“Mini Y” Envisioned For West Rock Kids

What if a West Rock community center had an art and music space combined with a recording studio? And a gym and boxing area for fitness and a playground for little kids? And an expanded library and upgraded computer center?

Those items and more were very much on a wish list in formation as young New Haveners gathered to look ahead to a future, expanded 295 Wilmot Rd. Family Center.

That 25-year-old building is fairly dilapidated now and struggling with insufficient facilities to serve an estimated 1,000 young people in the heart of the Housing Authority of New Haven’s otherwise rehabilitated West Rock communities of Brookside, Rockview, and Twin Brook.

Two dozen kids from those adjacent enclaves were attending a career training session on Thursday to both prepare for this summer’s Youth at Work job assignments and at the same time to begin to focus on their own short- and long-term life goals.

“Exactly what a Y is” for other communities — a kind of all-purpose place for fun, health, training, and supportive services — said HANH’s Director of Community Economic Development LaToya Mills, is precisely what they would like to see reborn in their building. 

With a recently scored $3 million federal grant, augmenting HANH’s own $2 million, the question of how to turn the smallish, concrete-block current building into a kind of well-lit, welcoming, all-purpose ​“mini Y” filled the old hallways on a bright Thursday afternoon with a special sense of celebration and optimism.

You could sense it in the ​“visioning” session that staffer Taisha Franklin was running: getting the kids to write out goals, short term and long, and then to create ​“vision boards,” with those expressed goals decorated with augmenting, motivational images cut from magazines, a kind of collage for self direction to hang in each person’s room to help guide their actions.

The Osei-Bonsu sisters, Rachael and Elaine, certainly were buying into the idea. 

Elaine, already a top student at Career High School, has her eye on a medical career when she begins college in the fall (either at UCONN or Howard), so she was cutting out images of little babies, although she wasn’t quite sure if her goal is to become an OB/GYN doc or a pediatrician.

Meanwhile her little sister, and Career High School freshman, Rachael, was keeping it more general as she cut out a picture of the Eiffel Tower from The New Yorker. ​“I want to be rich and to travel,” she declared, revealing that she’d already saved up $500 for her adventures.

“Wait,” called out Franklin. We’re distinguishing between short term and long term goals. A long term goal is to graduate from college. A short term goal is to help your parents, for example, to pay a bill.

“Becoming a billionaire?” she inflected the sentence into a question for the group, but with an eye on Rachael. ​“Goals are not the same as dreams.”

New Haven Academy freshman Isaac Mateo got Franklin’s idea as well, although he deferred helping his mom pay some of her bills until after he lives in a mansion, which success will be made possible by a successful career as a football player. 

“Please put in there,” he told a reporter whom he kindly permitted to read his worksheet over the shoulder, ​“that I want to become a better Christian as well.”

Another young man, currently working in the center’s offices (and clearly saving his money) wowed his colleagues by saying he’d already fulfilled an important shorter term goal. 

Seventeen-year-old Jayden Thompson had bought a car, making it easier to get to his jobs. Actually two used cars, he added. One serviceable old Toyota for work and another car for private, more special occasions.

As the kids nibbled on the pizza slices provided, and continued to fill out their worksheets and vision boards, the room broke into quiet applause.

Mills estimated that easily 80 percent of the young people in Brookside, Rockview, and Twin Rock developments participate in programs at the building, which can grow very cramped on busy days. 

Also other local organizations key to the community, such as the leadership-training Solar Youth, used to have headquarters at 295 Wilmot Rd. However, scheduling conflicts and serious roof leaks, among other issues, have resulted in their having to find space elsewhere.

Mills said she’d like to have them back, all under a wonderful, secure new roof. Sessions to solicit more specific community input are scheduled for the coming months.