August Della Donna, a senior creative writing student in the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program for secondary education at Quinnipiac University, worked this summer as the Presidential Public Service Fellow for Hamden Youth Services Bureau. This fellowship is just one option for Quinnipiac fellows. Some other placements are Hamden Mayor’s Office Fellow, Hamden Economic and Community Development Fellow and Hamden Town Clerk Fellow. These fellowships train students to lead in local government and provide them with a skillset and network to better their future careers.
Through this fellowship, Della Donna focused on planning Hamden’s National Night Out, which has been happening in Hamden for 16 years and focuses on connecting the community with the police in a non-threatening way. They also planned their own events such as Narcan Training with the Alliance for Prevention and Wellness and a poetry program with Hamden Middle Schools.
“I worked on a ton of different stuff this summer. A big part of it was planning National Night Out, which was supposed to be in August, but got postponed, and it was just this week or last week,” Della Donna said. “A lot of it was planning and scheduling, but the heart of it and the core of it was really trying to find something like a project for me to work on personally to benefit the community.”
Hamden’s National Night Out took place on Oct. 5 at Villano Park. It is a national effort that happens in cities all over the country on the first Tuesday in August. Due to weather, cities like Hamden and Austin, Texas, hosted their National Night Out on the first Tuesday in October.
“It’s a very peaceful event,” said Susan Rubino, the coordinator for Hamden Youth Services Bureau. “It’s very low stress. Nothing costs. Everything’s free. We provide dinner. This year was a cookout through Haven Beer Company. We have entertainment. We have a DJ, photo booth, and then we have exhibitors. So it’s like a resource fair in a sense, (with) different community providers. We had over 40 of those, and then we have raffle prizes.”
Rubino has worked in Hamden for 31 years now and worked as Della Donna’s advisor this summer.
Rubino works each year with the summer fellows that come from Quinnipiac who are then placed with the Hamden Youth Services Bureau. She believes the central location in the Keefe Community Center gives students a wide range of connections and experience, making the summer fellowship highly rewarding. Rubino worked very closely with Della Donna to put on National Night Out and make sure the event ran smoothly.
“August this summer was tasked with getting donations, which is not easy to do,” Rubino said. “And they did very well with it. We received donations from this movie theater, the Three Brothers Diner, Whitneyville Food Center, Target, the Hamden Police donated bicycles, and bunch of others. They took a lot of initiative and were very energetic. I felt very confident having them kind of like, take the reins for the two months they were here this summer.”
Rubino was beyond happy with Della Donna’s planning for National Night Out, but they did even more which impressed Rubino throughout their time in Hamden this summer.
“They even took initiative with doing a poetry program at the Hamden Middle School,” Rubino said. “They also participated in one of the markets at the town center and played music and even did a Narcan training with the Alliance for Prevention and Wellness. And this was all on their own. I didn’t have to ask them to do anything. It was something that they chose to do. So they really exceeded my expectations this summer.”
Della Donna ran a poetry program this summer for seventh grade orientation at Hamden Middle School. This poetry program was something that Della Donna felt truly passionate about as a creative writing major and artistic person themself.
“The whole idea of the fellowship was to develop something that we thought would continue to give back to the community after our summer internship ended,” Della Donna said. “So something that I’m super passionate about is poetry and creative writing. So something that I wanted to do was give more students, an opportunity to learn creative writing, to learn about poetry, because I really feel like it’s an outlet emotionally. It’s also really a building block to teach kids how to use their own voice andbuild connections with their peers and just be more confident in the classroom.”
Della Donna’s program focused on an activity called blackout poetry. This program takes a page of text and allows students to take a sharpie and black out everything except the words they want to use. From there they make their own poem out of whatever words are left.
“I thought that would be a cool idea because it shows you that you can make something out of anything, no matter what you’re going through or what kind of steps that you need to take, you can still make something new out of it,” Della Donna said. “A lot of kids in the classroom have the same pages of text, and they all end up with something completely different. I felt like that was a good message. I felt like I could have just had some more reassurance, and no matter what happens, you’re on the same level as everyone else and you’re going to get through it.”
Being able to share their passion with students was a great experience for Della Donna and something they want to continue. In a few weeks they will be returning to Hamden Middle School to continue this project and ones like it. Della Donna also does field work at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven to better prepare them for entering the teaching field.
“I learned, or kind of relearned that everyone’s really part of something bigger,” Della Donna said. “We go to school in Hamden and we’re part of the Quinnipiac community, but, our reach is so much more broad than just what happens on campus and what happens in our dorms … (It’s) also finding ways to give back to the community and finding ways to be creative about it.”