To enroll your child or student in our program, please wait until the next recruitment cycle begins. We typically start accepting new interest inquires around the summer each year between (June -August) and the deadline is usually September 1. Once applications are open, you can get in touch below with your contact information.

We encourage you to check our website and social media regularly for updates on the upcoming recruitment cycle.

Leadership Development Workshops, conversations through media, and creative content to express various life issues and community problems youth experience daily. Additionally, we host a guest speaker series: featuring professionals from various industries and backgrounds facilitating workshops and presentations on various life skills practices. (i.e., financial literacy, public speaking, mental health and wellness, and workforce/career readiness training, etc.) Moreover, on average weeks, using the problem-solving approach that our youth helped the CADCA coalition develop a decade ago, the youth, in their workgroups, define a problem, research its root causes and local conditions, and build recommendations for change.

Serious – and fun – opportunities to learn and grow! GHYLA experiences include discussing community issues in a safe space – and gaining the knowledge to be a confident advocate. Individually and working as team members, our youth participants develop research, communication, and leadership skills that prove useful later in high school, on the job, and/or in college. We see tremendous growth when young people work to interpret local, state-wide, and national data. Lastly, more benefits of traveling around the country to expose youth to other surroundings outside their neighborhoods and being invited to present at national conferences.

Historically, since the early 2000s to date, youth who participated in this program have gone off to college and graduate school and become lawyers, educators, entrepreneurs, first responders, and even contracted administrators for HCTC, among many other professions. The additional project is to build out the extended reach of the academy and grow the networks within our students to help them follow their dreams in the respective career journey they choose to take post-high school. For those not going to college or uncertain, we aim to help support their entrepreneurial, armed services, certification, vocational or trade program endeavors. This is one of many initiatives we look to sustain overall and allocate the necessary resources.

The youth have taken many trips for enrichment and also to speak as advocates at events, for example, before our city council, state legislature, and congressional delegation. The youth have advocated at the Eighteen x 18 voter registration conference sponsored by Yari Shahidi in Los Angeles, CA; at a congressional delegation briefing hosted by Rep. John Larson and Sen. Chris Murphy at the U.S Library of Congress and urged the Connecticut General Assembly to expand Black History into a serious part of the school curriculum, instead of just a one-month feature every February. For enrichment, the youth have taken many eye-opening trips, such as in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, New York City, as well as at the annual college recruitment HBCU festival and CADCA national leadership forum both in National Harbor, MD. Our philosophy is that new knowledge and experiences help young people grow exponentially.