Anna Eliza Carter was a licensed practical nurse.

Carter died Nov. 24, 2012. She was 59.

She was born May 28, 1953 to Louise and Arthur Carter.

She attended West Catholic Girls High School for two years, but graduated from Overbrook High School in 1973. She attended Community College of Philadelphia, graduating with an associate’s degree in liberal arts. In 1979, she enrolled in James Martin Trade School, receiving a certified nursing assistant certificate. Two years later she graduated from the same trade school as a licensed practical nurse.

Carter worked as an LPN at Pennsylvania Hospital for five years and at Temple University Hospital for 18 years.  For the last four years, she volunteered at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.  She never married and had no children, but was loved by many people who became her family. 

She is survived by her friends Diane, Bruce, and April Reed, Erika M. Goodwin, Penny Stephens and Ameerah Kelley, Marie Harris, Pamela Sloane, Denise Patton and Adam Cooperstein and other relatives and friends.

Viewing will be held Nov. 30 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Slater Funeral Home, 1426 Fitzwater St. Services will be held fromn noon to 1:30 p.m. Dec. 1 at Slater Funeral Home.

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput was the principal celebrant and homilist for the 50th annual celebration of the canonization of Saint Martin de Porres recently.

Martin de Porres was one of the first Black saints from the Americas. He was born in Lima, Peru in 1579 and died on Nov. 3, 1639. He was canonized on May 6, 1962. His feast day is Nov. 3.

During the celebration at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, the first African-American deacons of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia were recognized for 30 years of faithful service. Among them were Deacon Thomas Shields, St. Martin de Porres Parish; Deacon Edward Purnell, St. Therese of the Child Jesus Parish; Deacon Stephen Hopkins, St. Benedict’s Parish; and Deacon Richard Nightingale, Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Parish.

Chaput was initiated into the Catholic Fraternal Order of the Knights of Peter Claver during a ceremony prior to the memorial celebration.

The Knights of Peter Claver, Inc. is the largest historically African-American Catholic lay organization in the United States. The order is named for Saint Peter Claver, the Spanish priest who ministered to African slaves. Tit was founded in Mobile, Ala. circa 1909 and is presently headquartered in New Orleans. In 2006, a unit of the order was established in San Andres, Colombia, South America.

The Knights of Peter Claver and Ladies Auxiliary will host their 98th annual National Convention at the Philadelphia Marriott in Center City, July 19-24 next year.

Successful re-entry program lost state funds

Only highly structured and proven programs will help address the ramifications of the city’s high rate of incarceration and subsequent re-entry for area residents, state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams contends in fighting for a $50,000 grant fora program that hits those marks.

Philly ReNew, an innovative, father-centered effort for ex-offenders pioneered by the Pennsylvania Prison Society, had been reduced to economic life support after its state funding was stripped, despite a success rate that surpasses 85 percent.

“It doesn’t make sense we have to beg to support these programs,” Williams said. “This grant is more than symbolism. It’s a lifeline. It’s a statement for Philadelphia and the surrounding region. If we don’t pay on the front side, we’ll pay $30, $40,000 per person, per year, on the back side.”

The Pennsylvania Prison Society has worked with former offenders throughout its 225 years of existence. State funding has withered, a trend this grant may yet reverse, said William DiMascio, executive director of the Prison Society.

“It seemed a little bit of pennywise and pound-foolish to cut a program that helped so many people get on with their lives,” he said.

Williams presented a ceremonial check to DiMascio and Ann Schwartzman of the Prison Society as he spoke before a group of Philly ReNew participating employers and clients.

The grant engineered by Williams not only offers a pulse of resuscitation, but also reaffirms the legitimacy of the program and its objectives, supporters said.

“The workforce of former offenders that I have hired is the hardest-working, most driven group that I have,” said Mark Boyd, CEO of Goodwill Industries of Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia. He has hired hundreds of former prisoners over the last five years, from various programs.

“Without that paycheck,” Boyd said. “The chances of reentering society successfully go down dramatically. There are a lot of people without four-year degrees who need to feed their families.”

Boyd encouraged other employers to hire former offenders. Williams echoed that sentiment.

“The ability to go to a ShopRite, or PECO, or PGW, gives skills that will follow them throughout their lives,” he said. “My uncle was never the man he thought he could be. We need fathers who can set an example for their children, on how they will conduct the rest of their lives.”

Philly ReNew, with its focus on parenting, mentoring, building relevant skills for ex-offenders, has a track record for substantively addressing these issues. More than 400 men have gone through the program in its three-year history.

Isean McNeil participated in the last cohort of Philly ReNew and talked about how devastated he and the other men were when they heard the bad news, knowing how effective the program had been for them.

“[Prisoners] need this program as I needed it when I came here,” said McNeil, who had spent 15 years in prison and is now a case manager at Shalom, Inc. Today, he works to help young people get off the streets and away from gun violence and interested in education and employment.

Philly ReNew is particularly relevant given the reality that the city’s fatherless households increasingly are the source of young people with greater entanglements with the criminal justice system.

