$ Cash won’t solve youth problems
From The New Haven Register February 8, 2006
By Andy Bromage
NEW HAVEN — Meeting the goals of Mayor John DeStefano Jr.’s new City Youth Initiative will require far more than money for expanded summer job programs, three youth advocates said.
What’s needed is nothing less than a total overhaul in how the Elm City engages its youngsters, starting with the kid next door who wants 10 bucks to shovel your sidewalk, the advocates said.
"It’s more than just saying, ‘OK, I’m going to mentor for two hours a week’," said Che Dawson, executive director of LEAP, or Leadership Education and Athletics in Partnership, a youth club on Jefferson Street. "It’s really about how you choose to live, and choose to support issues that promote a culture that embraces youth."
DeStefano rang in the new year and his seventh term as mayor reaching out to the city’s youth after a summer of scattered violence in some of the poorest neighborhoods.
The mayor pledged to double the number of jobs for teens through Youth @ Work, offer after-school activities for 600 more children and implored all citizens to become youth mentors.
Last week, a group of youth advocates and state lawmakers, including state Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, asked the state to create a $100 million Youth Trust Fund, to support youth employment and learning programs statewide.
In New Haven, DeStefano charged three youth services professionals — Dawson, Eliza Halsey and Cynthia Rojas — with steering his City Youth Initiative. The trio will chair a working group aimed at geting youth off the streets and putting them into jobs and positions of leadership.
Dawson, Halsey and Rojas discussed the program goals and hurdles facing city youngsters during a recent interview.
"The way they are depicting youth is negative and not completely true," Dawson said. "We blame them for their condition, which is unfair. We want to begin to think about whether we provide enough opportunities for positive interaction with young people, and I think we are finding the answer is no."
Rojas said many city youth lack basics, like transportation or job training, which keeps them in a state of underachievement. In 2005, funding cuts forced Youth @ Work to turn away 1,300 kids seeking summer jobs, while another 470 did land summer employment.
The mayor’s goal is to double that number to 940 this summer through grants and new business partners.
"You have neighborhoods where only 20 percent of the residents have cars," said Rojas, project manager at Clifford Beers Clinic, an outpatient behavioral health clinic.
"A school bus could take your child to the YMCA, but if you don’t have a car to pick your child up at 6 p.m., you are not going to send your child to the YMCA," she said.
Another problem is that youth have no entertainment venue to claim as their own, said Halsey, of Public Allies, a national apprenticeship program for people ages 18 to 30. The youth initiative could address that too, she suggested.
"Look at Long Wharf Theater as an example," Halsey said. "If we tried to take away Long Wharf, people would be up in arms. What is the equivalent of that for youth in New Haven?"
One idea is to create a community music studio for teens in the likeness of AS220, a nonprofit arts organization in Providence, R.I., that gives youth an uncensored space to make art.
Recently, DeStefano met with a local music studio owner to discuss the idea, though mayoral aide Derek Slap stressed the idea is very preliminary.
There are an estimated 31,446 youth under the age of 18 in New Haven, and there is "no way" youth organizations can begin to engage them all, said Halsey. So the youth initiative will aim to boost participation in existing youth service programs, with an eye toward eventually creating some new ones, she said.
Part of the mayor’s plan, dubbed "Mentor New Haven", asks city workers and residents to volunteer with youth in schools. He is looking for mentors in the mold of Kevin Henry, 17, a Wilbur Cross High School sophomore and junior counselor with LEAP.
Henry mentors adolescent boys five days a week after school and sees first-hand how organizations like LEAP keep at-risk kids out of trouble.
He said these programs can change lives, but without more funding and space, they will have to turn at-risk kids away. "We had to turn down a lot of kids from LEAP last summer because there just wasn’t space."
