Gwendolyn Busch Williams at WNHH FM.
Coogan Pavilion is a wide-open space. And now it’s a community space: Depending on what time you enter it, you might stumble into a line-dancing class. Or a yoga class. Or a ceramics session. Or painting.
A different nonprofit group runs each of those activities. The landlord is the city’s Youth and Recreation Department (YARD).
YARD is in the process of replicating what’s happening at Coogan (by the Edgewood Skate Park) at eight underused buildings in parks throughout the city. The idea is partnering with nonprofits to bring much-requested public activities, especially for kids, to underused buildings: YARD keeps the buildings open and in shape, then coordinates with nonprofits that come in to use the space for free to serve the public.
Gwendolyn Busch Williams spoke about that innovative new approach during an interview Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”
Busch Williams, a New Haven native who has worked for variations of the city’s youth department since 2007, became the first director of YARD when the Elicker administration created it in 2020 as a merger of the old youth department and the recreation wing of the former Department of Parks, Recreation and Trees. The idea was to turbocharge youth activities in a coordinated way for the city’s 21,000 school-age children.
Maya McFadden Photo
City teens at YARD-organized Westville Musical Bowl concert.
Under Busch Williams, YARD has done that with gusto. Buoyed by $3 million in federal pandemic-relief money that runs through 2026, it has staged summer and back-to-school concerts for students at Westville Bowl and College Street Music Hall; opened learning hubs and mass meal-distribution events when the pandemic closed the schools; expanded summer camps; and organized annual Halloween “Trunk-or-Treat” events, among other activities.
In addition to pioneering the new neighborhood community youth center approach, YARD has updated the former YouthStat program (now called Youth Connect) to include more community agencies in guiding the 100 identified most at-risk students in town to safer and more productive lives.
Busch Williams spoke about all that, and about how growing up in Bethel AME Church prepared her for a career in youth leadership, on the episode of “Dateline,” which you can watch by clicking on the above video.
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Gwen is a great leader and has taken the department to new heights in a short amount of time. She truly cares about our youth and has implemented programs to assist in not only their development but the factors that contribute to truancy and involvement in the criminal justice system. New Haven definitely benefits from Gwen and her staff.