In Altered Season, A Garden Grows | New Haven Independent

Covid killed Demelle Turner’s and Marquel Caesar’s chances of throwing touchdown passes this fall. Instead they found themselves throwing soil into garden beds — with a team devoted to preventing violence.

Turner and Ceasar (pictured above) are quarterbacks for the Hillhouse and Wilbur Cross high school football teams, respectively. They grew up together. They played Pop Warner football together. This was supposed to be their big athletic year as seniors; then the pandemic canceled the football season.

Thursday they grabbed shovels as part of a group of young people brought together by New Haven’s street outreach worker program, the Connecticut Violence Intervention Program (CVIP).

The outreach workers have been keeping teens busy, and out of trouble, with an in-person daily program at the program’s Ashmun Street headquarters.

Read the whole story here in the New Haven Independent: In Altered Season, A Garden Grows | New Haven Independent