Network Connect gears up for a 5th year of impact

Wilmington-based nonprofit Network Connect turns five next year.

While it’s changed some since 2019, the youth and community-building organization has still maintained and expanded its commitment to the community. What started as an org focused solely on city youth, education and workforce development has since expanded to a “cradle to grave” model that serves all ages while having a special focus on seniors.

“Our mission has changed a little bit to focus on youth and their families,” Network Connect executive director Cierra Hall-Hipkins told Technical.ly. “A lot of our youth and teens come to us and they’re being raised by their grandparents, so we wanted to provide services to that population as well.”

Those services include door-to-door outreach to help people understand their health benefits, as well as how to navigate the redetermination process; vaccine events; psychological recovery resources; and social events like screenings of “The Color Purple,” Football Sundays and tea parties.

Serving youth is still a big part of Network Connect’s mission. In 2022, Zach Jones, founder of the innovative Dual School program for high school students, approached the organization about acquiring the program. Dual School is now a Network Connect program, with Jones, who currently lives in Maine, serving as a board member.

The new Dual School still has project-based cohorts of teens from public, charter and private schools. It also now boasts partner programs, including a nutrition-focused cohort with ChristianaCare.

Youth representing all three counties participated in the ChristianaCare programming, called Health Impacts. It was initiated by a $100,000 grant from JPMorgan Chase for a training and internship program for Delaware teens.

“They came to us and they wanted to do [an ideation] process on how might we engage youth as employers — either in their dietary department or other departments throughout the hospitals,” Hall-Hipkins said. Each participant received a $250 stipend, as well as workforce development skills and a taste of what it’s like to engage in a healthcare system.

The YMCA, which has its own Dual School partner program focused on community passion projects, recruited youth who care about healthcare nutrition, including students in the technical and public schools’ nurse tech and culinary programs.

“When you go into a hospital or a patient room, what do you hear first? ‘I don’t like the food in the hospital.’ How do we change that perception?” Hall-Hipkins said.

The next Dual School cohort, which will be recruited in the spring, will be a summer program partnership with the Delaware Solid Waste Authority that focuses on environmental awareness.

The Network Connect’s flagship program, Future Culture Creators, just finished its seventh 12-week cohort focusing on workforce development, skill-building, mental health awareness and creating a trauma-informed environment in the workplace. Each cohort has incorporated discussions on gun violence.

Then there’s the violence prevention-focused Wilmington Street Team, the youth advocacy roundtables, the Red Clay School District-partnered summer camp and the ”RACE to Wellness” campaign. The last of these programs now operates in five Delaware schools and aims to reverse the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences among teens. All of this work, which the organization’s network of partnerships enables, will continue into 2024 and beyond as the organization keeps growing.

In the meantime, Network Connect is always looking for volunteer and business partners.

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