Create a Website for an Amazing, New-Haven-Based Youth Club

The Basic Info: This project will be overseen / mentored by Jake Halpern, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who teaches in the Yale English Department. Jake also sits on the board of the New Haven Age Group Track Club. This is a club that transcends divides of race, class, and gender and unites kids from across the city and has produced several national champions. Yale has partnered with the team and let them use its facility, Coxe’s Cage. The team has also been recognized by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) as one of the best clubs in the country. As exciting as all of this is, the team has virtually no resources. The coaches – who work as much as 4 days a week with the team – are unpaid. The parents scrap every last cent so kids can have sneakers and track uniforms. What the club really needs now is help to build a first rate website so that it can showcase its good work and attract some larger donors. You can read the Yale Alumni Magazine article about the club here (https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/4837-a-place-to-bond). This team is an amazing success story.

The Work: We need 1-3 students who have experience designing or building a website. We would build this website on SquareSpace or a platform like it. We would invite these students to come to a practice and meet the kids and the coaches and be part of our community! Then the students would work with Jake to create the website. This would be a project-based job, so there are no set hours. This job would likely be a total of 20-30 hours, total, spread over several months. But this may vary depending on the students preference. We would just like the website to be operational by the end of January.

Compensation: This is an unpaid position, but it is eligible for a Service Award through Dwight Hall’s Community Response Fellows. Jake would also be happy to write letters of recommendation.

Contact: Interested students should email jakehalpern@aya.yale.edu.