A Hartford summer camp works to serve more than kids, but also a community ‘looking for connection’

Hartford Communities That Care is once again opening its doors to some of the city’s youngest residents, as it relaunches its summer camp for ages five to 13.

The original summer camp, which had run for about 15 years, became – like so many childcare services – a casualty of the COVID pandemic in 2020.

“It’s so nice to see the relaunch coming in, bringing it back to where we started,” said HCTC’s operations manager, Edward Brown III.

A return, but also something of an evolution. The six-week camp, called the New Journey Titans Summer Program, now has extended hours from 8.30 a.m. to 4 p.m. each weekday, and it has a new director, Dayzra Bournes. She says the 40 spots in the program went quickly once they got the word out.

“My phone was blowing up – it was overwhelming,” she said. “But it was also a little emotional. They were so overjoyed for what we were offering to them as families.”

The camp is free, and will be held at HCTC’s headquarters at 2550 Main St. Bournes said that accessibility is crucial for many families who don’t have other close or affordable options for childcare in the summer.

The organization is partnering with Phillips Metropolitan CME Church right next door on Main, which in past years has run summer services for kids through a Freedom School program.

That program was one of a network organized by the Children’s Defense Fund, an initiative that traced its origins back to the very first Freedom School opened by civil rights leaders in Mississippi in 1964. Bournes said this summer’s combined program builds on the Freedom School model, “understanding what that was, and then building off of it, but also making it our own,” she said. “We kind of put our own little twist to it.”

A key part of that twist is a central focus on social-emotional learning, continuing to tackle the dislocations caused by pandemic isolation.

“We’re trying to help the kids – and eventually the parents – see themselves as full people,” said co-director Lebert Lester. “Because I think that’s so much of what COVID accidentally shrunk in us, especially as social beings when we’re not around each other.”

Lester, a licensed therapist, said that social-emotional learning will be continually woven in to conversations during all of the typical fun of summer camp.

“We have group activities where students will be drawing, creating stories, even doing some light enactments so that we’re making sure to engage them in a new way than perhaps they’ve been engaged in school,” he said.

Another important aspect of the daily programming – the kids will be integrally involved in creating it.

“We realized from some of our past work that what tends to resonate with the kids is when they have some of the say in the direction of the education,” he said. “So we try to make sure that it’s collaborative.”

Hartford Communities That Care celebrated its 25th anniversary in June. Bringing back summer camp allows the organization to extend its wraparound services for families in the city who need support. And, crucially, it will also provide another touchpoint to reach families who may need other sorts of help, with services like housing, educational support or violence intervention.

For Lester, their approach is all about meeting people where they are.

“I think it should encourage more service orgs to think about how they do their outreach,” he said of the overwhelming response to the camp. “The people that we serve, the families and the community are looking for these services, but they’re also looking for connection.”

Bournes, a case manager for families served by HCTC and a graduate herself of the organization’s Greater Hartford Youth Leadership Academy, said she’s grateful to be stepping up into the director’s role

“Now I can put my case management and this together, and now I can be a pillar to the families in the summer program that are new to Hartford Communities That Care,” she said. “Seeing the little ones and seeing them blossom, it’s just like going back in time and seeing myself again.”