A Young People’s ​“Village” Emerges

Melissa Atterberry-Jones understands that to raise a child, it takes a village. Hamden now understands that to make a village, it takes … Melissa Atterberry-Jones.

As of Saturday afternoon, after months of work, Atterberry-Jones’ village is now open. The fruit of those months of planning, ​“The Village,” is a new youth center on Pershing Avenue in Hamden.

Atterberry-Jones said she and her mother had talked about opening a youth center for years. Her mother used to run a daycare from her home. Kids in the neighborhood would stop by whenever they needed anything.

“Anything they needed, my mom’s house was that house,” she said. She said her mother used to say that kids needed a place to go instead of being on the streets. ​“We can’t just tell them to get off the streets and not have somewhere for them to go,” she said.

Her mother, Michele Atterberry, passed away in May. After that, said Atterberry-Jones, ​“I felt I had no choice but to follow in her footsteps.” With the recent uptick in shootings and murders, and with so many families struggling, it needed to happen now.

At its grand opening Saturday afternoon, The Village was packed with friends, kids, community leaders, town officials, gold and black balloons, and a smattering of politicians. Darryl Pervis of Dperv’s T. O. P. BBQ was serving sumptuous-smelling trays of fried chicken and rice.

While it may take a village to raise a child, Atterberry-Jones did most of the work to create the village in the first place. She said she’s been working on the center for about two months. She funded it entirely herself.

As she walked around the one-room space, she pointed out where the many activities would take place. One side is devoted to fitness. In one corner is a boxing ring, where boxing teacher Solomon Maye was coaching kids through a match. Along another wall are weights and other gym equipment like treadmills and ellipticals.

On the other side of the central column that divides the room in two were the tables laden with food, but when the space is in use, Atterberry-Jones said, it will mostly remain open for activities like dance. There is a foosball table and a pool table, along with an alcove with TV for video games, a small basketball hoop, and a table with a chess set.

Atterberry-Jones said that side of the room would be used for games, arts, crafts. A table set apart from the rest of the room by dividers will provide the space for homework.

While The Village will offer kids the chance to learn boxing and dance, it will also teach them life skills like how to change a tire and how to tie a tie. It is also partnering with a bank to teach financial literacy.

While Atterberry-Jones created, and will run, the center, she started to get help from friends, politicians, and the town.

A few weeks ago, her car was vandalized. She called the police, and an officer showed up to investigate. He asked her what she was working on, and she told him that she was creating a rec center. The officer told her she should talk to his sergeant, who was looking for ways to engage with the town’s youth.

A few days later, Atterberry-Jones got a call from Hamden Sgt. William Onofrio.

“This is all her,” said Onofrio. But he said the department has helped however it could. It connected Atterberry-Jones to businesses in the area that could partner, and is helping her through the process of becoming a non-profit.

The department will also send plainclothes officers to the center a few days a week to mentor kids. He said he wants officers to build relationships with kids. The department will also be able to send teenagers deemed ​“at-risk” who have been referred to the town’s juvenile review board to The Village. He said they would come to the center so they could have something to look forward to, and have a place to learn to box, or play games.

Mayor Curt Leng said he is thrilled to see the center opening. ​“They did it on their own, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.

Leng was standing near the treadmills, facing the boxing ring.

In the ring, Brianna Alers and Amir Foster (pictured above) were bounding about in a match.

“Keep your head down! Keep your chin down,” shouted coach Solomon Maye from the side.

Maye has moved his teaching operation to The Village. He runs Knock ​‘em Boy, LLC, and a non-profit called Tha Bridge.

Maye said he hopes to use boxing to provide structure and stability that he didn’t have as a kid. ​“Boxing was like a parent to me,” he said.

He started as an amateur boxer at 13, but his amateur career ended when he started going back and forth to prison. After serving a six-year sentence, he started boxing as a professional at age 38. He said he never intended to teach, but kids would ask him for pointers when he was training in the gym, and that pushed him toward his current role as a mentor.

“I want to be to them what I didn’t have,” he said. A lot of the kids he mentors don’t have fathers, or their parents don’t have time to take care of them because they have to work. Boxing requires discipline, and above all, trust, he said. It forces him to build strong relationships with the kids he mentors, he said.

The center is open to any student from grades 7 – 12 who wants to come. There is a one-time $25 registration fee, and after that, they can come for however much or little time they want. It will be open Monday-Saturday, 2:30 – 6 p.m.

Atterberry-Jones gave a list of her dreams for The Village. ​“I’m hoping by this time next year we have to move into a bigger space,” she said. She said she would like to start a community closet where kids can come get clothes for free. Someday, she said, she hopes to create a scholarship, and even provide housing for kids who don’t have homes.

But for now, she can give kids a place to come after school, and a community. ​“Sometimes what a kid needs is just to know that someone loves them and someone cares,” she said. ​“And we want to be that support for them.”