Analyzing Gun Violence Data

in Waterbury

Over the past 18-months, Senior Portfolio Director and Director of Data and Research Adhlere Coffy and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) have provided capacity-building supports to the cities of New Haven, Bridgeport, and Hartford to analyze their gun violence data and use it to support the creation of operational plans to reduce gun violence that impacts CTOP's target population in their cities.

Connecticut's Unspoken Crisis showed that the City of Waterbury has a similarly high percentage of young people experiencing disconnection as these three major cities, and the city's data also shows a gun violence problem impacting those young people. So, over the last few months, Adhlere and BCG have been supporting the Brass City municipal leaders and the Waterbury Police Department in conducting a gun violence problem analysis to better understand key trends such as who is most affected by and involved in gun violence in Waterbury, where challenges are most pronounced, and what areas are most important for further inquiry. We are excited to share the full analysis later this year.

Expanding Career Pathways for All Requires Investment in Community-Based Organizations

CTOP and Dalio Education continue to focus our efforts on building workforce development pathways in Connecticut for severely off-track and disconnected youth. CTOP's Deputy Director Amanda Olberg penned an op-ed recognizing the CBIA Foundation's Connecticut Workforce & Education Strategy Blueprint, and pushing for this strategy and the Connecticut Career Pathways Commission to prioritize the population of young people experiencing disconnection who are beyond the reach of school-based programs. In order to reach this group of young people and reconnect them to the workforce, the state needs to invest in nonprofit organizations with proven track records of reaching young people beyond the grasp of schools.

Over the last 10 months, CTOP has worked with Community Psychiatry PRIDE at Massachusetts General Hospital to provide a 35-week cognitive behavioral techniques training and coaching program to our team along with staff from four CTOP grantee partners. In June, participants completed their final coaching session and their assessment for certification so that they can now use and teach TEB skills to young people in their programs.

Congratulations to the 19 professionals who completed this program! We are excited to launch a train-the-trainer cohort in the fall so that organizations can train, coach, and develop staff continuously.

In June, Roca's Hartford Young Women's Program celebrated another cohort of graduates from their behavioral health intervention program that teaches young women the skills necessary to choose to live and set themselves and their children up for success.

In this year's graduating cohort, 11 young women step into their futures on a path towards self-sufficiency.

• 2 CNA graduates in partnership with Harriott Home Health
• 3 culinary graduates in partnership with CTOP grantee partner Forge City Works
• 2 Bridge to Success graduates in partnership with Trinity Health
• 5 high school graduates
• 1 Transitional Employment Program graduate

Congratulations to these young women!

In July, Forge City Works celebrated eight young people for graduating from their culinary job training program. In this cohort, one Roca young woman and three COMPASS youth graduated as a part of the Pathways to Careers strategy. All of the graduates earned ServSafe certifications and are pursuing food service career paths, some via internships at one of Forge City Works' social enterprise businesses and some through external employment.

Congratulations to these young people!

In June, Forge City Works (FCW) hosted its first annual Alumni Summer Cookout, where they gathered alumni, trainees, and staff to build community, play games, fire up the grill, and compete in a pie eating contest. FCW also intentionally leveraged the event to continue securing input on programming opportunities they will be making available to graduates and recruit youth to participate in those workshops.

The event was a rousing success. In the months leading up to the event, CTOP Senior Portfolio Associate Emily Bonzagni supported FCW's Employment Specialist Alba Ortega in planning and project managing the event.

COMPASS Hosts Gabby Giffords in Hartford

In April, COMPASS hosted former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, founder of Giffords, an organization fighting to end the gun lobby’s stranglehold on our political system, for a roundtable discussion about gun violence. COMPASS co-hosted the event with the Hispanic Federation and was joined by leaders from the City of Hartford, Trinity Health, Connecticut Children's Medical Center, Yale School of Public Health, Roca Hartford, Hartford Communities That Care, and Mothers Against Gun Violence. The conversation focused on the work being done in Hartford to quell gun violence and make Hartford safer for everyone, especially its young people.

Diego Lopez Featured as a

Champion of Peace

Diego Lopez, Peacebuilder Lead at COMPASS, was featured by Giffords as a Champion of Peace. Lopez gave a poignent interview where he discussed his lived experience, his work, and his hopes for the future.

COMPASS hosted its Annual Meeting on June 25, where they introduced new board members and hosted a panel discussion with key stakeholders, including Greg Jackson, former Deputy Director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and Special Assistant to President Joe Biden; Commissioner Gary Roberg, Executive Director for the State of Connecticut Judicial Branch’s Court Support Services Division; Sergeant Christopher Mastroianni, Hartford Police Department; Attorney Trudy Condio; COMPASS CEO Jacquelyn Santiago; COMPASS Team Lead Diego Lopez; and a COMPASS youth, Gigi.

WTNH's Kathryn Hauser moderated the panel, which examined the Community Violence Intervention Model and its role within the community violence intervention ecosystem.

At the end of June, Becky McGuigan, Co-Interim Executive Director and Director of Training Programs at Forge City Works, joined more than 100 employment social enterprise leaders in Chicago for a gathering hosted by Redefine Alliance, formerly REDF. Leaders from across the country came together to share best practices, innovative ideas, and new strategies for using social enterprise to create stronger pathways to employment. Becky and the Forge City Works team are already thinking about how to apply these learnings to continue to strengthen their program!

Evie joins us after five years at CTOP grantee partner Domus Kids, where she most recently served as a Post-Secondary Support Coordinator. Evie built this role from the ground up, working with seniors across all three of Domus’s high school programs to chart their paths beyond high school. She was also previously a family advocate at Stamford High School, where she created meaningful connections with students and their families, helping to bridge the gap between home and school life while providing the skills necessary for graduation and leading a life of self-sufficiency. Before her work at Domus, Evie was a substitute teacher across various school districts in Connecticut and provided re-entry services to individuals returning from incarceration in New York City.

Evie grew up in Naugatuck and lives in Stamford. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UConn and a master’s degree in social and forensic psychology from NYU.