Off the hill: YDS students engage their city through New Haven Pilgrimage

Perched on Prospect Hill, the Yale Divinity School campus welcomes students and faculty with its lush green lawns, graceful Georgian Colonial architecture, and new Living Village residence hall. It doesn’t take long for students to feel at home in the rhythm of classes, chapel, and community life. Yet while some may venture downtown for a concert on the Green or a bite to eat, most don’t truly get to know the city YDS calls home.

A few miles—even blocks—from the Quad, New Haven boasts neighborhoods of brick rowhouses, corner churches, mom-and-pop shops, and community gardens. Although it shares a zip code with one of the world’s most prestigious universities, New Haven is a community where a quarter of residents live at or below the poverty line and 22 percent face food insecurity (that’s twice the national average). It’s a world students can see from “the hill” but often pass by.

The New Haven Pilgrimage invites them to pause, and learn, instead.

Now in its third year, the pilgrimage (held September 12-14 this year) is a three-day program that introduces students to the people and organizations of New Haven. It begins on Friday evening with a shared meal and panel discussion with New Haven residents who ground the conversation in lived experience. This year’s panel brought together a teachers union president, a local playwright and social services provider, a community organizer, and an environmental justice advocate. A civic and non-profit leader moderated the discussion.

On Saturday, students board a bus and set out across the city, visiting its neighborhoods and meeting with faith and business leaders, social service providers, and community partners who open their doors and tell their stories. This year’s pilgrimage included visits to the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen; CitySeed, a food justice nonprofit; and Beulah Land Development Corporation, a faith-based housing developer. 

The journey concludes on Sunday evening back at YDS, where participants break bread and reflect on what they’ve seen—and how those experiences might shape the ways they study, serve, and live in the community. 

Origins of the pilgrimage 

The program’s inspiration is both pastoral and practical. YDS Director of Black Church Studies Joanne Jennings wanted to create an opportunity for students to better understand the local community and consider their ministry through that lens while at the Divinity School. She partnered with YDS Director of Professional Formation Alison Cunningham ‘84 M.Div., drawing on Cunningham’s decades of experience in New Haven’s nonprofit sector to create a program that connects students more deeply with the city.

For Jennings, setting the context was essential. “Wherever they go, I want our students to be aware of the fact that God has been at work before they arrived,” Jennings says. “It’s so important to look around, understand the context, and recognize that things don’t start happening only when you arrive.”

As Cunningham explains, the program was also designed to broaden students’ understanding of ministry to include social services and community involvement. “We have many students who aren’t sure about ordained ministry, but who are very curious about how to be of service in the world,” she explains. “The pilgrimage provides some good, firsthand examples of how to do that.”

Each year’s itinerary is shaped by student interests and the city’s changing landscape. Drawing inspiration from ongoing efforts in areas like social work, environmental justice, and housing security, Cunningham partners with local leaders who embody those priorities in their work. 

Bridging the divide

It’s an uncomfortable truth that many YDS students come to campus carrying certain assumptions about New Haven. First-year student Zach Ballenger ’28 M.Div. recalls hearing about a town-and-gown divide, “where part of the town is filled with Yale buildings and completely distinct from the rest,” he says. Other portrayals are less generous, as Cunningham explains, with many new students hearing that New Haven is unsafe or to be avoided. 

In turn, city residents have their own impressions of the Yale community. “Many people feel the university is untouchable, aloof, and disconnected from the city,” explains Darrell Brooks, CEO of Beulah Land Development Corporation. Some residents also view Yale as carrying an air of superiority, as if its representatives arrive with their own ready-made solutions to the city’s challenges. 

The pilgrimage offers a meeting ground, drawing students beyond the Quad and into New Haven’s neighborhoods—places defined by resilience, creativity, and collaboration. Students hear residents’ personal stories firsthand: what called them to their work, the experiences that shaped them, and the hopes they hold for the city they call home. “Those conversations allow students to see themselves in the work,” Jennings says. “They recognize their own passions reflected and realized in the lives of others, and begin to imagine how they might also get involved, whether it’s here or elsewhere.” 

Along the way, their misconceptions of New Haven are challenged.

“I signed up to join the pilgrimage because I had been warned to stay on campus,” Ballenger says. “That didn’t sound like a great mindset for me to have going in. I wanted to see the full extent of the city for myself instead of relying on perceptions.” The weekend reframed New Haven for him as a community of lifers—people “who really have worked hard and really care about this place,” he says—rather than a temporary stopover for students. By the end of the pilgrimage, Ballenger came to see New Haven as “a beautiful place,” and experienced a renewed passion for volunteering.

Sheena Crews ’28 M.Div., who has a background in the nonprofit world, says the pilgrimage was an opportunity to learn about her new home and see how local organizations operate and intersect with faith. Before arriving on campus, she associated New Haven primarily with Yale and assumed it was a wealthy city because it housed one of the world’s great universities. “What I found on the pilgrimage was an incredible, diverse community,” she says. “Each stop we made gave me a great sense of the spirit of New Haven, the passion and empathy there is for the residents here, and the desire to serve at even a higher level than they are now.”

It’s Jennings’ and Cunningham’s hope that students learn lessons on the pilgrimage that they’ll carry with them throughout their time at YDS. This was certainly the case for Charissa Lee Yi Zen ’26 M.Div., who joined the inaugural pilgrimage as a first-year student in 2023. “The pilgrimage set the tone for what it means to be a good neighbor while we are here,” she says. “It made us think about what it means to put faith into action and test your principles through practice.”

Melissa Kvidahl Reilly is a New Jersey-based writer and editor who specializes in higher education, religious education, and business-to-business subjects.