Resources For Human Development Resource Center

The thumping bass on the radio in the living room sounds like a heartbeat, and a house in west Philadelphia is coming to life after years of slumbering in disrepair. Workers hustle up and down the stairs, hauling out the old and putting in the new. Walls go up. A house is becoming a home, and a neighborhood is taking a step toward renewal, thanks to Brothers' Keepers.

Brothers' Keepers is an employment program at Resources for Human Development, providing jobs and life training to marginalized populations including ex-offenders and adjudicated youth. One of the many crossover businesses flourishing at RHD (a crossover business is a for-profit enterprise with nonprofit ideals), Brothers' Keepers is the dream of Gerald Hatten, a social entrepreneur who is determined to rebuild both places and people.

Find information about Brothers Keepers' bedbug removal system here

“We can change the face of the neighborhood,” Hatten said on a recent Saturday, standing in front of a house Brothers' Keepers was rebuilding. “We can give people pride in their neighborhood, we can give back to the community and teach skills to people who don't have them.

“I used to talk about this day all the time. We'd have hard days, times when we did a lot more giving than getting. We did homes for not much money, we charged people what they could afford. And I kept saying: We get rewarded for this. And just the other day, I said to one of the guys: This is the day I was talking about.”

Brothers' Keepers has become one of the great success stories at RHD, winning praise from mayor's office and a sizable grant from the city of Philadelphia for its program of hiring ex-offenders. In addition to home remodeling, Brothers' Keepers runs landscaping, car detailing and commercial cleaning services.

In 1990, Hatten began rehabbing houses, with the goal of providing employment and life skills for people in need. Hatten, an ex-offender himself, personally understands the struggle that many ex-offenders face when trying to find employment. When RHD CEO Bob Fishman gave him the chance to build a business, it became Brothers' Keepers, which now employs more than 50 individuals, many of whom were ex- offenders, at-risk youth and high school drop-outs.

“I never set out to hire ex-offenders,'' Hatten said. “But those were the people who needed us most. Last week someone wrote us from prison; he'd heard about us and wanted to get involved. We're getting a lot of that. Just word of mouth.

“One thing Bob and I talk about on a regular basis is that while we're running a company that has to sustain itself, it's about more than work. It's about a community sustaining itself.”

A willingness to embrace an alternate currency is also helping. Employees of Brothers' Keepers take a portion of their salary in Equal Dollars Community Currency. Two Brothers' Keepers employees have signed up to rent the house upon completion of the project, and will pay a portion of their rent in Equal Dollars. In a time when the US Dollar is scarce, Brothers' Keepers and Equal Dollars are finding a way to provide employment and housing, simply by thinking creatively and finding new ways to make it work.

But thinking outside the box is nothing new for Hatten.

“When I was first working for RHD, and trying to make something like this work, Bob heard about what I was doing and asked what he could do to help or support me,'' Hatten said. “And I said: Legitimize me!”

RHD provided financial and bookkeeping help, in addition to an organizational support structure. Brothers' Keepers employees had access to the Family Practice and Counseling Network and SQA Pharmacy, as the partnership with RHD offered Brothers' Keepers what it needed to grow.

And so Brothers' Keepers grew. Often they don't sign contracts; a handshake is good enough. When clients are struggling financially, they'll take what the family can afford – sometimes taking as little as $100 each month until a job is paid for.

“If we just work for the people who can pay for it, we'll continue to do the same work for the same people and nothing will change,'' Hatten said. “Doing work for the people who can't afford it, that's the only way to change the face of the neighborhood. I'm not talking about making the block look nicer, I'm talking about a different mentality.

“There's a picture in my mind of a Saturday morning, when I was a kid and my mother sent me to the store for something. It was a bright, sunny day – not bright just because the sun was out, but because everybody in my block was out, painting the curb, planting flowers, creating something. I remember walking down the street and saying: Good morning, good morning, good morning a hundred times. Today, you don't see that. We have to bring the community back, and get people to trust people again.

“When we say: We trust you to pay us when you can? Now, that's trust. You can pay that forward. I live in my grandfather's house. Half the work on that house was done by people in the community. There was a plumber on that block, there was an electrician in the community, someone could do the masonry. They never exchanged money. They exchanged favors. Every weekend, they were at someone else's house, working that off. A new front sidewalk at my grandfather's house meant the next weekend someone's mother's house was getting new siding. That kept the neighborhood up. We can bring that back. We've got to get back to that.”

The house seems to come together by the hour. When Brothers' Keepers started, the house seemed an impossible job. But Hatten and Brothers' Keepers are making the impossible happen.

“We'll eat Thanksgiving dinner here,'' Hatten said. “That's going to be a big celebration.”