“We, unfortunately, now have a legacy of 18-, 19-, 20- and 21-year-olds, if not 15-, 14- and 13-year-olds who now have records,” Williams said. “And we have a large number of people who are returning from prison. Some 30 percent of the state’s prison population comes from Philadelphia.”

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Evelyn Jacobs Ortner Center on Family Violence and Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell have released a report assessing the city’s handling of domestic violence cases and recommending improvements.

“Violence Against Women in Philadelphia: A Report to the City” features the perspectives of nearly 20 organizations that work with victims of domestic violence and sometimes with those who commit it.

“Practices and procedures have led to incomplete data, but, more importantly, opportunities to identify and intervene with abusers and victims are routinely missed,” said Susan B. Sorenson, director of the Ortner Center, at the School of Social Policy and Practice at Penn. “At this point, the agency doing the most proactive work in terms of the practices, procedures and collaboration with other agencies may well be the Philadelphia Police Department.”

While the number of calls to 911 about domestic violence issues has decreased, the number of arrests has increased. 

In 2009, the number of domestic violence calls to 911 reached 157,176. But in 2011, the number dropped to 145,904. As a result of those calls, there were 4,927 domestic violence arrests in 2009 and 6,256 in 2011.

In 2010, the Police Department, with the help of local domestic violence agencies, started using a new, improved on-scene evidence-collection form for domestic violence calls. The Ortner Center was instrumental in helping to develop that form.

“While law enforcement is the primary public framework used to address violence against women, this violence has a substantial impact on a wide range of city services and programs, including public health, behavioral health, homelessness and child welfare,” Sorenson said.

In addition to the Police Department, many other organizations contributed to the report, including the Department of Public Health, the district attorney’s office, the Rape Crisis Center, domestic violence programs, the Department of Human Services, the Veterans Administration Medical Center and the medical examiner’s office.

“Violence Against Women in Philadelphia” highlights include a number of scenarios.

The rate of protection-from-abuse orders issued in Philadelphia is about twice as high as elsewhere in Pennsylvania. According to Pennsylvania law, the person seeking a restraining order is responsible for serving the papers to the accused, although police help can be requested.

Also, Philadelphia has only one emergency shelter for victims of domestic violence, which is always full, causing thousands to be turned away. Many of those turned away must go to the homeless-shelter system, where they fill as much as 37 percent of the beds.

Recommended actions in the report included: online posting of photographs and other information about persons wanted for domestic violence; creating uniform screening, documentation and intervention protocols at hospital emergency departments; increasing the city’s capacity to provide emergency shelter; and increased funding for the district attorney’s office to provide adequate staffing of the Family Violence and Sexual Assault Unit.

Four Penn students helped launch the project: Elizabeth Sivitz, an undergraduate who took the lead; Yair Schiffy; Jia Xue and Kendra Birdsall. 

Funding from the Philadelphia Foundation and the Trustees' Council of Penn Women made the work possible. 

A new book, “The Road Half Traveled: University Engagement at a Crossroads,” provides a forward-thinking perspective on the future of university-community partnerships. Coauthored by Rita Axelroth Hodges, assistant director at the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships, the book reviews the role universities have played as anchor institutions in their communities and reviews the new directions those relationships might take. 

Hodges, a 2005 Penn graduate, joined Steve Dubb, research director at the Democracy Collaborative of the University of Maryland, to write the book, based on a report they had worked on previously. They met while compiling a report on the role of anchor institutions in improving urban neighborhoods, produced by a national task force led by Ira Harkavy of the Netter Center.

The task force was recruited to advise Shaun Donavan, incoming U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary, after the 2008 presidential election. Not long afterward, Dubb contacted Hodges with an opportunity through a grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation to explore the anchor institution concept further.

“They were looking at how various types of universities were impacting community economic development,” Hodges said. “I signed on for a six-month research project that lasted well over two years.”

As Hodges and Dubb define it, a university’s mission as an anchor institution is to apply the institution’s long-term, place-based economic power, in combination with its human and intellectual resources, consciously and strategically to better the welfare of the community in which it resides.

The pair drew on 10 diverse universities as case studies. 

“It was a mix of public and private, Ivy and community college, East Coast/West Coast and included a historically Black college,” she said.

The authors said the schools’ engagements with their communities had come about through a variety of ways but stems from a deep tradition of the land-grant colleges, first created in 1862. Their work explores strategies for improving conditions in low-income communities and emphasizes the critical roles of university leaders, philanthropy and policy in this process.

While a growing number of universities are dedicating resources to support their surrounding communities, the writers suggest much potential for advancement remains.

When Hodges and Dubb were in the final stages of producing the Casey report, they learned that the Michigan State University Press wanted to publish their work as a book as part of its ongoing series on Transformations in Higher Education.

The book is a comprehensive account of the range of roles played by universities as anchors in their communities. Released in October, “The Road Half Traveled” is available from Michigan State University Press through its website and at bookstores, including the Penn Bookstore.