Teen ​“Ambassadors” De-Litter Newhallville

Tyrone Moye didn’t realize how messy his block had become — until he and ten other teens got a summer assignment to clean it up.

A rising sophomore at Achievement First Amistad High School, Moye is one of Newhallville’s 11 summer Youth Ambassadors, charged with neighborhood cleanup from July 3 to August 4. Now in its third year, the ambassadorship program is funded by the Livable City Initiative​‘s (LCI) Neighborhood Public Improvement Program (NPIP), which awards $10,000 to each of the city’s 10 community management teams to spend however they wish to make their streets nicer.

Earlier this year, the Newhallville Community Management Team voted to allocate the majority of NPIP funds to the ambassardorship program, which pays students $10.10 per hour for 25 hours a week. The program operates out of the Winchester Avenue police substation as a collaboration between LCI and Youth At Work. For the first time this year, the program is extending into a small part of Dixwell as well.

In addition to trash pickup and neighborhood beautification projects like painting flower stands and pots, ambassadors take part in professional development, team building, and college readiness activities. So far, these have included training sessions from SeeClickFix’s Caroline Smith and city supervisor of Youth, Family and Community Engagement Kermit Carolina, as well as college campus tours of Yale University. A tour of Southern Connecticut State University is planned for later this week.

Tuesday morning, ambassadors prepared to pass out fliers for a ​“Freddie Fixer Friday” targeting Lilac Street, Sheffield Avenue, and a street off Dixwell that ​“has yet to be determined,” said LCI Specialist Linda Davis-Cannon. Those three areas have been targeted both because they are some of Newhallville’s most trash-plagued, and because they span all three of the neighborhood’s wards (19, 20 and 21). That translates to cleanup efforts for Alders Alfreda Edwards (whose daughter Kim is running to succeed her), Delphine Clyburn and Brenda Foskey-Cyrus.

Starting at the substation at 9 a.m., ambassadors made their way from Winchester Avenue to Sheffield, walking up Division Street as a gray, low-hanging sky gave way to sun and a smudge of blue. At Sheffield and Division, they split into two groups, working with Davis-Cannon and fellow supervisor Matthew Wrocklage, a president’s public service fellow at Yale who got involved with the group through the Newhallville Safe Neighborhood Initiative. Their assignment: To hit each home, knocking on doors and chatting with a few neighbors who were sitting out on their stoops, and get the word out about Freddie Fixer Friday. 

The pitch seemed pretty easy, said ambassador Asia Hunter as she started down the sidewalk. From 9:30 to noon, the ambassadors will be out on those streets, working with neighbors to pick up the plastic bags, empty cigarette cartons, candy wrappers, empty plastic bottles and cans that tend to populate — and stink up — the street during the summer.

“It’s not really my thing,” said Hunter, who opted for the program because she didn’t want to spend another summer working at Dunkin’ Donuts. ​“But I guess it’s OK.”

She headed to her first house, shifting from foot to foot as she and ambassador Orianna Martin rang the doorbell. Nothing. She slipped a bright flyer into the door handle and headed down the steps, a slight bounce in her step. On the other side of the street, a group of ambassadors had stopped to speak with a group of young guys, sitting out on their porch in the sun. Hunter stopped to look at them momentarily, and then headed to the next house. 

For Moye, toting a black trash bag as he distributed literature on the other side of the street, the program is more personal, and not just because it’s his first paying job. He moved to Sheffield Avenue with his mom 10 years ago, and has found that he likes the street best when it’s trash-free. In the mornings, he walks from home to the substation, and has begun noticing what a change the program makes. Especially on Tuesdays — trash day for the neighborhood, and a full two days before the Department of Public Works comes through with a street-sweeping truck.

“I didn’t really notice it before,” he said, ​“But now I really like cleaning up, making the neighborhood cleaner.”

“I get that from my mom,” he added, opening the bag wide as Davis-Cannon dropped an entire rubber flip-flop into the bag with a thump. As he approached a nearby house, neighbor Michael Jones came down his three steps to clap him on the back and exchange greetings.

Already, a small group of ambassadors had gathered at the porch, where Jones, his daughter Mikela, and neighbor Jolene Ball had taken copies of the Freddie Fixer notice, and shifted subjects from trash day to neighborhood beautification to basketball. Among quips about NBA trades, Ball said she was grateful for the program.

“It’s a positive thing,” she said. ​“The kids are getting active, and not getting into trouble.”

“We all work together here,” added Jones, nearly finishing her sentence. ​“We’re very neighborly — in the fall, I come out here with my leaf blower, and then I do my lawn and the other houses.” The program was part of that, he said.

Working their way back down Sheffield Avenue to Huntington Street, ambassadors made a few more stops, some lifting their shirts over their noses as the sun rose higher, and hit overflowing trash cans that lined the street. While one group headed for the apartment and condo complexes that dominate the lower end of the block. ambassador Ben Brown made a special stop at 122 Sheffield, where his grandmother — who also happens to be alder Edwards — lives.

At the next house over, High School in the Community student Orianna Martin wasn’t having the same luck: a resident opened the door, only to shut it in her face after a few harsh words. Martin left a flyer on the door anyway. A resident of nearby Shelton Avenue, ​“I like seeing the neighborhood cleaned up,” she said. Even if that means a few not-so-nice interactions.

As the group headed down Huntington Street and back onto Winchester, Pearl Wilson waved them down from her front porch, asking to learn more about the program.

A handful of the ambassadors described the program, detailing Friday’s upcoming cleanapalooza. When she asked why they didn’t also do Winchester Avenue, they assured her that they did — it was a main artery in the city. Down the street, Davis-Cannon was already lifting a plastic bag with two discarded, stained paper plates into a now-heavy trash bag.

“I think it’s nice,” Wilson said afterwards. ​“But they should clean up Winchester too.”