I consistently and intentionally ground myself daily with the WHY. I believe that if we are honest with our motives and genuine in our approach it allows us to keep our Scholars first and gets us closer to being the organization that the Scholars within our program deserves! Isn’t that why we are all here?

As we look back on this past year -- I am overcome by a feeling of gratitude for so many things. While it has been a challenging year for many, particularly the Scholars in our program, I am reminded of the collective power of community. 

And with that frame of mind, I thank you all for being with us today. As I look across this virtual board room, I see a village…our village. You have been called on time and time again to do extremely important work and every time you’ve answered that call. I want to acknowledge all of our Board members, donors, friends, corporate and community partners that are here with us today and extend a sincere and public thank you for the various ways that you support HYS. This year HYS celebrates 15 years of programming and my oh my have we grown. Thank you for believing in us, our Scholars, and the city of Hartford as we would not be here standing tall and proud absent your time, talents, and treasures.

I also want to take a moment to acknowledge this team of beautiful people. Although I get to stand in front of you all today, we should all know that in reality these are the heroes that make the magic happen. Our Scholars are so lucky to have this group of brilliant and passionate minds providing support and advocacy on behalf of our Scholars. I tell the staff almost weekly how much I respect, love and honor them, maybe to the point of awkwardness at times.

Today we have 9 full-time staff, 3 of which I am proud to say are HYS alumni, 7 faculty, 4 part time staff and a host of interns. At times it feels we are fighting well above our weight class but someone once said ‘A small team committed to a cause bigger than themselves, can achieve almost anything.’ Friends, help me to let our staff and faculty know that they are seen, valued and appreciated for their dedication.

While HYS’ 10-year commitment to each family and personalized approach to educational attainment is unique, HYS could not achieve its goals without the partnership of numerous other organizations throughout Hartford, Connecticut, and New England. Over the past 15 years, HYS has forged relationships with various stakeholders in the greater Hartford community and throughout the region in order to prioritize and achieve our vision.

It certainly takes a collective effort to navigate through these unprecedented times. With the world seemingly and in many ways quite actually on fire around us, TEAM HYS has continued to be a resource to our scholars and their families. We are fully aware of how the social and political climate is directly impacting the lives of our Scholars, which as a result pushed us to critically analyze our program delivery and curriculum because we are also cognizant of the ways this directly impacts Scholars’ ability to be fully engaged in their classrooms. So not only did we provide educational emergency financial support, like provide laptops for our virtual classes. We also implemented more Social Emotional Learning strategies in our classrooms. We created the space for our young people to breathe…to vent…to better understand and discuss what is going on in the world around them. 

We trained our instructors to adopt a social emotional learning curriculum as well as adding a Civics Course to our Collegiate Academy curriculum lead and instructed by 2022 OBAMA reaching back Award recipient Jailene Pedraza.

Additionally, we expanded our Beyond the Books programming to increase Scholars’ opportunities for personal, social, and experiential learning, thereby supporting Scholar mental health, wellness, and deepened engagement in our program…which we believe will directly support the desired outcome of college completion. 

We are hard at work recruiting our 17th Cohort of Scholars who will join us this June, for our first in person Summer Academy since 2019 and I can’t wait to see all of their smiling faces—It’s still unbelievable to me that they show up to Summer School with a smile even though we do have lots of fun.

At any rate, we have also doubled down our commitment to ensure that our Scholars better understand college admissions and success. In addition to our College Readiness Conference, College Planning Bootcamp, and SAT Prep, in 2021 we successfully piloted our Bridge to Success program, which is a week-long summer workshop series for rising college freshmen that provides Scholars access to speakers and consultants, workshop materials, meals, and incentives for the week. 

This series prepared Scholars for the transition to college by addressing the logistical, academic, and social-emotional facets of college success. With increasing costs associated with attending college we are thrilled to be in position to offer every Scholar that participates in all of HYS’ college preparation programming a scholarship for college supplies, such as bedding and books, and a MacBook to ensure that they are able to participate fully in their courses upon arrival to college.

HYS currently serves 265 Hartford students and their families; 95 are in college, 111 are in high school, and 59 are in middle school. 57% of our Scholars attend Hartford high schools and 43% attend independent high schools. As of January, 2022 HYS is also proud to celebrate 80 Scholar college graduates. This May we look forward to the graduations of our 7th Cohort of Scholars adding another two dozen Scholars to our 80 alumni who have received their diplomas to date! In 15 years of operation, what an amazing day for our organization to celebrate a milestone of 100 college graduates…from Hartford!

To support these graduating Scholars, in 2016 HYS designed a career readiness component for the Scholar Success programs, featuring the HYS College to Career Pipeline. Since 2018, HYS has developed formal corporate partnerships to support the career readiness and job skills of college and graduate Scholars. These relationships include partnerships with Travelers, Cigna, and Hartford HealthCare. Over the last year, HYS has developed and increased partnerships with CT Wealth Management, Eversource, Aetna, and Hitachi Corporation. Please consider helping us to find more! With so much wonderful and diverse talent in the HYS pipeline, call me selfish but, I want them all to stay local. That starts by helping them find quality and competitive job opportunities!

