New Haven Independent

Posted by: Henry Fernandez | February 7, 2008 6:01 PM

This is a hard comment for me to write because I am so completely committed to youth development in this community. I find this whole project quite problematic, despite the fact that I have no doubt many good people are involved.

That being said, the youth organizations in this city are struggling, and many of them are excellent. So instead of engaging with Farnum House and LEAP to serve more children through their award winning well known programs, or with Junta and Centro San Jose to expand their efforts to reach older youth, the Community Foundation is spending $150,000 on a study by an outside expert to create a new organization?

The Community Foundation does not give $150,000 annually to any of these community based organizations that serve low income children -- and never has. The reason our community institutions are struggling is not because of a lack of vision on the part of the committed underpaid souls who run them.

For $150,000 I am sure any one of these organizations could effectively engage another 100 young people. Certainly they could employ another 100 teenagers through the summer months.

I have just about had it with studies when it comes to our children. Between our local universities and donor community, this town is just about studied to death. And these studies have generally served as nothing more useful than a doorstop and a waste of resources that could have gone to those who actually work on behalf of our children.

While dozens of well-funded studies have occurred over the last decade, a host of youth agencies have closed because of lack of dollars, lack of willingness to hold executive directors accountable and too much political patronage. Human and financial resources should be put into solving these problems, not into a dream program while strong local efforts which shape children's dreams every day go wanting.

If our quality non-profits were all saying, "hey we just can't expand even if you give us more resources," then study away. But our donor community has to get much more serious about keeping our existing organizations alive and thriving and spend less time talking to itself.

Those youth organizations that remain should be the focus of foundation and donor leadership. Some individual donors have done just that and they are to be commended.

Now it is time for the rest of us to get on board.

Posted by: C | February 10, 2008 12:08 AM

Absolutely right Henry! This town has spent millions on studies from marketing to retail development to education and kids programs with virtually nothing to show for any of the studies - zero implementation.

I know of Strickland's work and he has lots of money and lots of sources for money so why does he have to come here and beg 150 grand just for a study that takes money that should go to our kids right now! If he wants to help us so much he should do it on his dime and let that $150,000 go to the starving programs for kids and to rescuing the empty Q House.

Once agian we need to "hire from within." We are spending a huge fortune for this new economic development program and paying this woman Whelley from Baltimore a big salary when we certainly have plenty of people from New Haven who could do the job. Now we are paying Strickland when we should be paying our own.

Doug Bethea in the Dixwell area runs a dril team program that is doing a great job of keeping at-risk kids off the streets yet he only gets a paltry $4,000 a year in funding. Shafiq Abdussabur is running his CTRibat program on fumes and is having trouble scraping up funds. And there are some great media programs for youth that are seriously short on funds and on and on and on! Believe me $150,000 is a mountain of money to these programs and the Foundation is not doing nearly enough to help any of them.

So what's next? My guess is Strickland comes and does his study, says New Haven is a place for his next dream program and then what - asks for another 2 million from us to implement it. Right?

Meanwhile we need to rescue the Q House on an emergency basis. The absence of that center for youth activity has done more to cause teen violence and create at-risk teens than any other factor in our city. So I hope the Foundation puts more money into that and makes it a priority over Strickland's arts dream center!

Posted by: Your Tax Dollars at Work | February 11, 2008 12:01 PM

Very well said, Henry!

There is so much to do in New Haven and there are so many needy organizations doing great jobs. It's extremely disappointing to see more good money wasted on what is basicially another P.R. program.

When is the last time the The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven has been studied? How effective is it in spending and investing the funds entrusted to it? Is it wisely and effectively administered? What kind of job is the Foundation doing "investing" donors' funds in the community at large?

Posted by: William W. Ginsberg | February 14, 2008 2:14 PM

Education and youth services have long been among The Community Foundation's highest priorities - in 2006 alone, The Foundation made $3.3 million in grants to support local non-profits providing these services. We know the organizations doing this work in our community and we support them year after year. It is exactly this knowledge that has informed our decision to assess whether a new after-school arts program and adult vocational education program modeled on Bill Strickland's nationally renowned Manchester Bidwell center in Pittsburgh would make sense for New Haven.

