‘Disconnected youth’ commission taking first steps toward strategy

When the Dalio Foundation released a report last October about Connecticut’s 119,000 “disconnected youth,” it said it was just the start of the work to come.

Months later, the 119K Commission , a 15-person group made up mainly of town mayors tasked with coming up with strategies to tackle the problem, is still developing a strategy — and doesn’t have a cost estimate for its efforts.

Still, the group says its “North Star” goal is to get 60,000 at-risk and disconnected youth back on track within the next 10 years.

The first step was bringing awareness to the issue of the growing number of Connecticut youth, from ages 14 to 26, who were judged to be disconnected or at risk of being disconnected from school or employment, based on factors such as chronic absenteeism, behavioral issues, and leaving school without a degree or other path to employment.

The 119K Commission said it plans to release a detailed strategy in October but did not provide further details at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

“This is a process that you have to really get your arms around the scope to make sure that the strategy that you put out will truly move the needle and answer that question of, ‘What would it look like to reduce this population by 60,000?'” Joe DeLong, a commission co-chair and executive director and CEO of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities , told The Connecticut Mirror. “It’s such an important measure because there are probably going to be a series of things that we would really like to happen to this strategy that ultimately may not make the cut because, as you put it through those filters, it doesn’t meet that goal.”

DeLong said some initiatives — such as partnerships to work on curriculum changes to keep students better engaged, more community centers for extracurricular programs or more organizations offering wraparound services for struggling students — are being analyzed, but there wasn’t anything set in stone yet.

“The one concept I think that the whole commission has coalesced around from the beginning is that we have to create this young-person, student-centered model in terms of their needs,” DeLong said.

That effort has begun with a listening tour with months of roundtables with youth from Waterbury, Stamford and Bridgeport so far.

Two more meetings are planned in Stratford and Hartford, which would total 200 youth involved in “representing a mix of young people from at risk, to modernly disconnected, to severely disconnected, different ages, genders and race,” and their perspectives, said Josh Brown, a co-chairperson from Domus , a Stamford-based nonprofit that works with disconnected and disengaged youth.

“There are many insights, but there’s six big lessons that we have learned from our young people. One [is that] these young people have dreams, just like all young people. Some of them want to be doctors, real estate professionals, lawyers, entrepreneurs, photographers, police officers and even educators,” Brown said. “Two [is that] charting a path to achieve their goals and dreams is often based on Google. If they’re lucky enough, they’ll have a family friend or somebody that also has experience and go to them as well, but with that being said, in most cases, these young people have to be very self sufficient.”

Students also said youth programs and resources are hard to navigate and that high school can feel like an obstacle when they can’t find transportation to campus, may have to take care of siblings or curriculum may not fit their interests.

“One thing is clear and common: we all heard they’re bored,” Brown said.

Young people lack a sense of community and “there’s scarce access to recreation,” Brown added. “They have cited a wide range of wishes, ranging from questions on how to access nature walks, going to the library on the weekend, or common comments that are limited opportunities — either because they don’t have the money, or … they just don’t know about it,” including weekend activities or sport leagues.

The insight from the community so far has led to four “emerging strategic pillars”: coalition, coordination, conditions and capacity, said Andrew Ferguson, a co-chairperson for Dalio Education, a grant foundation that engages with public school communities and provides funding to several nonprofits.

“These four things are building on some existing efforts in Connecticut, but they’re also helping to build out a lot that doesn’t exist yet,” Ferguson said.

DeLong said more “really deep dives” are needed in the next three months as they finalize their strategic plan.

“There’s areas that we all think are really, really important, but they they need to wait to be explored at a later time, because they won’t be part of this initial strategy that meets the mission,” DeLong said. “[There’s] such a wide and important variety of areas [youth need help in] that go from housing and homelessness to food insecurity to trauma. … We need something that defines actions going forward.”

Editor’s Note: The CT Mirror is a grantee of the Dalio Foundation.

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3. Report: About 19% of CT youth ‘disconnected’ or ‘at risk’ in 2021-22