Chapter 2 –THE DETAILS

Tom Clinton was working for the Town of Dedham Youth Commission and was a founding member of Human Services of Dedham, Inc.

The name Human Services was selected to represent that the group would serve many groups of the community. Teens were Mr. Clinton’s specialty.

Back in those days, the federal government allocated funding for youth employment programs.  The Dedham Youth Commission (YC) wrote a grant that hired 6 teenagers and a full-time supervisor. The teens were all not attending school (school dropouts).

 The Endicott Estate greenhouses had been left abandoned and was a mess. This work crew cleaned up and refurbished the greenhouse to working order. That included a solar retrofit (black rain barrels, plastic covering of one wing), that was later abandoned. Part of that greenhouse effort included developing the community gardens in front of the greenhouse to replace the effort in Riverdale.

 For years, the greenhouse and gardens were a site for summer youth work programs, and court referred community service projects:

Pumpkin decorating workshops at Halloween;
Christmas greens projects for winter holidays;
4-H club for middle school students;
Girl Scout troop activities

all took place due to the Dedham Youth Commission (YC) involvement.

The community gardens were open to all.

One endeavor the group pursued was to serve the ‘latch key’ population - young children going home after school to empty homes when parents were working. Those efforts, though not easy, led to the first after school program held at the Capen School. Eventually the YMCA would run programs in all of the schools. It is believed the Dedham School Department themselves now run the program.