It is easy to criticize studies as "a waste of resources" and to brand any effort to look outside our local community as a disservice to our local non-profits. Our experience, however, has led us to a different conclusion. We are investing in this planning work to figure out how this proven national model can complement existing programs and can bring new local leadership and new donors to the table in support of this work. That is why we brought LEAP's leadership with us to Pittsburgh to see Manchester Bidwell last year. If a feasibility study provides answers to those questions, this project can be of assistance to every youth program in the community. If the study determines that those goals cannot be achieved, there will be no project.

Similar planning work has been very successful in the past. Several years ago, The Foundation and others brought a national organization to New Haven to work with local arts organizations on financial stabilization. A solid plan was put together that inspired people to get involved. As a result, $5 million dollars was raised from a variety of sources - both individual donors and institutions - and long-term benefits were created for the eight local arts groups that participated. Another example is the joint effort of The Foundation and the Graustein Memorial Fund to undertake a family learning initiative called PACK. Together we made the up-front investment to put together a solid plan. As a result, $750,000 was raised from a national foundation and 14 local institutions got involved and participated actively over five years, many of which are still carrying this work forward today.

One often hears the criticism that the non-profit community wastes the resources that it has by providing duplicative services. The kind of study that The Foundation is supporting in this case will address this issue directly. There will be an assessment of where the service gaps are and how they can be met. This kind of planning may be expensive, but it is a wise investment in longer-term cost savings.

The Foundation is not alone in taking this view. We are proud to have four co-investors in this feasibility study: United Illuminating, Yale-New Haven Hospital, Empower New Haven and William C. Graustein.

Bill Strickland has a thirty-five year track record of inspiring inner-city youth and of successfully bringing together community leadership to raise the priority of youth and vocational education programs. New Haven could benefit from his example and his inspiration, and The Community Foundation is proud to be working with him and his team.

William Ginsberg
President & CEO
The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

Posted by: Esbe | February 14, 2008 8:57 PM

Mr. Ginsberg, it is very good of you to stop by and comment. Your response is pretty vague, though. What about Henry Fernandez's specific point that you don't currently spend $150,000 on LEAP or on any similar program in New Haven?

I checked out the webpage of the Manshester Bidwell Organization. Plenty of over-the-top self-promotion. Apparently, he will get to our fair city right after he brings peace to the Middle East. I kid you not:

Many have tried and failed to bring about peaceful coexistence in the Middle East. Manchester Bidwell Corporation President and CEO Bill Strickland has embarked on the same lofty goal, and he is determined to succeed.

Posted by: Chris Gray | February 18, 2008 1:58 AM

"I have people in the program with high-school diplomas they can't read," Strickland said.

Soon they're doing more than reading. Welfare moms within six months are gourmet chefs, he said. Or within ten months they'd be "doing analytical chemistry using logarithmic calculators."

So, snake oil comes with orchids and world peace now-a-days?

Heck, Wally can't even sell roses on Valentine's Day. What will we do with orchids?

Back in the days when Will Ginsberg was in the city administration and hanging out with the likes of Sal Brancati, I stood behind him in line at the New Haven Savings Bank to cash my paltry pay check while he fumed imperiously at a delay of his holiday weekend and, when my turn came, I said to the teller, "You know, I work as hard as he does, attend many of the same meetings, and serve the same public and think about the disparity between our paychecks." She smiled.

"Take your time," I said. "Thanks," she replied.

When I heard he got the top job at the Foundation, I knew we'd see more ways for the UIs and Yale-New Haven Hospitals to throw money around, so they can brag about their community involvement, without really helping solve any problems.

Henry, on the other hand, seems to be a straight shooter, as the expression goes,

Posted by: Henry Fernandez | February 18, 2008 12:41 PM

I appreciate that Will was willing to respond to my critique. I have to admit that I wrote it in the spur of the moment and would normally now just pick up the phone, but Paul Bass has convinced me that the Independent can be a good place for community dialogue. And this issue should be out in the open.

Here is the crux of our disagreement. In the area of youth programming, there is not duplication of services. Mathematically there cannot be - subtract the Q-House, Hill Cooperative Youth Services, Latino Youth, Youth Fair Chance, the YWCA, CityKids -- all programs that have closed over the last decade, and we have lost well over a thousand slots for children and teens. Couple this with a dramatic downsizing of LEAP (which is only now growing again after a very tough financial period) and what is clear is that our city is not at risk of having duplication of services. We are at risk of having hundreds of children on the streets.

