DYC, director a ‘lifeline’ for kids
Budget cuts could cost Dot community a key cog
In the essays that accompanied his applications to Harvard and Yale, George Huynh, the son of Vietnamese immigrants, wrote about “this tall skinny white guy” who presided over the Dorchester Youth Collaborative in Fields Corner and became a surrogate father to both him and his older brother, Johnny.
“Emmett Folgert appeared in both of my college essays,” George Huynh recalled yesterday, “and I was accepted to both Harvard and Yale.”
Huynh, who is now completing his junior year at Yale, arrived with thoughts of going into the fields of biomedicine and chemical engineering.
But after three years and weekly phone conversations with Emmett Folgert, director of the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, Huynh says he has shifted his focus to “working within a government structure to explore new and different ways to help people.”
Simply put, when George Huynh graduates from Yale, he wants to be Emmett Folgert. Or perhaps, Emmett Folgert on steroids. Huynh recently told Emmett that he was chosen to mentor incoming Yale students next year, so he’s already got a start down that path.
“The DYC was a lifeline for me,” he said, “as it was for so many of us. We didn’t look alike. Our families didn’t come from the same places. We didn’t speak in the same languages. You had light-skin Cape Verdeans, hanging out with a couple of Vietnamese brothers, who were there with kids from Puerto Rico and we all came together in this wonderful place that was little more than a second floor with walls.”
The cruel irony here is that the DYC, the place two floors above Fields Corner that nurtured both George and his brother — who will graduate this year from UMass Amherst — may soon disappear due to shrinking funds.
The DYC is hoping to raise about 50 grand within the next few weeks to remain alive.
You could think of the DYC as a kind of boutique social service safety net. It does not have the larger profile or the political drag of, say, a Boys & Girls Club, but that hasn’t prevented it from keeping kids safe, and more importantly, expanding their horizons.
“The DYC was a lifeline for me and my brother,” George recalled. He was 12 when his father committed suicide by jumping off the Tobin Bridge. “That’s when Emmett stepped in. He knew we had potential. What we needed was time and care.”
At the DYC, the kids were free to make videos, write poetry and rap lyrics, break dance, do homework and above all stay safe.
“If you lose the DYC,” George said, “you lose the spirit of Dorchester, you lose a safe haven, kids will lose a lifeline that helped to save my brother and myself, and the city will also lose a fundamental cog in violence prevention. And every bit of that is embodied in Emmett. There is simply no way the city can lose him.”
Donations may be sent to Dorchester Youth Collaborative. org or on Facebook.