target areas of concern are back routes of activity near 65^th and Woodland Avenues, in Philly and the business strips along Church Lane as far as Chester Ave, in Yeadon to Cobbs Creek Parkway in Philly.

And from the office of the Yeadon mayor, he wants “reports of troubling crime hotspots and chaotic schools” to come to him so he may “help to bridge solutions for a better suburban and inner city”.  “There is a better way of creating a more successful community, cultural, and ancestry environment,” he says.

Rohan K. Hepkins has added a touch more worthiness to the more traditional organized events and citywide services which benefits city projects in hopes of attracting younger and older concerned citizens. Yeadon and Philly would seem to align with that ambition.

As a legislator, he must deal with these issues every day, but says that his work as a minister and pastor of the Chapel of the Good Sheppard Church located at 654 Church Lane helps equip him for the duties and responsibilities of mayor.

Mayor Rohan hopes to demonstrate the importance of finding borough and city solutions to common challenges by creating a project that combines service, make public leadership work harder and reform to improve neighbor’s lives.   For more information about project You’re Worthy contact the Yeadon Mayor’s office at (610) 284-1606 or at facebook page Yeadonmayor Rohankhepkins.