BUILD OUR LIVES TOGETHER • PHILADELPHIA
The people who know the block should be leading the block.
BOLT equips youth and adult residents in Philadelphia's neighborhoods with the leadership resources and tools to drive intergenerational, community-led change.
THE PROBLEM
Residents are treated as recipients of services, not leaders.
Many have worked their blocks for decades and understand the problems better than anyone — but they get read as small, informal, and risky. So resources flow elsewhere: to outside organizations that don't know the neighborhood intimately and have no reason to stay.
Capacity never gets built where the expertise already lives. The problems persist — and the persistence gets read as proof that residents can't lead.
WHAT GETS OVERLOOKED
Grassroots leaders bring what outside stakeholders can’t buy.
TRUST & CONTEXT
They already have the relationships.
Lived experience, local knowledge, immersion in the day-to-day of the neighborhood — and neighbors who already trust them.
DEDICATION
Their home is where they work.
They aren't serving clients. They're serving their neighbors, their friends, and their family. The commitment doesn't end at five.
PROOF OF CONCEPT
They’re already doing the work.
Many hold multiple jobs and pay out of pocket to test models that deliver critical community services — with none of the resources.
OUR MODEL
We build capacity in the adults leading change now, and in the young people who will lead it next — then we connect them to each other, block by block.
Two tracks, neighborhood-based.
ADULT TRACK
BOLT School for Grassroots Leadership
An eight-month program for adults already doing community work in low-to-moderate income neighborhoods.
100 hours of instruction
Monthly 1:1 executive coaching
$3,000 stipend
YOUTH TRACK
BOLT Youth Leaders Fellowship
An in-school, for-credit fellowship in public high schools during the academic-year and 6-week intensive during the summer, run peer-to-peer by youth Coaches.
120+ hours in the academic-year and the summer
25-week for-credit class during the academic-year, 6-week intensive during the summer
Culminates in a Community Action Project
WHERE THE TRACKS MEET
Adult graduates come back as mentors to our youth fellows — matched by neighborhood.
Young people see change happening on their own blocks, meet the adults making it, and find a way into rooms they didn't know existed. That's what makes the change intergenerational instead of just two programs under one roof.