There is not even a youth center in Dixwell or Newhallville, neighborhoods where too many young people have been lost to violence in the last few years. There may be a time in our future when a $150,000 planning grant for a dream program makes sense - but it will be after we have rebuilt our core infrastructure of youth programs. Where will the dollars and leadership talent come from to fund and run the multi-million dollar agency sure to be proposed by our new out-of-town friend, when we cannot sustain our existing quality agencies?

I do want to recognize that the foundation has been a partial funder of two significant City Hall driven initiatives which appear to be working wonders: the expansion of summer jobs for youth and the street outreach workers. Our teen violence has been on the noticeable recent decline while the number of summer jobs has grown rapidly. These efforts represent New Haven at its best -- community leadership recognizing a problem and moving together to solve it. Let's be sure these programs tested under fire are a top priority for continued funding.

Will highlighted funding that the foundation put into strengthening the arts community. As the City of New Haven's representative, I sat with Will on the board which governed this effort. It drove improvements in the financial position, bookkeeping and governance of a small number of New Haven's leading arts organizations. It also invested millions of dollars in those organizations as a carrot to get them to make necessary changes. It is exactly the type of thing that is needed for the city's youth agencies.

While Mr. Strickland's resume may or may not be impressive (no disrespect - I just don't know), the end result will be a study that tells us what? That we lack programs for teens? That his organization can now be paid more to help us build these programs up? Let me save $150,000 -- here's a three year plan, based on the reality that we need to protect what we have and increase our existing capacity to serve youth:

• Identify those organizations which provide high quality services. Will says his staff know these organizations well. Great. Ask them what they need to survive and expand. The current leadership of our top youth agencies are well respected locally and nationally. They'll provide the same advice for free and they won't need a map to find their way around New Haven.
• Stop making agencies jump through new hoops every year based on the foundation whim of the moment. Work with advocates, other donors, city government and state legislators to create an endowment which funds a baseline of youth services in the city every year. Teens organized to create something similar via ballot initiative in Oakland where now 2.5 percent of the City's unrestricted General Purpose Fund is directed to services for children and youth, not including schools.
• With other donors, create the same multi-million dollar effort with carrots and defined targets that you did for the arts community, to facilitate greater financial and governance strength for these youth agencies.
• In addition to general operating support, invest specifically in paying for staff at quality youth agencies to raise money from national foundations and local individual donors. Basically, help them build a fundraising office.
• Lead (or find someone to lead) the tough fight to open a youth agency in Newhallville/Dixwell. Maybe that means re-opening the Q-House - possibly under the direction of another existing youth agency - possibly not. No doubt good people were involved previously but they have not succeeded and their disagreements and involvement should be left behind because the need is so great.
• If you want to fund a study, here is one we could use. Do a report card every year on where New Haven stands for youth - or to protect your political viability, hire someone like Connecticut Voices for Children to do so. We should all be held accountable with a report and big press conference telling us what we are doing better and where we have failed over the last year. Is teen pregnancy up or down? Are youth shootings on the rise or falling? Have agencies expanded or closed? This way we won't continue our quiet slide into failure.

Mr. Strickland might be a saint of a man, but it is not his job to build a sustainable infrastructure of funding and programs for youth - it is ours. And there is no better place for this movement to begin than at the community foundation, which was created in 1928 to sustain this city.

Posted by: Chris Gray | February 18, 2008 3:04 PM

Almost certainly, the paycheck I cashed that day I mentioned above was in some small part subsidized by the Foundation and two groups I worked with received support from it, long before Ginsberg took the helm.

So, don't think I am saying the Foundation's work is all bunk.

The part of the article I highlighted, however, seemed an extravagantly inflated claim.

I have already written, in a post here, of my support for the street outreach worker program and it would be difficult to fault expansion of a summer jobs program for youths.

Meanwhile, Fernandez' comments are wise.

Posted by: Esbe | February 18, 2008 4:27 PM

So, Henry Fernandez has solved everything. He has given the Foundation a great 3-year plan, for free. The Foundation can put the 150k into actual youth services, Mr. Stickland gets more time to solve the Israel/Palestine problem and New Haven can skip straight to Strickland's bottom line from the article:

Hire a local chief. Choose a smart and completely local board.

