While the blog is on summer vacation, we’re sharing past posts about the many ways City Connects helps students thrive.
This week’s post looks at the work some of our community partners are doing. City Connects is proud to work with community partners who make opportunities available to all students.
“Who We Work With: The YMCA”
City Connects and the YMCA have developed strong collaborations throughout Massachusetts. The Executive Director of the YMCA of the North Shore in Salem, Charity Lezama, said that when she and her colleagues identify a child or family in need of specific supports, they “communicate these updates to the [relevant] City Connects Coordinator to ensure that the school is aware and can prepare any services that the student may need at school the next day.”
YMCA locations are especially well-regarded nationwide for their accessible sports programs. In the Boston area, such programs play a strong role for many City Connects students. Megan McShane, the Coordinator at the St. Columbkille Partnership School in the Brighton neighborhood, said, “Sometimes, in passing, students will discuss having played basketball [at the YMCA] over the weekend, and I’ll think, Wow, I didn’t realize you were connected to that. The YMCA knows my students and families as well as I do.” This synergy of relationships and support springs from the City Connects model.
“Dayton Flight: a community partnership that connects students to African-American men”
In Dayton, Ohio, Coordinator Keisha Anderson set out to establish a community partnership with a focus on African-American boys, whom she observed faced a lack of such programming. She reached out to a local pro basketball team, the Dayton Flight, and soon found success. The team provided families at Belle Haven Elementary School with tickets to games, and some players even attended the school’s Field Day, playing basketball with the students and creating “big brother moments,” as Anderson called them.
“Ms. Anderson and the kids probably felt like we were doing something for them, but they’re doing something for us,” said Flight General Manager Brandon Harper. “If we’re not touching these young folks’ lives in some way other than entertainment, then we’re not really professionals.”
“A book drive thrives, thanks to a community partnership”
In the wake of the COVID pandemic, Coordinator Stephanie Sanabria collaborated with the Marketing Specialist of MassMutual Federal Credit Union, Samantha Barnes, to reimagine MMFCU’s book drive program for children. The program used to function via a big box in a hallway outside the credit union’s office. However, for obvious reasons, the foot traffic near the box came to a halt in the spring of 2020.
The disruption spurred fresh ideas. Barnes transitioned the book drive online and, after consulting Sanabria (who’s now a Program Manager), learned of a particular need for books for older children. Over the next few years, the drive adopted a model of online and in-person donations alike, collecting 579 books in 2022.
“It’s a more tailored partnership,” Sanabria said that year. “The credit union wants our input, which means we can tailor requests to the needs of our students. I even received a request from a Coordinator who wanted a few books to set up a lending library in her office.”
Learn more about how partnerships enrich the lives of students during the school year, and all summer long.
