There is no doubt that Philadelphia is a beautiful city. But if, like me, you’re not from Pennsylvania, it might be lost on you that it’s not all roses. You may have such a romanticized idea of the “city of brotherly love” that you neglect its heartbreakingly dismal challenges: poverty, gentrification and abandonment.
To Yuan Huang, the dilapidated buildings and forgotten dreams of North Philadelphia are sights to behold. This Temple Urban Studies/Geography major is still just a teenager in her sophomore year but her generosity and social consciousness reflects that of someone much older.
Born in Shanghai, China, Yuan moved to Gainesville, Florida when she was three years old. She would then go on to live in New York, Delaware, Upper Darby and Havertown. Her love of the diversity in the city led her to Temple, where she faced the reality that all Temple students do upon arrival: the decrepit community that is North Philly. While other universities ridicule us for the conditions in which we live and we may not necessarily appreciate our surrounding neighborhood, Yuan views this as our virtue.
There are so many resources here at Temple,”“ she asserts. “We, as students, do have the time, ideas and the energy to contribute to the neighboring community.”
Yuan was so inspired when she got here that, as a freshman, she joined a brand new organization called Temple Community Gardens within a few days of entering the campus. TCG is an organization dedicated to empowering North Philadelphia communities by showing local students how to control where their food comes from and all the while teaching them how to take responsibility and ownership for themselves and their neighborhoods.
Now serving as the president of TCG, Yuan has played a crucial role in the rapid prosperity and growth of the organization. She barely knew anything about gardening and had to learn as she went, but her tireless work paid off. They now work with local schools like McKinley Elementary and recreation centers like Penrose to set up programs that include cooking and gardening lessons as well as science projects. Her most recent project is a collaboration with Project EDU and the Entrepreneurial Student Association called Urban Roots.
Urban Roots involves teaching gardening to the inner city students through business. Gardening lesson plans are interwoven with business lesson plans and all of it comes to fruition as the children grow their own plants and vegetables to sell.
On top of these projects, Yuan is a Chinese teacher at John Welsh Elementary School and has just won second place in the Fox School’s Business Design Competition with her team, Synergi. For those who don’t know the concept of the competition, the goal is for each team to develop a service or product to revitalize North Broad Street. Their team developed a phone application called Synergi that allows users to take a photo of any building and then uses Google Goggles to provide information about the building based on the user’s personality and preferences.
Yuan’s level of involvement in Temple’s community is commendable and she’s got plenty of years ahead to continue honing her skills as a budding urban planner. But she doesn’t want to do it alone.
“There’s so much we can do with the kids,” she says. “These kids really want to connect with the Temple students and if every student could take a little time out of their day, I think we would see the graduation rates increase.”
Yuan’s message is an important one. We can whine and moan about how dangerous the surrounding area is and how much we resent it or we can take it as an opportunity to raise social awareness and do something positive for the people who need a little optimism in their lives.
Temple students have the advantage of proximity, resources and diversity to make a difference in North Philadelphia. The tens of thousands of us can breathe life into the worn-out spirit of North Philly and leave an incredible legacy if we each do a fraction of what Yuan does.
Yuan Huang is a reflection of how much of an impact one person can make with a big heart, a sharp mind, loads of ambition and a few seeds.