News Roundup May 6

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Ice cream meets space in a project by Little Baby’s and The Workshop School

Little Baby’s Ice Cream is big on wild, outsized ideas. “Generally,” says CEO Pete Angevine. “They stay as that, just ideas.”

So it was with some surprise that Angevine found a group of local high schoolers willing to take on what may be his most outsized of all ice cream-related ideas: Sending a pint of Little Baby’s where no pint has ever dared to go—into space. Read more.

The Enterprise Center Helps Minority Businesses Get Over Their Startup Slump

For 25 years, The Enterprise Center in West Philly has launched hundreds of minority and woman-owned businesses all over the city and beyond, helping to create thousands of new jobs in Philadelphia. But a few years ago, the folks who run TEC realized something: They were successful at helping to launch businesses, but a few years in, many of their entrepreneurs were still in hustle and struggle mode, lacking the resources and big picture skills needed to grow, hire new staff, become pillars of their community and reliable employers. Read more.

At May Day Rally, Child Care Becomes a Radical Act

For a hundred or so activists who crowded into tents to escape the rain Sunday afternoon, the May Day U.S.A. March, Rally and Family Celebration at Clark Park in West Philadelphia was a chance to speak out on issues from the Verizon workers' strike to the perils of gentrification to the need for a $15 minimum wage. Read more.

Following the Footsteps of African-American Worker Cooperatives

New York City has invested more than $1 million to boost the number of worker cooperatives in the last couple years. Of a plan to do something similar in Rochester, New York, Mayor Lovely Warren recently said, “We liked the ability to improve neighborhoods by actively having employees build co-ops in a neighborhood that’s challenged, where people could actually walk to and from work, building wealth and keeping the money in the neighborhood.” Now Philadelphia’s getting a program that will promote the equity potential of the employee-owner model — and it’s taking a cue from African-American co-op history. Read more.