SoHarlem is a social enterprise that partners with creative thinkers, residents, not-for-profit organizations, as well as public and private industries to provide people living in high poverty neighborhoods with cultural industry jobs and career opportunities.
We exist to create a skilled cultural workforce earning livable wages in historically disenfranchised communities through education, apprenticeships, and entrepreneurial experiences.
As a place-based social enterprise, SoHarlem draws heavily on local history, culture, economics, environment, and circumstances to inform its policies, practices and programs. For example, its Cultural Workforce Program has the explicit goal of connecting Master Artisans and apprentices to their community in ways that promote citizenship, entrepreneurship, community sustainability, and environmental stewardship.
We recruit local artisans, the disabled, ex-offenders, veterans, and women because they are most vulnerable. We especially seek women of color because women are the majority of the poor and of those excluded from economic power, to some degree, in all societies, and because women of color are the poorest of all.
SoHarlem is a women-run organization that prioritizes training and jobs for women, not simply because women need jobs, but because recognizing the central role women play in meeting the needs of their neighborhoods is a proven strategy for successful community development that benefits everyone.
Specifically, SoHarlem hires underemployed, master artisans to train local unskilled and unemployed residents in the production of wearable and functional art; serves as catalyst and convener in the development and implementation of training programs that produce a pool of skilled workers, critical to the social and economic development of poor people in Harlem; operates a model demonstration site where potential trainees, cultural and industry leaders, and the community at large can observe the development of a trained workforce in a working environment, where skilled workers seeking employment and creative industry employers connect; helps place trained cultural industry workers in jobs making livable wages; promotes and sells the works of master artisans through exhibitions, public programs and salons; and serves as an incubator for creative entrepreneurs.
The above activities are carried out through the following three programs:
Cultural Workforce Program
Creative Entrepreneurship
Creative Outlet
The 501(c) 3 fiscal sponsor and employment administrator for SoHarlem is the Innovative Charitable Initiatives (ICI), a subsidiary of the New York Council of Nonprofits.