The Foster Connection is a student-run organization that provides remote tutoring and mentorship to foster children of all ages across Connecticut.
The Jewett Center for Community Partnerships (JCCP) has historically funded work-study positions for eligible student staff members at the Foster Connection. In the wake of a budget reckoning that forced the JCCP to make sweeping cuts to affiliated student organizations, the program has been forced to downsize its leadership and tutoring capabilities.
The Argus sat down with Foster Connection Coordinator Aryana Galdo ’28 to discuss the group’s mission and how cuts to JCCP-funded student groups have impacted the organization.
The Argus: What are your day-to-day responsibilities as a coordinator?
Aryana Galdo: Right now, we’re operating at a smaller capacity. A lot of what I do is very much on my computer. [There’s] a lot of email work. I take intakes from the Department of Children and Families (DCF) throughout Connecticut. Every day, I look through all of the referrals I get, which are foster children, what their needs are, who their contacts are, and then I file those away.
I also do intake and recruitment with Wesleyan students. We are trying to get people to come in and be tutors; the most difficult part of that is that we have to get people registered. Students are going to be doing a lot of background checks and forms and then [pushing that] through our DCF contact. I’m the point of contact between the student, the social worker, our DCF contact, as well as the tutor, who is another Wesleyan student. I manage any communications between myself, our DCF contact, and any of the social workers.
A: What are some memorable moments you’ve experienced in your time with the Foster Connection?
AG: I started as a coordinator last year in October [when] I was a freshman. I’m a sophomore now. I will see kids who have intakes and we’re getting constant communication from their social worker that the students are really pushing to get more and more help. Then at the end of the year, I get that really happy email, “[this] student will not need tutoring anymore,” [and I am] able to move them down on my Excel spreadsheet and say the student doesn’t need tutoring because what we’re doing is working.
A: What have you learned from your time working in the Foster Connection?
AG: I learned that people can be more reliable than you think. If you want to work as a team and work together with a lot of different people, you have to trust that everyone can be as reliable as they can.
I’ve learned this before, and I keep learning it every single day: how much of an impact students here at Wesleyan can have on the community. I stay in contact with a lot of these families, students, and social workers. Like the first email, I’m getting from a social worker saying, “This student really needs help.” Then the last one: “Thank you for working with me.”
A: What are some positive changes you’ve seen in student volunteers after they’ve spent some time tutoring children?
AG: I’ve seen a lot of people go through tutoring. It is a very remote type of job, but I’ve really seen the mentoring skills come into play. When you first start, it’s like, “We’re gonna do this piece of homework,” but then you get to see that kind of connection and get those mentoring skills to blossom. Then it’s: “We’re gonna talk about homework, but what problems are you having? How can I help you?” And then [they take] that extra step.
A: How has the program had to adapt as a result of the cuts to JCCP-funded organizations?
AG: In two big ways. One, we had to downsize our coordinators and our coordinator work. I’m a coordinator, we have one other coordinator, and we originally had three. We had someone fielding the recruitment side at Wesleyan. We had somebody fielding the matches, and then we had somebody else fielding at the DCF side, making sure background checks are clear, checking them over, things of that nature. I mentioned we are a middleman, but everybody is interacting with the middleman of different spaces, and now it has me and one other coordinator, but a lot of that has just fallen onto me to coordinate.
On top of that, it is just a lot harder to get students involved and there’s a lot of, like, supplementals put in to compensate for the fact that they’re not paying people, but it is making my life harder because I’m getting tutors in, and they’re like, “Well I don’t want to take this class. Do I tutor? Do I not tutor?”
A: Has there been any communication between The Foster Connection and other impacted organizations regarding how to move forward amidst JCCP cuts?
AG: Yeah, totally. I’ve talked a lot with the Traverse and the Wesleyan WUMSTP [Wesleyan University Middle School Tutoring Partnership]. How are we getting more people? What are our tactics to entice more people to do this as a volunteer? Are we using CSPL290 [Community Impact Residency, a community impact program for course credit]? How are we going to use it? There’ve been a lot of questions that we’ve been ping-ponging off each other, trying to figure out how to go forward, because, at the end of the day, it’s a bunch of students running some really consequential programs. I have social workers emailing me day in, day out, “This foster child really needs tutoring. We want them to continue in the next grade.” And we have college students fielding those questions, while also fielding the question, “How this group is going to continue?” We’re just kind of taking it day by day.
A: What do you think are the best ways in which students can help organizations like the Foster Connection in times like these?
AG: We’re always looking for people to tutor. The programs don’t come to Wesleyan; we go to the programs. It’s not like we could send a bunch of people to DCF, which is unfortunate.
At the end of the day, even with the hour cuts, even with everything that’s going on, I know for myself—and I can confidently say for everybody else running these programs—that they care about [what] they’re running. For a lot of people, this is a passion project. It’s a lot of work, and it’s really [about] putting that work and channeling that energy into something that you want to make great, but you need students to do that.
A: How do you think this JCCP budget cut has impacted the ultimate mission of the Foster Connection to reach all of Connecticut’s foster children?
AG: I think it limits it. We cut down on our coordinators. There was a suggestion for us to cut down to one coordinator because it has been done in the past. The issue is that The Foster Connection was a mere fraction of what it was when there was only one coordinator. The suggestion to go back to that is just limiting the idea of tutoring Connecticut as a whole. We’re trying to get more people in, and it’s harder, and I can’t blame them. It is really hard to dedicate that much time and not be paid. It also inhibits the idea of us trying to go from just online to in-person [tutoring], and we have had to nix that idea, because we can’t do that if we can’t get people to go out and get fingerprinted and go that extra mile, because that’s the nature of our program.
Whenever you have foster kids [involved], people are getting background checks to be on Zoom, so imagine the extra steps that have to be taken to go and do this in person, which we would love, and I think would make a real impact on the tutors and the kids, but we can’t make it happen with the current budget cuts. It’s a lot harder to entice people when there are not only budget cuts, but these added extra steps in order to get people in, when, at the end of the day, all that we want is Wesleyan students, helping Middletown citizens and helping Connecticut citizens.
A: What does the future look like for the program, in your opinion?
AG: Hopefully bright. I’ve talked to a lot of representatives from the JCCP. They really mentioned, “We’re trying to get some extra funding here. We’re trying to make it work.”
Every program is different. We are a much smaller program than Traverse, for instance, and we can’t do as much. There’s a very specific coordinator who has been doing this for years, who has really dedicated her time and her energy for years upon years, as a senior now, to building this program up. My hope is we can build upon that, and we can have Wesleyan students tutoring the foster kids continue with these kids for years upon years and be mentors. I’m hopeful for that. I just don’t know how feasible it is.
Kealsy Rincón can be reached at krincon@wesleyan.edu.
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