Under that backdrop, Davis, along with state and local leaders, gathered at the Northeast Frankford Boys & Girls Club to announce 46 grants totaling $56.5 million for 113 projects aimed at reducing community and gun violence, as well as supporting after-school programming.

In Philadelphia and throughout the state, there is a diverse range of program options available.

“It is critical that we create multiple ladders of opportunities for young people to succeed … making sure that they don’t turn towards violence,” Davis said.

Having been a part of the program for nearly a decade, 17-year-old Mahiyah Azuakoemu finds the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Frankford to be a safe place from the violence prevalent in her Kensington neighborhood.

“Going home is like a nightmare,” Azuakoemu said. “Being exposed to the gun violence or the drugs or the profanity, it’s a lot.”

Azuakoemu walks with her brother to school, carefully navigating around discarded syringes and observing individuals with visible injuries and open wounds.

“It’s normal to us now,” Azuakoemu said. “It doesn’t faze us anymore.”

Since joining the Boys & Girls Club at the age of 8, she has emerged as a leader for her peers.

“If they’re having a bad day, it’s always nice to be heard, to be able to express yourself,” Azuakoemu said. “We have to be able to see and hear the children or else it’s not gonna be good for the future.”

On most days, she motivates kids to show their feelings through art and other fun activities at the club.

“I love painting,” Azuakoemu said.

Proponents of gun violence prevention assert that gun violence disseminates through social networks and is exacerbated by long-standing inequities and public health disparities.

“Boost can halt the spread by enriching children with mentors and skills and love,” said Debra O’Connor, executive director of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is a grassroots movement advocating for stronger gun laws, closing safety loopholes and promoting responsible gun ownership to combat gun violence and protect families.

O’Connor contends that there is insufficient funding and that more people need to care.

“We lift the messages of the many anti-gun violence groups who have had boots on the ground for decades. And we know that gun safety laws make a difference,” O’Connor said.

Pennsylvania’s three statewide row officers will be sworn in to new four-terms on Tuesday, joining Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro in Harrisburg and marking the first time that the state’s voters elected Republicans to fill all three offices at the same time.

Treasurer Stacy Garrity and Auditor General Tim DeFoor will each be sworn in to a second four-year term, while Attorney General-elect Dave Sunday will be sworn in to his first four-year term.

They’ll take their oaths in separate, back-to-back ceremonies in the Forum Auditorium, across the street from the state Capitol. Shapiro was scheduled to attend.

The offices are often viewed as a springboard to running for higher office, and the row officers each have built-in watchdog duties that could affect how Shapiro governs.

For instance, a treasurer or auditor general must approve a general obligation bond issue, while both must approve a tax-anticipation note. Treasurers can block payments they see as illegal.

Attorneys general, meanwhile, must ensure all executive branch contracts are legal and can carry a governor’s policy agenda in the courts, such as in clashes with lawmakers or the White House. They also can use their statewide platform to amplify an opposition message.

The three of them will be in office at a time when there is considerable friction between Shapiro and the Republican-controlled state Senate over the pace of state spending.

Twenty one states raised their minimum wages on Jan. 1, but Pennsylvania was not among them.

The minimum wage, the lowest hourly wage employers can legally pay, has remained unchanged at $7.25 an hour since 2010, when the federal minimum wage last increased.

That’s not for a lack of desire or effort to increase it over the last decade and a half. While the Democratic controlled House last year passed a measure to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, it died in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Pennsylvania Democrats say raising the wages of the commonwealth’s lowest-paid workers will again be at the top of their agenda in the 2025-2026 legislative session. 

“The fact that Pennsylvania’s minimum wage continues to be $7.25 an hour is just immoral,” House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D-Montgomery) told reporters when the newly elected House convened for the first time on Jan. 7. 

“It’s unconscionable. I can’t imagine with the affordability crisis that we have in this commonwealth, that anyone thinks it’s appropriate to be paying someone $7.25 an hour,” he said.

Gov. Josh Shapiro also said increasing the minimum wage will be top of mind when he introduces his 2025-2026 budget proposal next month. Shapiro’s first two budgets included increases in the minimum wage.

