Newhallvile management team’s Kim Harris with Westville’s Marjorie Wiener and Newhallville’s Jeanette Sykes at Thursday’s kick-off.
Travel to Newhallville for a basketball tournament. To Amity to learn about native pollinators and plants. To the Hill to eat brunch and talk financial literacy.
Hearing about those events took only a few steps and a conversation at an official kick-off Thursday of a summer-long flurry of family-friendly activities designed to bring all of New Haven’s neighborhoods together long-term.
The organizers behind each of those events and more now want city residents to keep moving from neighborhood to neighborhood over the next two months to see just how much each part of town has to offer.
On Thursday afternoon over 100 New Haveners gathered in the indoor track of Hillhouse High School’s Floyd Athletic Center on Sherman Parkway to celebrate the opening day of the “One City Initiative,” a collaboration among the city’s 12 different community management teams to put together at least one family-friendly activity per day in each neighborhood for the next 60 days straight.
The initiative formally began at Hillhouse on Thursday and will end with a ceremony on the New Haven Green on Aug. 26. According to Kim Harris, the co-chair of the Newhallville Community Management Team and the founder and chief organizer of the initiative, “One City” already has around 770 activities planned for the summer. (Click here for details.)
During Thursday’s kick-off event, each community management team had its own table at the center of the track. The tables were positioned in a circle, surrounding dozens of children’s books which had been laid out in the shape of a peace symbol. Behind each management team’s table stood representatives from a handful of community organizations based in that particular neighborhood.
Throughout the afternoon, each management team and community organization pitched events that their neighborhood would be hosting throughout the summer as part of the “One City” festivities.
“New Haven is a hidden gem,” Harris said as she flitted from table to table, sporting a bright red shirt emblazoned with the name of her Newhallville pre-school. “There are so many opportunities. People just need access.”
Behind each set of tables, representatives from each neighborhood made their pitch as to why their community was worth a visit, or multiple visits, this summer.
In the Newhallville section of the room, Audra Clark and Adrienne Sheats from the Harris-Tucker school made their pitch for “Sundaes on Mondays,” a weekly opportunity for adults to come to the Newhall Street pre-school, read to children, and then make their own ice cream sundaes with the students. That activity will run from 3 to 5 p.m. every Monday this summer except for July 2.
Behind them, Baba Jide Davis, the community outreach coordinator for the Newhallville Safe Neighborhood Initiative, told passerby about the YouthStat 2 program, which helps 17 to 27-year-olds recently released from prison find housing, jobs, and earn their GEDs. Davis said his program, which is overseen by the city’s Youth Services Department, will be hosting a basketball tournament every Sunday at noon for the next six Sundays at Lincoln-Bassett School on Bassett Street.
In the Hill section of the room brother and sister team Steven and Rachel Cotton shared information about their organization Building IT Together, which holds free brunches and financial literacy workshops every Saturday at 12:30 at barbershop at 552 Congress Ave.
Over in Dwight, Lensley Gray of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, Southern Connecticut, Inc. promoted the upcoming opening of a new sickle cell disease education center at Orchard Street and Chapel Street just across from the old St. Raphael’s Hospital campus …
… while Dwight Community Management Team member Olivia Martson shared a poster board with photos and information on historic Dwight homes and buildings. She also brought with her photographs that her husband Sven had taken in 1992 of an anti-tax protest on the New Haven Green.
In the Downtown section, Alanis Allen, a summer intern with the New Haven Preservation Trust, told passerby about such upcoming activities as a native pollinators and plants workshop at the Pond Lily Nature Preserve in Amity on Tuesday, July 10 at 6 p.m. and a “Scat, Tracks & Trails” activity, where participants investigate dropping and tracks left by animals in Eugene B. Fargeorge Preserve in Quinnipiac Meadows on Wednesday, July 11 at 6 p.m.
Mecca gets her face painted by Neighborhood Housing Services’ Haley Brown.
“Togetherness,” Harris said when asked what “One City” strove to accomplish. “How do we take our uncommon relationships and pull together and make these collaborations for the future.”
New Haveners from every part of town did just that on Thursday afternoon. And they’ll have 60 more days to explore the different reaches of the city with the help of hundreds of “One City” activities.
Read previous coverage of the initiative below.
• “One City” Ready To Take On The Summer
• Neighborhoods Join Forces
• ‘One City’ Initiative Takes Shape
• How Neighborhoods Started Joining Forces
• Orange, Minus Cars
Click the Facebook Live vide below to see the press conference at City Hall and recent “One City” appearances of the management teams on WNNH’s Dateline New Haven Program.