Markeshia Ricks Photo
A youth empowerment project has two new faces and two new locations in Dixwell.
On Monday afternoon, banners featuring portraits of Isaiah Bussey and Makayla Dawkins went up on the vacant former C‑Town Supermarket building on Dixwell Avenue and on the Dixwell firehouse.
The installation of the banners is the latest in the march of the IMatter Project’s plan to put up 100 banners featuring young people from New Haven all over the city. The first banners were installed Downtown on the buildings that house the Dollar Tree Store (Chapel Street), MBA High School (Water Street) and LoRicco Towers (Crown Street). Dixwell is home to the project’s first neighborhood banners, the first of which went up on the Goffe Street Armory.
Both Dawkins, 17, and Bussey, 18, were on hand Monday to watch their likenesses go up.
Dawkins, who serves as a student representative on the Board of Education, said when she saw the banners up downtown she immediately wanted to get involved with the IMatter Project. Little did she know, but the day after those banners went up she would be invited to participate.
“It’s amazing,” she said.
Friends, family and neighborhood cheerleaders including Nina Silva, who happens to be Bussey’s mom, Stetson Librarian Diane Brown, Dixwell Neighborhood Specialist Diondrea Moore and Sharon McCann.
Brown said that the Stetson Library is central to helping those who live in the historically African-American neighborhood remember its significance and she said “it’s important to have positive images of youth” to help foster a strong sense of identity and pride.
Fire Chief John Alston Jr. said that having Makayla’s picture up on the firehouse is a great reminder to the youth of the neighborhood that they are always welcomed.
Diondrea Moore Photo
Rob Goldman, the creator of the IMatter Project, said that it has been exciting to see the project embraced in the city and now in the neighborhood of Dixwell to give young people a voice.
Click the play button below to catch an IMatter Project presentation at the Dixwell firehouse.