by | Feb 20, 2024 1:27 pm | Comments (2)
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Monday's financial literacy workshop at The Shack with Chanelle Goldson.
Make your money work for you. Don’t work harder, work smarter. You can’t out-invest bad spending habits.
by | Dec 20, 2023 5:24 pm | Comments (37)
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Shelter staff and helpers Danielle Robertson, Deshaya George, and John Labieniec.
There’s room at the former Days Inn on Foxon Boulevard this holiday season.
by | Dec 5, 2023 1:03 pm | Comments (4)
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Orchard St. shelter client Tony Briggs: "Whether it's mats, pads, or the floor, it's better than freezing your ass off."
Career student Aleika Pizarro: The new shelter is "actually a good thing."
Just before sunrise, Tony Briggs stepped out of the city’s newest overnight “warming center” at a former school on Orchard Street — roughly half an hour before Career High School senior Aleika Pizarro arrived early for classes right across the street.
Briggs left the shelter grateful for a warm place to spend a cold New Haven night. Pizarro arrived at school with compassion and understanding that all city dwellers deserve a safe place to lay their heads.
Continue reading ‘On Orchard, Shelter Night Ends, Then School Day Begins’
by | Nov 28, 2023 3:49 pm | Comments (9)
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Grubbs: After 35 years, it was time.
The Rev. Bonita Grubbs has more big plans for Christian Community Action, the anti-poverty agency she runs.
She concluded that it’s time for someone else to put them into practice.
Continue reading ‘Anti-Poverty Champion Bonita Grubbs Retires’
by | Nov 21, 2023 2:49 pm | Comments (25)
Thomas Breen file photo
Mayor Elicker (at podium) and regional health leaders on Tuesday.
Roughly $10 million in federal aid will flow to the New Haven area over the next five years to help municipal health departments take a regional approach in combating the opioid epidemic through the hiring of 10 case-management “navigators” and the cross-town sharing of overdose data.
This aid comes as the number of overdose deaths in 2022 reached 490 in New Haven county, including 128 in the city itself.
Continue reading ‘Overdose-Prevention Grant Heralded On Grand’
by | Nov 21, 2023 11:01 am | Comments (6)
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F.A.M.E. Middle Schoolers from dance Cumbia with their senior citizen counterparts in Fair Haven.
Fair Haven school kids filed into the Atwater Senior Center to keep their senior counterparts company in advance of Thanksgiving — and to dance cumbia with New Haveners like 73-year-old Yvonne Sheppard, who said the celebration was less a loneliness intervention than it was a special occasion among a vibrant city full of friends.
Continue reading ‘Atwater Thanksgiving Brings Fair Haven Together’
by | Nov 21, 2023 8:49 am | Comments (2)
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Orsella Hughes, Ginne-Rae Clay, Fixing Fathers Inc. Founder Dr. David Asbery, and Larry Conaway.
In a music- and dance-filled celebration, the Prosperity Foundation distributed $900,000 in grant funds to 25 mostly Black-led organizations.
Continue reading ‘Prosperity Foundation Awards $900K In Cannabis-Legalization-Related Grants’
by | Nov 20, 2023 4:23 pm | Comments (19)
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Columbus House CEO Margaret Middleton: Bracing for “silver tsunami of people experiencing homelessness.”
A leading provider of local homelessness services is tearing down its one-story office space — and building 80 bedrooms in its place in order to better accommodate a changing landscape of unhoused New Haveners.
Continue reading ‘Columbus House To Build New 80-Room Shelter’
by | Nov 20, 2023 12:37 pm | Comments (0)
Contributed photo
Will Ginsberg.
Will Ginsberg will retire in November 2024 from his longtime post as president and chief executive officer of The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, marking the end of what will be 24 years of serving as the leader of the local philanthropic organization.
Continue reading ‘Community Foundation Prez To Retire In Late 2024’
by | Nov 16, 2023 8:28 am | Comments (11)
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Jacqueline James-Boyd at Newhallville meetup: Cannabis cash meant to address "all the issues we have in Black and Brown communities.”
Millions of dollars in cannabis-legalization money are slated to trickle back into New Haven’s neighborhoods most negatively impacted by the War on Drugs — and residents are responding with programmatic pitches to put those funds towards community revitalization, from serving the homeless hot meals to mentoring Black billionaires in the making.
Continue reading ‘Neighborhood Q: How To Spend State Cannabis Cash?’
by | Nov 13, 2023 11:38 am | Comments (8)
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Eliza Halsey at Thursday's Board of Alders meeting.
The Board of Alders officially approved local charter school founder Eliza Halsey to lead the city’s social services department — while passing new mechanisms to enforce elevator maintenance and salons’ health code compliance.
Continue reading ‘Halsey Confirmed As New Social Services Chief’
by | Nov 10, 2023 12:25 pm | Comments (16)
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Mt. Calvary Deliverance Tabernacle Pastor Robert Smith (right), with Youth Continuum's Tim Maguire: "The community is hurting."
A local homelessness services nonprofit is looking to open the city’s first warming shelter exclusively for young adults — but is still searching for a location after scrapping a Newhallville church partnership in the face of community opposition.
Continue reading ‘Youth Shelter Planned, But Not For Hazel St.’
by | Nov 3, 2023 2:31 pm | Comments (1)
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Toni Thorpe, Royce Hatfield, Richard Cowes, Sara Gonzalez, Latoya Armstrong, and Stephanie Paris-Cooper.