Which is exactly the same "go local" point that Henry F. is making.

Posted by: WEBblog 1 | February 18, 2008 4:58 PM

Henry,

Thank you for the history up-date, which I'm sure Strickland will be paid handsomely to assemble. After all the dialogue between you and Ginsberg, it seems to me that your last paragraph says it all, or, all that need be said.

"Mr. Strickland might be a saint of a man, but it is not his job to build a sustainable infrastructure of funding and programs for youth - it is ours. And there is no better place for this movement to begin than at the community foundation, which was created in 1928 to sustain this city".

Posted by: Maria | February 18, 2008 6:32 PM

Henry's recommendations make a lot of sense.

Posted by: mary | February 18, 2008 7:20 PM

I Know Mr.Fernadez is right. If this new program comes in and is used to enhance other existing agencies and programs it would be terrific. If you used the local people that have been working with kids then, okay. But, spending the money on outside help is kind of wasteful.

Posted by: Onebyd | February 18, 2008 8:07 PM

BRAVO Henry, and just think you laid out a plain for the City to follow that did not require hundreds of thousands of dollars and did not require months to "study"!

If the City really has the best interests of our children at heart, they will listen to you and the great leadership over at LEAP (where my daughter is a junior counselor) and put that money into actual programs, not "studies".

Thank you again for saying what needed to be said so eloquently!

Posted by: ericaholahan | February 19, 2008 8:23 AM

Does anyone know whether or not there is a community group working to reopen the Q House? (fundraising, advocacy, PR, mediation, etc.)

Did their board dismantle? Do they still have and advisory committee? As Henry mentioned, it is problematic that there is no youth center in Dixwell/Newhallville.

If anyone has a reliable account of why the center closed, I would be interested to hear it. Maybe someone could provide me a link to an article so that my post doesn't change the course of this particular debate, and posters can continue discussing the issue of youth services city wide.

Thanks.

Posted by: Alex | February 19, 2008 5:44 PM

If we keep our money in New Haven we can develop our own Bill Stricklands. Yes, he is inspirational and successful but we have tons of talent in New Haven and we don't develop it or fund it! Strickland was initially given $1 million by Heinz. If Yale and the Community Fdn would put up that kind of money for New Haven's kids we could have a luxurious center like Stricklands in New Haven. If you want to see hiscenter and a talk by him go to - http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/184

We waste so much money on studies, and ignore situations that are right in our face like the Q-House that should never have been allowed to fail. Where's eminent domain when it does some good for Dixwell/Newhallville folks as opposed to burned up buildings downtown? The violence and deaths that resulted from the Q-House being closed cost the city more than a million dollars.

We are not Pittsburgh and we can do so much here if we place faith in our own people. Henry's right - we need "a sustainable infrastructure of funding and programs for youth" but we also need to develop and support our own creative visionaries that we have right here in our own fair city - our own Bill Stricklands.

Posted by: Chris Gray | February 20, 2008 2:37 AM

Erica, a quick search of NHInd gave this story title:
"Q House's Would-be Savior Gets A Cold Shoulder."

Yahoo search also gave me a story titled something like:
"United Way pulls funding of..." and one mentioning Willie Greene, former alderman and former director of the closed Dixwell Community House considering run for Mayor.

A lot happened while I was out of town and not paying the attention that I should have.

Posted by: patrick v gore | February 21, 2008 3:39 AM

I THINK IT WOULD BE BETTER SERVED TO PUT RESOURCES
IN THE COMMUNITY I AM IN THE PROCESS OF ESTABLISHING THE DIXWELL-NEWHALLVILLE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT GROUP WHICH WILL BE LOCATED AT 677 DIXWELL AVE AND I WOULD INVITE ANY ONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO HELP OUT TO E-MAIL ME AT gorehamden@yahoo.com.

PATRICK V GORE

Posted by: ericaholahan | February 21, 2008 6:42 AM

Chris,

Sorry, are you the new alder in that ward? A resident? Or city official?

Pardon the side conversation.

