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The conclusion of 2022 going into 2023 has been the most rapid growth period yet for Connect Center for Youth (CCFY). With the continued funding from the United Way of the Greater Capital Region acting as our launching point, we made great strides in our afterschool programming.
As we closed out 2022, we served 90 unique students across our Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday class schedules. This success was a testament to the hard work and dedication of everyone involved, which allowed Connect Center to attract the attention of more community organizations and students. As a result, we are thrilled to announce that we expanded our Connect After School programming to five days a week this spring for the first time ever and piloted two new programs alongside it!
These new programs relate to a topic near and dear to our hearts here at Connect Center For Youth: esports. More specifically, how kids can build complex and soft skill competencies that can translate to future academic and career success through organized esports play. To accomplish this, we partnered with a local tournament organization company, Claim to Fame Entertainment, the leading organization in the capital district for hosting professional gaming events both for adults and children. Alongside Claim to Fame, Connect Center piloted its “esports career pipeline” program, Warp Zone. With ten students in our first cohort, we were able to stress test this course's more intensive hybrid lecture/hands-on curriculum before its full launch in the fall of 2023. This data was invaluable for our efforts to refine this structured class for future semesters and establish its viability for our students, their parents, and the community at large. With Warp Zone, we hope to show that you can, in fact, have your cake and eat it too when it comes to competitive video games and future successes in life.
Speaking of the community at large, however, there is another benefit given to us by our improvements to Connect After School that has had a more immediate impact. The COVID-19 pandemic had a fortunate upside in that it allowed schools to more responsibly entertain the idea of having organized esports teams as part of their extracurriculars. Some schools started clubs, while others, like Cohoes City High School, started an entire Varsity program. The structure and interaction brought about through these teams “helped me really get through some of the more isolated parts of the pandemic,” noted one of our students.
Fast forward to 2023, and teams were still formed for Cohoes with no formal playspace to gather with their teammates in person now that normal operations had resumed. Seeing this need, Connect Center For Youth partnered with Cohoes City High to host their teams in our BlackBox Arena for the foreseeable future. Being only a few blocks away from the school, students can come after their day is done to official daily practices alongside their teammates and coach, play their matches on scheduled days, and have a place they can truly call home.
To bring it back to earth, it's important to remember that none of these historic changes for Connect Center would have happened without the initial fiscal support of organizations such as the United Way of the Greater Capital Region and the championing they have done for us throughout our time together. The partnership that has been built between us only continues to grow and echo out in the good works and further community development we are able to do here in Cohoes, and we are truly grateful.