On May 3rd Eli’s Garden of Healing, with the Town of Hamden, hosted a Party at the Park to celebrate the 18th birthday of our late friend, classmate, and family member Elijah Gomez. The energy was lively with family friendly activities provided by Hamden Youth Services Bureau. We had a bounce house, DJ, arts and crafts, and a face painter!
Hamden High School generously allowed EGH to borrow their marching band conductor podium to create a unique viewing platform for attendees to see the future home of the healing garden in person. It allowed viewers to leave with such a strong connection to our vision to transform an old Winchester machine gun test firing range into a healing garden for people impacted by violence. Instant ah-ha moments that would not have been possible without the loaned podium from the high school!
While community gathered to celebrate Elijah’s birthday, we were surprised with a beautiful gesture from our local State Reps. Led by State Representative Laurie Sweet, Elijah’s family was honored with a Citation from the Connecticut General Assembly recognizing and honoring Elijah’s 18th birthday.
Speaking of sweet gestures, Jaylyn and Alana are two high school students in the HHS Class of 2025 who have been supporters of EGH. You can find their bracelets and Eternal Rose on our popup shop. They had tents set up selling their handmade goods and donated 20% of their sales to EGH at the end. They donated $152 on our Birdies for Charity fundraiser, which was matched 15% by Webster Bank making the contribution $174! Thank you ladies!!
During the event we also handed out our Eli’s Cleats donations for the 2025-2026 school year. New to the list of schools this year is Common Ground. CG has been an amazing partner with us, so it was an honor to add them to our roster of schools receiving funds to support student-athletes in need of gear to play in school sports. This round of donations brings the impact of this program to 30 students receiving $4800 worth of contributions in less than three years!
This event would not have been such a success without all of our friends and community partners who volunteered to make the day special for our community. Thank you to everyone who tabled or donated their time to help. Big thanks to The Community Foundation For Greater New Haven for an event grant which helped us keep this event FUNded.