Every day last spring, Latoya Armstrong dropped her daughter off for camp at the Q House.
One day in April, on her way out she scanned a flyer QR code to learn about the programs at the Dixwell community center and found a perfect fit for herself: GED classes by the New Haven Adult & Continuing Education Center.
by | Oct 25, 2023 12:50 pm | Comments (4)
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At Georgia Goldburn's Hope Child Development Center in October 2022.
More early childcare providers, higher wages for those teaching the city’s toddlers, and better help for parents struggling to find the right daycare or pre‑K for their kids.
Those are some changes that could happen here in New Haven, now that the city has committed $3.5 million in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act to help its struggling childcare system — so long as providers come through with proposals about how to spend the money.
by | Oct 24, 2023 1:32 pm | Comments (2)
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Community Services Administrator nominee Eliza Halsey, at City Hall Monday.
The founder and long-time executive director of a Blake Street public charter school is one big step closer to becoming the city’s next head of social services, after winning a vote of support from a key aldermanic committee.
Continue reading ‘New Social Services Chief's Appointment Advances’
by | Sep 18, 2023 4:22 pm | Comments (13)
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Pride Center Executive Director Juancarlos Soto (center): "Come party with us!"
Drag performances, banned books, rainbow flags and more will be on display across New Haven this week — as the city kicks off its annual pride festival.
by | Sep 5, 2023 11:58 am | Comments (5)
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Saving a gun shot victim at the Shack during a Yale EMT training program.
Aspiring Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) Andreanna Adkins, Iijonnia White, and Kimah Davis kneeled down to aid a plastic-dummy “gun shot victim” on Elm Street — inside a West Hills community center, as part of their training to save a real life down the line.
by | Aug 31, 2023 1:00 pm | Comments (3)
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Metro's restorative justice boots on the ground: Connie Catrone, Nyla Johnay Conaway, Briana Harrington, Courtney Maddox, Tienna Guadarrama, Daymary Lopez, and Stephen Staysniak.
In a bid to expand its restorative justice practices, Metropolitan Business Academy has put together a class for the second year in a row that focuses on helping high schoolers learn that “there are other ways to deal with harm.”
Continue reading ‘Metro Class Readies For Restorative Justice’
by | Aug 10, 2023 9:05 am | Comments (7)
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A memorial made by passerby on the steps where Petrulis passed this week.
Kaysie Mire felt scared, alone and lost the first time she visited a homelessness drop-in center — until Keith Petrulis, who’d been without housing for two years, took it upon himself to tell Mire, “Hey, you’re okay.” He showed her around the space, offered her some snacks, and introduced her to her future boyfriend.
Eight months later, Mire and her partner have secured an apartment and are expecting a child together — while their best friend, Petrulis, is now dead, after his body was found on the State Street sidewalk where he’d been sleeping for the last two weeks.
Continue reading ‘Unhoused Activists Mourn One Of Their Own’
by | Aug 3, 2023 3:48 pm | Comments (5)
The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven’s largest grant program has funneled more than $2 million to 77 local nonprofits — funding programs in Greater New Haven that help kids thrive after school, unhoused people find beds to sleep in, artists create with more financial security, and childcare organizations survive a struggling yet essential industry, among a wide range of services.
Continue reading ‘77 Nonprofits Receive $2 Million In Grants’
by | Jul 31, 2023 4:13 pm | Comments (22)
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Queenie Nkrumah (center) in class for S.T.R.E.E.T Credit and Enrichment Program.
Fifteen-year-old Queenie Nkrumah penned a letter to her future self five years from now detailing her goals to buy a home for her mother, become a real estate agent, and work toward making $1 million by age 21.
Continue reading ‘Black Corner Students Study For Financial Freedom’
by | Jul 31, 2023 11:48 am | Comments (29)
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Ex-social services chief Mehul Dalal: "There's no secret plan."
Loved ones of lives lost to overdoses stepped out of the shadows and into City Hall to express both support and skepticism towards medically supervised injection and drug consumption sites — and to slam a mayoral candidate’s public opposition to such harm reduction centers as politicizing and polarizing opioid addiction.
Continue reading ‘Safe-Use Hearing Shines Light On Overdoses’
by | Jul 26, 2023 8:34 am | Comments (0)
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Chynna Sherrod, Claire Criscuolo, and Josiah Brown.
Connecticut CASA, a New Haven-based nonprofit organization, submitted the following account of a recent event held on its behalf.
On July 20, Connecticut Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) held a “Cooking for CASA” Benefit with Chef Claire Criscuolo and a musical performance by Chynna Sherrod.
Continue reading ‘Benefit Brings Cooking & Singing For Child Advocacy’
by | Jul 25, 2023 3:45 pm | Comments (12)
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Hana and Eva Feldman, both ready for college.
Hana Feldman plans to return to school once her firstborn is old enough for daycare — and hopes that two-week-old Eva will have an easier time following in her footsteps with state money newly set aside for college tuition.
by | Jul 24, 2023 6:56 pm | Comments (74)
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Goldenberg: "New Haven should not be an experiment for the state."
The Elicker administration is in the early stages of looking into medically supervised injection and drug consumption sites as a local strategy for combating opioid overdoses — while a mayoral challenger is pushing back against those tentative plans as a tactic for bashing the incumbent.