Thanks to many of you, HYS had its most successful fundraising year ever! Records were broken but there is still so much more work to be done. In 2021 we exceeded our goal by 11% raising an HYS record of $927,266 dollars to our annual fund. When you include restricted revenue, and interest earned off of the endowment in 2021 HYS raised over $1million dollars…a long way from the $330k raised in 2010! 

HYS’ today is critically important to Hartford’s tomorrow. In 2021, we took the time to refresh our strategic priorities for the next three years, and with your support of these initiatives we will accomplish our mission and be closer toward realizing our vision of seeing HYS Scholars using the opportunities that our programming provides to revitalize our community. In our scholars I see agents of change to dismantle systems of inequity that hinder social mobility. We are traveling down a new path as an organization in 2022 that will have triumphs and challenges. What got us here won’t get us there and we will need to implement new approaches to fundraising, recruiting, operations and strategy. As we go down this road, I will commit to keeping you informed on what will stay the same, what will be different and what I might not know the solution at that moment but will be working on one. It’s a new era of growth for HYS and excited about what will be and glad you are on the journey with me. 

And with that I want to thank you all again for helping HYS Scholars the opportunity to change their lives through education.”

For the second year in a row, Hartford Youth Scholars awarded a prize for the students who best exemplify giving back to the HYS community through their own service. Early on January 17, 2022 the HYS staff organized a zoom to surprise and celebrate the recipients of the Obama Reaching Back Award!

This prize was generously given by HYS Founder, Tom Francoline, his son Robert Brandt and their family to recognize extraordinary service by Scholars to their community and to ensure that Scholars who who are an asset to society are recognized as role models by their peers, their parents, the staff and the HYS Board members. Their goal is to highlight and acknowledge the many Scholars serving HYS and the community.

HYS Leadership is grateful to the Francoline/Brandt families for their nearly 20 Years of commitment to the youth of Hartford through their service to, and support of Hartford Youth Scholars.  Tom Francoline together with Founding Chairman Karl Krapek and Kelvin Roldán were recruited by then Mayor Eddie Perez to establish the Hartford Youth Scholars Foundation the precursor to HYS.  Tom and Michael Danziger began the lasting affiliation with the Steppingstone Foundation in Boston which provided much needed early financial and technical support. Along with Kelvin Roldán, Tom obtained nearly 11M in financial aid from area independent schools to provide Scholarship to qualified Hartford Scholars.

Tom served as Vice Chair from 2005 – 2015, when Scott Conners succeeded him as Vice Chair, and later Chair.  Tom stepped down officially in 2019 and his son Rob Brandt joined the board.  Rob Quote: “The purpose of the prize is to encourage older Scholars to help pull others forward –we wanted this tradition among Scholars to be institutionalized and this prize is helping to do just that.” 

The Award is named for Michelle Obama and draws its inspiration from her 2012 Democratic National Convention speech. Her address touched on the value of living in a cohesive, interdependent community. Michelle went on to say, “When you’ve worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you. You reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.”

The Obama Reaching Back Award officially honors Scholars who have significantly reached back to help their peers and/or younger Scholars on their path to and through college. This year the pool of applicants was so strong that the prize was given to THREE Scholars. Recipients were chosen for their personal commitment and service to HYS over the past year. They were also awarded a citation, given the opportunity to speak at a board meeting, and received a generous cash stipend.

The three recipients, pictured below from left to right: Jailene Pedraza ’21, University of Connecticut; Natiel Cooper ’22 University of Connecticut, and Kimberly Alexander ’22 Trinity College.

The following three presentations have an important practical aspect; we want our Scholars to get a sense of the possibilities the city of Hartford presents once they graduate university and potentially return to our community as professionals. We want students to see the work that these three presenters are doing and get an idea of what career paths are available to them in the future.

Due to the ongoing global health crisis, we will not be holding in-person events this semester until it is safe to go on field trips. Our original plan was to complement our Guest Speaker Series with museum visits and other cultural excursions. Instead, we will be showing films and documentaries twice a month on Thursday evenings. The films and documentaries that we will watch will give Scholars a chance to learn about music, art, and youth activism. Some of these will speak directly to our Community Hour presentations while others will expand into themes that may be new to our Scholars. In February and March, we will focus on culture (music, dance, and art) and April will be dedicated to activism (during the Civil Rights Movement and contemporary struggles).

• February 17: Ailey (2021)
• March 17: Summer of Soul (2021)
• March 24: Black Art: In the Absence of Light (2021) 
• April 7: Homeroom (2021)
• April 28: Takeover: How We Occupied a Hospital and Changed Public Health Care (2021)

Conclusion

The Dean’s Office has been in touch with all speakers to provide them with context and background about HYS and the academic profile of our Scholars. All presenters will have 20-30 minutes to speak and share any images and videos that they may have. Afterwards, we aim to have engaging conversations for another 10-15 minutes aimed at letting Scholars participate and ask questions. We have also chosen documentaries that are in line with our themes and relate to our Community Time speakers.

The overall aim of the Beyond The Books Watch Parties and the Community Time Speaker Series is to provide educational opportunities and potential career paths to our Scholars that they may not receive at their schools. We also want to expose our students to history and culture as well as professionals in various fields and industries that can widen their horizons and give them resources to envision their own futures.