BY JENNA CARLESSO
HARTFORD — First Niagara Bank has donated $50,000 to the city’s Wilson-Gray YMCA to support the organization’s teen incentive program.
The program, also known as Y-TIP, provides at-risk teens with “tools and encouragement needed to achieve academic excellence,” officials at the YMCA said. The program is implemented in Hartford and Springfield, Mass.
“Approximately 80 percent [of] those cities’ high school students live in poverty, and half of all black and Latino students never graduate from high school,” officials said in a press release. “The YMCAs of greater Hartford and greater Springfield are taking a regional approach to overcoming the obstacles young people face on the path to success.”