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Gold and Gateway community cut ribbon on new center.
While helping to cut the ribbon on a newly renamed Gateway Community College (GCC) counseling and wellness center, alum Kelsey Snedeker thought back to when she lost both her adoptive and biological mothers a few months apart — and how Gateway’s wellness center got her through school and her loss.
Snedeker and dozens of other GCC stakeholders celebrated the funded future of the institution’s counseling center Thursday as a result of a $250,000 donation from the Amour Propre Fund Inc. and its president and local philanthropist, Lindy Lee Gold.
GCC hosted the check pass-off and ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday evening to celebrate Gold and the future of wellness programming at the center for students like Snedeker.
The gift from the Amour Propre Fund also resulted in the renaming of the center to the “Amour Propre Fund / LindyLee Gold Center for Counseling and Wellness.”
Maya McFadden Photo
The gifted funds will help to enhance the center’s current services and resources to provide more GCC students with academic, career, financial, and personal support.
Eighty GCC staff, stakeholders, and local leaders attended the ceremony in the Curran Community Center, which featured wine, finger foods, and cheese platters.
The speaking program for the evening included Gold supporters and friends including GCC CEO William Brown Gateway Community College Foundation Chair Helene Augustine, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, Mayor Justin Elicker, North Haven First Selectman Michael Freda, Connecticut State Colleges and Universities President Terrence Cheng, Community Foundation for Greater New Haven President William Ginsberg, and Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce President Garrett Sheehan.
Speakers expressed their excitement for the investment in the center’s wraparound services and coaching to “heal students.”
Brown noted that the Amour Propre Fund donation will particularly help to aid GCC students dealing with academic, mental, and emotional concerns due to the pandemic.
Elicker shared that this week he met with the Citywide Student Council at Hillhouse, and students mentioned the homicide of 17-year old Keiron Jones. He said several students suggested the school provide more mental health resources to students.
Gold cited the recent release of New Haven Public Schools math assessment data that shows that less than 1 percent of juniors and seniors are performing at their grade level in math. (Read more about the district’s literacy and math assessment results here.)
“Next year’s forecast, due in part to the pandemic, is more grim,” she said. “Together we will work to see even these students succeed. This is the very definition of inclusive economic growth. The greatest engines for social mobility are publicly funded community college and state universities.”
Gold reminded guests of the need to provide students access to wellness resources.
Gold has been a GCC Foundation Board member since 2006. She currently chairs the board’s Professional Development Committee and the Scholarship and Resource Development Committee.
Gold cited GCC’s mantra: “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
“The center for counseling and wellness will help in our quest for systemic sustainable change,” Gold said. “Our students will break the cycle of poverty and create a new paradigm, for not only themselves but for their families for generations to come. Justice. Equity. And student success.”
Kelsey Snedeker: Graduated with help of FESP.
Snedeker spoke of how the Family Economic Security Program (FESP) housed out of Gateway’s Center for Counseling and Wellness saved her and her education.
Snedeker shared that she was adopted into a loving family due to her biological mother suffering from severe mental illness. She got pregnant while a teenager in high school and “graduated high school ten days after having my daughter.”
As a single mother, Snedeker made the choice not to attend the University of New Haven after a “obstacle came up.”
She instead applied to GCC to continue her educational journey while being a mother.
In October 2019 Snedeker’s adoptive mother passed away unexpectedly.
“This changed my world,” she said. “I had to figure out how to take care of my daughter. I had to figure out how to make it to class. I had to figure out how to work.”
Snedeker sought help from a FESP counselor, who helped her deal with the loss of her adoptive mother, keep on track in school, and apply for emergency funding from FESP’s Helping Hands Program for her mother’s cremation cost and memorial.
Eight months after Snedeker’s adoptive mother passed away, her biological mother passed away.
“When I knew I needed someone to talk to, I knew it would be a FESP counselor, as they made me so comfortable,” she recalled.
At GCC, FESP helped Snedeker achieve her associate degree and learn more about herself, she reflected. In May 2021 Snedeker graduated from GCC.
Snedeker thanked Gold for a gift that will help “more students get through difficult times that may come up and help students with emergency needs.”
She added that this past February she also lost her father to Covid. Currently Snedeker is attending the University of Bridgeport, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in human services.
Sounds like this generation of snowflakes will never be allowed to get over COVID. And if they do dare to stand on their feet,, these do-gooders who profit off of misery will be sure they relapse quick. Many jobs and much money at stake in their inability to care for their own lives!