Posted by: patrick v gore | February 21, 2008 11:33 AM

I AM A LIFELONG RESIDENT OF NEW HAVEN AND I GREW UP IN NEWHALLVILLE

Posted by: Jacqueline James | February 21, 2008 3:16 PM

Henry is absolutely correct. We need to out more effort and energy in the services that are here in New Haven. We tend to put a bandaide on the situation in regards to OUR youth and at the same time avoid what some of the major issues are that bring them about. I have also been working with a board, several Yale University students and Law School on creating a comprehensive progam that addresses issues of homelessness, family resources, support along with education and economic development for Adolescents and Family. It is unfortuante that a cit such as New Haven is so resource rich in services and we continue to not have a comprehensive social service agency. It is also unfortunate that politics has played such a major role in what organizations are funded and which programs are able to sustain.

We welcome any funder or volunteer to assist in the opening of Elm City Youth and Family Center. We have been working with the State Delegation in regard to accessing funding. We have presented to the appropriations committee and complete all necessay paperwork with Rosa DeLauro's office in accessing federal funding.

The mission of the Elm City Youth and Family Center (ECYFC) is to build strong adolescents and families in the Greater New Haven community. This outcome relies on meeting the following goals:
• Parents and guardians have the tools to support their children through all developmental stages
• Children are engaged members of their community
• Families have access to quality clinical and medical care.
In order to achieve these goals, ECYFC will provide comprehensive intervention, prevention, and referral services to families in the Greater New Haven area.

ECYFC program offerings will be based on these goals and the specific needs of the community:
• Phase I: Transitional living facility for girls aged 15-19, a life skills training program, family reunification counseling, and clinical and medical referrals through a partnership with the Hill Health Center.
• Phase II: Prevention programs, including parenting classes, a family resource center and Street Law Clinic
• Phase III: Pre-K program.

ECYFC believes that these goals are more effectively met within the context of a community center offering a broad range of services to both children and parents/guardians. The community center creates a sense of trust between families and service providers, allowing ECYFC to have a deeper impact on the families it serves. ECYFC aims to build profound, ongoing relationships with its clients to more effectively address the multiple problems they face. ECYFC will continually track and measure the performance of its programs and use this knowledge to inform future program decisions to yield the best results for the families it serves.
A significant proportion of New Haven children and families face depressed economic conditions. The 2006 United State Census Bureau American Community Survey revealed wide economic and social disparities between New Haven and the state of Connecticut. For example, 26.7% of children under age 18 live below the federal poverty line, compared to 11% statewide. In addition, 20.4% of all families live below the poverty line, compared to 5.9% in CT. These economic conditions are both the cause and effect of high school drop out rate, teen pregnancy rate, and the number of abused and neglected children. The following charts highlight the specific conditions within New Haven in comparison to Connecticut.

At ECYFC we beieve that "It Takes a Community to Raise a Child" It is also going to take this communtiy to come up with a solution!

Posted by: mary | February 21, 2008 5:11 PM

Jackie,
You are so right we have so much but when it comes to the youth we give so little.I am still hoping that the city will put their focus on their children I know are communities are working together to help that focus come alive.I wish you all the luck in getting your funding and god bless you!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: Chris Gray | February 22, 2008 11:17 PM

Erica,

If I understand your question, I am a resident of senior/disabled public housing (I now have MS and am, thus, lame) in the Annex recently returned from living in Branford for about nine years.

I am not a public official of any sort but did run for office several times with the Green Party in the mid to late '80s, who also volunteered to produce the public access cablecasts of the Board of Alders' meetings for nearly ten years (along with helping establish CTV), worked for and eventually ran (some would say into the ground) The Elder Newspaper, a statewide senior citizen newspaper, later working for a community organizing group, the Coalition for People, that worked with public housing tenants and religious organizations.

I have lived, as a poor renter, in many of the city's neighborhoods and have a strong interest in the life and people of the city. It is my home.

My post directed to you was only meant to try to quickly answer your question, as is this one.

Posted by: Hope | February 25, 2008 9:11 PM

I support all of the posts here about developing New Haven's own talent and resources. Mr. Strickland's program worked in Pittsburgh--where he had the connections and local know-how to get it done. I simply can't believe he has some magic one-size-fits-all formula to engage young people that the many talented people in New Haven who have dedicated their lives to these kids don't have or can't develop. I don't mean to deny his obvious leadership and accomplishments, but I can't help but think that both Mr. Strickland's claims and the price tag for a feasibility study seem grossly exaggerated.