“To strengthen the economy, we need to raise wages. We need to finally pass a minimum wage increase in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said Wednesday at a news conference in Lycoming County.

“I’ve been for it for years, the House passed it two or three times, the Senate has yet to take it up.”

Nearly 68,000 Pennsylvania workers earned minimum wage or less in 2023, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry’s Minimum Wage Advisory Board. Another 800,000 earned between $7.25 and $15 an hour. Those earning minimum wage or less were most likely to be female, white and between 20 and 24 years old, among other attributes.

Yanette Lathrop, senior researcher and policy analyst for the National Employment Law Project, said $7.25 an hour is a poverty wage in Pennsylvania and across the country. 

“Even for a single adult without children it’s not enough,” Lathrop said.

The United Way developed the ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) model to calculate living wages for families across the country. It estimates the minimum cost of housing, child care, food, transportation, health care and technology plus a 10% contingency fund.

Under that model a single full-time worker must earn between $13 and $19 an hour to survive financially in Pennsylvania. A family of four with two adults working full-time, a survival wage is between $16 and $23 an hour.

“The inaction in Pennsylvania and in Congress is essentially dooming the workers who earn the federal minimum wage to poverty,” Lathrop said.

In June 2023, the House passed a bill that would incrementally increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next three years, with ongoing increases keyed to the consumer price index.

Although it received some bipartisan support, with votes from two House Republicans, it was not considered in the GOP-led Senate.

Bradford called on Senate Republicans to make a counter offer.

“We’ve shown what we can pass. What can you pass on the minimum wage? Or do you actually just agree with keeping it at $7.25, an hour? I think that’s a conversation that needs to be out in the public,” Bradford said. 

Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) said in 2023 and repeated last week that although Senate Republicans are open to discussing a “reasonable adjustment” to the minimum wage, $15 an hour is a non-starter.

Pittman said the General Assembly’s focus should instead be on creating more opportunities for businesses and workers.

“The minimum wage debate fails to recognize the importance of maximum wages, which are what actually allow families to grow and prosper across the Commonwealth,” Pittman said in a statement to the Capital-Star. “I continue to struggle with the lack of focus our friends in the House place on initiatives to foster maximum wage job opportunities, such as those that come from the responsible use of our God given natural resources.”

Pittman added, “Until our friends in the House understand a more reasonable number must be put on the table, there is little to deliberate.”

Among the reasons Senate Republicans have opposed a $15 an hour minimum wage is the impact it could have on nonprofit organizations that deliver essential social services, Pittman said.

For those organizations, wages for care workers present a complicated problem in balancing the ability to deliver services to as many clients as possible with the moral obligation to pay a living wage, Anne Gingerich, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofit Organizations, said.

“We don’t want to send our folks to get public benefits like SNAP or Medicaid,” Gingerich said, adding that many nonprofit organizations have struggled to retain workers as other employers have offered higher wages.

Child care providers and other groups have lobbied successfully for more state funding to support higher wages for workers. The 2024-2025 state budget included $280 million to raise wages for direct support professionals who provide individual care for autistic and intellectually disabled people.

“Our workforce is the most valued asset of all nonprofit organizations,” Gingerich said. “We have long taken the stance that we support efforts that would lead to sustainable wages for those who work for nonprofit organizations and those we serve.”

Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (D-Allegheny) said the Republican position doesn’t dampen Democrats’ sense of urgency to increase  minimum wages and he’s hopeful that the parties can reach an agreement on a higher hourly wage and how soon to implement it.

Pennsylvania has lagged behind other states in the region as each of its neighbors has increased minimum wages above $7.25 an hour. Only West Virginia and Ohio remain below $15 an hour and New York leads the group at $15.50 an hour.

That puts employers seeking a stable and reliable workforce at a disadvantage when workers can make considerably more at the same job by crossing the border.

“The ball is really in the court of my colleagues in the Senate Republican caucus,” Costa said, adding that he has had no recent conversations with Republican leaders on the topic. “We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to sit down among the four caucuses and work out a pathway to a higher minimum wage.”