Why Should Delaware Care?
A Dover YMCA expansion is intended to reach more youth in Delaware’s capital city. It remains to be seen, however, whether the new programming will provide enough support as city leaders face growing resident concern about youth gang activity and calls to address frequent shootings.
As local elected officials stood together last week to celebrate the Dover YMCA’s youth programming expansion, some are skeptical about the community center’s ability to adequately serve the capital city’s most vulnerable kids.
YMCA leaders unveiled last Thursday a new “Discovery Center” — a renovated kids’ area featuring a ninja warrior course, a “makerspace” for art projects and room for expanded summer camp offerings — which they said will help the organization double the number of kids it serves daily this summer.
The expansion comes at a time when advocates are sounding the alarm about gun violence and youth gang activity in Dover. The YMCA will now be able to more than double the number of children it serves in its summer camp programs.
But some community organizers are skeptical the initiative will reach those who most need it.
Despite an expansion of the YMCA’s financial assistance program as a part of its new youth-focused initiative, activists say monetary and transportation barriers will make getting buy-in from at-risk communities difficult.
“These programs happen, and they don’t get to those kids that really need the resources,” Kaligah Parker, a community organizer who works on gun violence prevention, told Spotlight Delaware.
City leaders like Mayor Robin Christiansen, however, say they are less worried about the specifics of who will use the YMCA’s expanded programming and more hopeful about the opportunities it will provide for bridging community divides.
“The kid over on the West Side who hates the kid on the East Side, can come here and swim and say, ‘Hey, he’s just like me,’” the mayor said. “Programs like these change hearts and minds.”
The Dover Police Department did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for data on the number of gun violence deaths in recent months, but community organizers said the YMCA’s new offerings come as they anticipate a summertime uptick in crime and gun violence.
Chelle Paul, an activist who works with at-risk youth in Dover, has sent emails to city officials at least once a week since February about shootings in the city, calling on the government to take action.
“These shootings have continued as projected, and residents are frustrated by the lack of visible, proactive action,” Paul wrote in an email to city leaders on April 2. “Many feel the city is responding reactively rather than preventing incidents before they occur.”
Christiansen, however, said he believes the city has the problem under control through its “fluid, rapid response, reactive and proactive” policing approach — and with programs like the YMCA youth offerings.
The YMCA’s youth programming expansion follows a separate initiative earlier this year geared toward kids in Delaware’s capital city.
Dover’s Opioid Use Disorder Task Force, which met in the fall and winter to discuss how the city should use its portion of the state’s opioid settlement funds, recommended directing the $250,000 it will receive this year toward a youth-focused campaign.
Discovering the Discovery Center
A group of YMCA leaders, city officials and state legislators convened on April 9 to unveil the new childrens’ space and promote the broadened summer camp programming.
John Rice, director of the Dover YMCA, said his goal with the Discovery Center concept is to serve more families and provide innovative and engaging activities for kids in Kent County.
The organization will now be able to serve 60 kids a day during its after-school and summer camp programs, compared to a 25-child capacity before the expansion, he said.
A spokesperson for the YMCA of Delaware declined to say how much money the organization spent on the Discovery Center expansion, but noted that the funds came from a mix of “private and public donor support,” including the Draper Holdings Charitable Foundation, an offshoot of the local media conglomerate family, and Bally’s Casino in Dover.
Rice added that the funding from Bally’s will allow about 30 kids whose families might not have been able to otherwise afford it to now attend its summer camps.
A number of Dover-area lawmakers spoke at the Discovery Center ribbon cutting, including State Sen. Trey Paradee (D-Dover) and House Majority Leader Kerri Evelyn Harris (D-Dover), who said they are drafting legislation aimed at making summer camps more affordable and accessible for working families.
Paradee, who is a co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, told Spotlight Delaware they are aiming to file that bill — which will propose using money from the state’s purchase of care childcare subsidy program to fund kids’ summer camp participation — within the next week.
“We have to support organizations like the Y that provide other outlets for kids besides playing video games, besides being on their phone, and besides being on the street and getting into trouble,” he said.
The community responds
While elected officials are applauding the YMCA expansion as a valuable step toward providing more youth activities and resources in Dover, community organizers have more questions about the best ways to reach vulnerable youth.
Parker, the gun violence advocate, said he has been working to inform Dover families about summer camp opportunities and other places they can send their kids outside of school, but many of the families he works with do not even know of the opportunities.
“A lot of kids and families in those urban communities will never even know that the YMCA is doing a camp,” Parker said.
Raphael Travis, an education and human development professor at the University of Delaware, said programs like the Dover YMCA’s new expansion are valuable to the community, but the challenge is getting the word out to the most vulnerable individuals.
Getting the information out, Travis said, can sometimes be done effectively through “credible messengers,” or trustworthy adults in the community.
“The challenge comes when it is so externally driven – not out of ill-intent – but if the people leading those efforts are too removed, and they don’t have that relationship,” Travis said.
Paul, the local activist who works with at-risk youth, said she thinks spaces like the Dover YMCA have great potential to get kids off the streets and engaged in other activities.
But she is not convinced the YMCA’s financial assistance is enough to make its programs accessible to many families. She said some parents also may face transportation barriers to getting their kids to the community center.
The YMCA of Delaware spokesperson said the organization does not currently offer transportation for kids to get to camp and after school programs, but it is “exploring that for the future.”
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
