‘Services we offer are essential’
Youth centers to provide trauma aid, food amid shutdowns
A prominent Dorchester youth leader says his organization will explore various ways to reach its at-risk teenagers while their center closes amid the coronavirus pandemic, calling for a unified effort to combat the spread of the disease.
“It really is the humans against the virus,” Emmett Folgert, executive director of the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, said Sunday. “It doesn’t matter your gender, your identity, your sexuality, your gang affiliation.
We’re all one now.”
The DYC shut down for the first time in the organization’s history on Friday, after teenagers could not maintain “social distancing” in the center’s setting.
“We couldn’t police it, it was impossible,” Folgert said after the center’s closing Friday. “We had to shut the center down. It’s terrible.”
Folgert’s center helps kids from “rough spots” in Boston where gang violence is prevalent by keeping them off the streets. He said he’s looking at “safety plans” based on what’s open and what isn’t and is trying to organize ways to ensure his kids get food.
The YMCA of Greater Boston also announced Saturday it will close its fitness centers and pools on Monday to use its facilities to feed children and help care for youth and teens in need as schools close across the region for two weeks or more over coronavirus.
“When schools close, children lose two meals daily — breakfast and lunch. For low income families, these may be the only complete meals some children receive in a given day,” YMCA president and CEO James O’S. Morton wrote in a letter to patrons. “Likewise, thousands of parents depend upon us for early education and before and after-school care. For these families, the services we offer are essential.”
Folgert said his center’s truck has been used for food deliveries, and staff are determining the best way to reach their highest-risk teenagers coming from the city’s most violent areas.
“We don’t know if it’ll work,” Folgert said. “We’re going to try to use FaceTime, we’ve got public health people we’re talking to.”
Folgert also said DYC staff has been trained in trauma counseling, and said there’s no reason for children in the high-crime areas to be involved in any illicit activity.
“This is trauma too,” Folgert said of the pandemic. “So we have really good trauma-informed counselors that can help these kids and families navigate through this, also ourselves.”