For New Haven youth and young adults participating in the programming of the local nonprofit Huneebee Project, beekeeping has become a safe haven and an enriching source of personal growth.
With support from the Dwight Hall New Haven Civic Innovation Prize and the Dwight Hall Socially Responsible Investment Fund, Huneebee Project is expanding job skills training and mentorship for environmentally-conscious youth in the foster care system. In August 2024, Huneebee Project also served as a community partner site during Dwight Hall’s FOCUS on New Haven Camp Yale program.
“We pride ourselves on being powered by youth and for youth. We use beekeeping as a vehicle for transferable job skill building and for trauma healing amongst resilient teens and young adults in the New Haven area,” explained Sarah Taylor, Founder and Executive Director of Huneebee Project.
Sarah is a Connecticut resident and a licensed social worker. With years of experience helping families and children dealing with trauma, she noticed gaps in community mental health services and child protective resources. Beyond her disheartenment with the availability of services in these sectors, Sarah herself began to feel burnout in her job, so she pursued a new direction.
“I sought out beekeeping for myself and found it to be an incredibly peaceful, grounding, and therapeutic escape. For some time, I had been considering how to create a social enterprise that employed youth who were aging out of the foster care system and do it in a way that addressed a lot of those gaps that I was bearing witness to,” she said.
In 2018, Sarah founded Huneebee Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that engages Connecticut youth in beekeeping and farming activities, providing them with mentorship and a 15-week therapeutic job skills training program. “One hundred percent of the youth we engage have a pre-existing mental health diagnosis, and at least 70% have child protective services or foster care involvement. We’re building job skills in a trauma-informed context and with attention to some of the barriers that we need to address in order for our youth to be successful,” she said.
Those involved in Huneebee Project learn soft skills such as communication, timeliness, and teamwork. The program also integrates hard skills, teaching the construction and maintenance skills that are essential in running a successful agricultural enterprise. Lead beekeeper Tim Dutcher noted that “in addition to a basic introduction to beekeeping, participants get support writing resumes, get basic photography training, help build and decorate hive equipment, and are paired with mentors who provide logistical and personal support.”
The organization operates on the premises of community gardens, incorporating beekeeping into various Connecticut urban spaces, including Common Ground High School in New Haven. Besides job skills training, youth are taught to digest and communicate discussions of ecological grief and climate anxiety–topics that Sarah defines as feelings of “hopelessness and despair related to the future of our planet”–to the broader community.
Over time, Huneebee Project has expanded its goals to engage more youth. With larger goals came a need for more personnel, and investing funds in young beekeepers and employment specialists became a significant initiative for Huneebee. As luck would have it, in spring 2023, the Dwight Hall Socially Responsible Investment Fund (DHSRI) reached out to Huneebee Project to provide a community grant.
Nicole Tian ’26, who was the head of DHSRI’s Community Investment Team at the time, explained the organization’s grant process: “As part of [DHSRI’s] grantmaking program, we established an application process for small nonprofits in the greater New Haven area. The funds come out of the returns on [the Socially Responsible Investment Fund—a portion of Dwight Hall’s endowment].”
The community grant, which Nicole explained allots “around $4,000 per organization,” does not put restrictions as to what the money may be used for, an advantage for small nonprofits. In the past, some organizations have used the DHSRI support to pay rent or purchase basic necessities.
DHSRI knew that the Huneebee Project would be a great fit for the grant, seeing that it exemplifies the Advance pillar of Dwight Hall’s Engage, Grow, and Advance program delivery model by developing innovative and collaborative programming to promote lasting social change.
“Huneebee was a really unique intersection between social advocacy and opening more urban spaces in New Haven for these beehives. We talked to Sarah last spring, and she mentioned that Huneebee was expanding towards having new flower gardens. They have invested back into the urban sphere, and also, Sarah’s work is very human-focused,” Nicole said.
Through this connection with Dwight Hall, Huneebee was introduced to Johnny Scafidi ’01, Dwight Hall Director of Community Outreach and Engagement. Sarah noted that Johnny alerted her organization of the possibilities available with Startup Yale, an annual conference recognizing entrepreneurial and community ventures at Yale and in New Haven.
Thus, in April 2024, Sarah and co-presenter Alex Guzman, a Huneebee student-participant, pitched the organization to a panel of judges for the New Haven Civic Innovation Prize, which is managed by Dwight Hall. Huneebee Project was declared the first place winner and was awarded a $10,000 grant from the Prize.
Johnny, who serves as primary administrator of the Prize, commended this honor. “It was pretty evident that what I saw at the New Haven Civic Innovation Prize pitch competition reflected our sense of the programming at Huneebee Project, as well as an understanding of the ethos, principles, values, and mission by which Huneebee operates,” he said. Johnny also highlighted the program’s authenticity during the conference, particularly in inviting a youth involved in the program to share the impact of Huneebee’s efforts.
“I think the way that Sarah has taken the growth of Huneebee Project and brought people into it is certainly a sustainable and replicable model for our region,” Johnny noted. “For those of us who operate in the social change space, we can understand that sometimes it is not the physical resource as much as the manner in which you go about the work that could be the innovative factor that you bring to it,” he added.
Huneebee Project plans to invest the award into the farm itself. “We are in the process of finalizing a lease with a warehouse space, and we are going to set up a temporary honey house. We would not have been able to do that without these funds,” Sarah emphasized.
Huneebee Project hopes to expand even further into the New Haven community, allowing local agricultural producers to reap success from its community gardens. Tim added that Huneebee’s honey house is still in its development phase. He explained that “the ultimate vision would be a commissary space where local beekeepers who might not otherwise have access to larger scale equipment can bring their honey supers to extract honey.”
As the organization evolves, Huneebee Project demonstrates a commitment to fostering community development through beekeeping and youth empowerment via mentorship. Huneebee Project promotes environmental sustainability in an urban space, creating a nurturing environment for personal growth. The program’s innovative approach promises positive change in New Haven, offering inspiration for other community-driven enterprises.
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