As wildfires raged in California this summer, over 2000 of the firefighters on site were paid just one dollar per hour to battle the blaze. These firefighters were volunteers from inside of California's prison system. They're part of a national workforce of incarcerated people paid pennies per hour and sometimes nothing at all for hourly labor benefiting the U.S. economy. Driven in part by demands for better working conditions and wages, incarcerated workers last month began a…

In April, a Starbucks manager in Philadelphia called the police on two black men sitting peacefully inside a coffee shop. The culprit, according to Starbucks’ CEO and the city’s mayor, was implicit bias—subconscious thought that…

When Max Johnson saw an ad for a software coding school in San Francisco called Holberton, he was in a dead-end job and looking for a way out. The idea of being a computer programmer had been in the back of his mind since he was a teenager growing up in Camden, New Jersey. So, he took a chance and applied.  

Johnson had…

Download your PDF copy of this flyer here.…

There are a few prek spaces available in school readiness funded programs throughout the community.  Please share the flyer which you can download here with colleagues and New Haven families with children age 3 & 4 years old.  Below is a list of programs with openings as of September 11. For more info, contact me…

I'm Rick Crouse, a fourth year neuroscience graduate student at Yale and the co-president of Yale Student Science Diplomats, an organization dedicated to science communication, outreach, and advocacy. I'm writing this post to spread the word about Science Haven.

Science Haven is a collaboration between two Yale student-led science outreach groups: Yale Student Science Diplomats and Open Labs. We are interested in…

Serena Williams, decidedly the greatest athlete of our generation, is no stranger to the obstacles of being a strong, Black woman. This past weekend at the U.S. Open in the final match between her and Naomi Osaka, Williams—who was competing for her 24th Grand Slam tournament win—was charged with three penalty code violations, contributing to her ultimate defeat and a victory…

Walter "Pop" Smith Little League builds friendships and teaches life lessons

When the Walter “Pop” Smith Little League first started in 1952, the kids played with wooden bats and the field was on the corner of Goffe Street and Sherman Avenue. Bat materials have changed since then and the field has moved up the block. Yet the game of baseball itself…

on the opening of our New Haven Skate Park at Edgewood Park. See the pictures made by two great New Haven photographers:

On the I Love New Haven blog by Leigh Busby: Edgewood Skatepark Grand Opening

and

On Facebook by Misty from Lotta Studios:…

Most every city resident has something that he or she wants to see improved. Be it a playground, an overgrown lot or a needed service that is unavailable, the best ideas for making the city a better place often come from local residents. Unfortunately, not everyone has the resources to take action. Twenty-seven years ago, The Community Foundation for Greater…

Here's some exciting news for our community - this week it was announced that The Community Foundation made a Mission Related Investment in the District Innovation Venture Center, which has brought in a Silicon Valley-modeled training program to address the talent gap and ramp up the region's tech sector. The program boasts a 100% job-placement rate and an application process that removes bias. Read more about it in the …

When Margaret Hagerman was trying to recruit white affluent families as subjects for the research she was doing on race, one prospective interviewee told her, “I can try to connect you with my colleague at work who is black. She might be more helpful.”... https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/09/white-kids-race/569185/

Synopsis: Many of the children who are presently gearing up for a new school year are also preparing to face police on a daily basis. The numbers of cops in schools is growing, which often means that instead of a detention or a timeout, routine misbehavior can result in arrest and criminal charges — with children of color disproportionately impacted. The U.S. Department of Education recently released data collected from America’s 96,000 public schools. That data shows that students of color…

Synopsis: The emerging science of implicit bias is one of the most promising fields for animating the human change that makes social change possible. The social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji is one of its primary architects. She understands the mind as a “difference-seeking machine” that helps us order and navigate the overwhelming complexity of reality. But this gift also creates blind spots and biases, as we fill in what we don’t know with the limits of what we do know. This is science that…

Community Mediation, Inc. arose 37 years ago to meet a need for self-determined conflict resolution in the neighborhoods and schools of New Haven. In our heyday, we were conducting 800 independent and court-referred mediations a year, and training new mediators to meet the demand. Over time, our services expanded to include facilitation of dialogues in communities and organizations, and training facilitators to work in a range of settings. In the last few years, the context has…