Q&A with DaMia Harris-Madden, Director of Westchester County Youth Bureau

ArtsNews recently spoke with DaMia Harris-Madden about her work as Executive Director at the Westchester County Youth Bureau (WCYB).

WCYB is an office that helps to fund, monitor and support organizations that are providing programs and services to local youth. The Bureau’s goal is to promote positive youth development and healthy lifestyles.

In fact, with an allocation of resources from New York State Office of Children and Family Services, the Westchester County Tax Levy, and the Department of Social Services, WCYB funds about 200 programs annually.

Q: How is this Youth Bureau different from the ones at the city, town or village level?

We really focus at the county level on identifying and analyzing youth trends and needs, and the deployment of resources and services. My team is very small, but we have 200 different programs that we fund. And unlike the local youth bureaus, we do not provide direct services. [Instead,] we provide special events, conferences…activities of that nature; but don’t directly implement programs in the way local youth bureaus do. We’re really the funding source and technical assistance provider.

Q: How do the arts inform the work of the Westchester County Youth Bureau?

A: We know that the arts are so important, particularly because they impact one’s sense of belonging. Art is so inclusive in the sense that it helps to build those social networks for young people who may not know what their niche is. Most of our programs are after-school programs, and most of those programs must integrate some form of art. So [the arts are] very important to the work that we do. Even if you’re not a self-proclaimed artist or musician, somehow art finds its way in. That could be spoken word. We created for the first time here the [role of] Youth Poet Laureate, and I’m very proud of that because we’ve had two installations of Laureates since I started in 2018. We hope, like ArtsWestchester, to continue to curate this and make it stronger.

Q: The U.S. Surgeon General raised an alarm in May about an epidemic of loneliness and isolation for teens in the country. What role can youth bureaus play to counter this phenomenon?

Youth bureaus are really invested in young people’s physical, mental, social and emotional health. They always have been. Over time, we have seen this dramatic increase in loneliness and unhappiness. There are significant barriers to mental health support for many families, so I’m really excited about our new initiative to integrate free mental health support into all our after-school programs as early as July.

Q: How are youth bureaus changing to meet the needs of today’s youth and parents?

A huge part of this is youth feedback and youth involvement in our planning. I spoke with the county executive [George Latimer], and told him that we needed to be informed on an ongoing basis so that we are tailoring our offerings to what the youth need. We created the Youth Empowerment Council for Change and they delivered a report that addressed the most salient issues for them. They are huge contributors to our work plan, so for our needs assessment, we conducted a youth survey with close to 2,000 respondents. That’s the youth voice that we try to integrate into everything that we do so that we are not off the mark.

About ArtsWestchester

For more than 50 years, ArtsWestchester has been the community’s connection to the arts. Founded in 1965, it is the largest private not-for-profit arts council in New York State. Its mission is to create an equitable, inclusive, vibrant and sustainable Westchester County in which the arts are integral to and integrated into every facet of life. ArtsWestchester provides programs and services that enrich the lives of everyone in Westchester County. ArtsWestchester helps fund concerts, exhibitions and plays through grants; brings artists into schools and community centers; advocates for the arts; and builds audiences through diverse marketing initiatives. In 1998, ArtsWestchester purchased the nine-story neo-classical bank building at 31 Mamaroneck Avenue which has since been transformed into a multi-use resource for artists, cultural organizations and the community. A two-story gallery is located on the first floor of ArtsWestchester’s historic building on Mamaroneck Avenue. artsw.org