Youth Voices Highlight Disparities at 2025 Hartford Youth Data Walk
Mayor Arunan Arulampalam addresses the Data Walk and commends youth work with data to address city issues.
On the afternoon of Tuesday May 13th, inside the historic Hall of Flags at the Connecticut State Capitol, Hartford youth took the spotlight. The 2025 Hartford Youth Data Walk, hosted by CTData, brought together young people, community leaders, nonprofit partners, and policymakers to engage with powerful, youth-led presentations rooted in local data. Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam recognized the 2025 Fellows’ commitment to civic engagement and provided them with citations for their ability to turn data into calls for action.
The Hartford Youth Data Fellows developed their data projects after months of data training and project development with CTData staff. Starting in January, the Hartford Youth Data Fellows met twice weekly to hone their data literacy skills, engage in data analysis training, and discover how to create effective data visualizations. They learned to connect their training with their own experiences growing in Hartford to develop data stories about housing and homeownership, education, and community safety.
This year seven youth completed the program as the 4th cohort of the Hartford Youth Data Fellowship program. They attended from different schools, colleges, and neighborhoods in Hartford.
2025 Hartford Youth Data Fellows: Nannette Garcia-Danila, Jahlani Ustanny, Jordan Chambers, Noah Anderson, Pablo Rodruguez, Samra Mujcinovic, Nashali Johnson, and Director Kate Eikel.
Their data projects built and expanded on data topics Hartford Youth Data Fellows have explored in prior years using different public and administrative data sources to highlight disparities within Hartford and compared to other municipalities in CT.
For housing and homeownership, Samra Mujcinovic delved further into the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, and her analysis revealed racial disparities in mortgage loans, even for families with higher income levels.
Jordan Chambers and Nannette Garcia-Danila reviewed state collected parcel data to analyze housing conditions across the city.
Reviewing State Department of Education data, Jahlani Ustanny found students receiving free and reduced price lunch had lower rates of high school graduation than other students.
Nashali Johnson reflected on the higher teacher-student ratios in Hartford schools and called for mentoring programs to increase teachers in the district.
Noah Anderson and Pablo Rodriguez reviewed city and state reported crime data and complaints in Hartford’s 311 data to review crime trends and property and blight complaints.
The Data Snapshots developed by the youth are on posted to our website.
This year’s Hartford Youth Data Walk was the largest yet. Over 70 people attended, including 20 youth from the Hartford Public Library’s Immigrant and Refugee Youth Program, and several alumni from prior years of the fellowship also. An overwhelming majority (93%) of attendees answering our survey reported that the research topics related to their work. “Amazing showcase of Hartford youth talent and important issues brought up in an important location” one participant shared. Additional comments can be found here.
The youth came away with greater confidence in their ability to use data to generate insights: “I have more skills that can translate to other areas and help me with internships. [No matter which career path we take], I believe we all have to work with data,” said Jahlani Ustanny.
The 2025 Hartford Youth Data Walk highlights the Hartford Data Collaborative’s work sharing data in Hartford. You can read more about prior year’s data walks here: 2024, 2023, and 2022. The next group of youth will begin in January 2026 and applications will open in the fall of 2025.
CTData would like to thank the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund, the Travelers Foundation (the charitable arm of Travelers), and the City of Hartford-funded Community Development Block Grants for their support of the Hartford Youth Data Fellowship program. More information about the program can be found here.
For More Information
Hartford Youth Data Fellows create community-based data projects through a paid fellowship with the Hartford Data Collaborative, a project of CTData (click here to learn more). To read more about their work and see the full data projects, click here. To review more Hartford data projects by CTData, click here. You can keep up with us by subscribing to the CTData newsletter and following us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.