Dishing out nutrition lessons during soccer practice

by Suzanne Bohan

February 24, 2018

A group of kids in South Los Angeles is getting a lesson in nutrition during a break in their “Soccer for Success” practice session.

“Who can tell me what is a grain?” asked a coach at a “Soccer for Success” session with young children last summer on a South Los Angeles playing field. “Wheat!” a young boy called out.

“Who knows the difference between a good wheat and a bad wheat?” she asked next. “One is a brown one and one is a white one.”

Several of the kids, mostly five- and six-year olds, called out white and then one said brown.

“You get a high five for that one,” the coach said. “The brown one is better. If you eat bread, if you eat pasta, if you want to eat anything the brown grain is better, OK?”

This young boy was sure he had the answer to a nutrition question asked during the “Soccer for Success” practice.

“So let’s recap, guys. Which one’s better, brown or white?” All the kids shouted “Brown!” in unison.

Not long after the grain training session was over, the youngsters got a snack that underscored the lesson.

The nutrition session was all part of the “Soccer for Success” program, which in South Los Angeles is run by the Brotherhood Crusade. It’s a sports-based child and youth development initiative, largely funded by foundations, with the goals of combating obesity, reducing youth violence, promoting healthier lifestyles and increasing family and youth engagement in the community.

But rather than just focus on physical activity – soccer – for losing weight, it also stresses eating fresh, quality foods instead of high-calorie, high-fat processed foods. Experts know that weight loss takes both increased activity and cutting back on rich foods with little nutritional value.

The nutrition segment I witnessed has a significant effect on the kids, said George Weaver, administrator with the Brotherhood Crusade. During the 90-minute soccer workout sessions, the coaches take two breaks to teach the children and youth about healthy eating. The topics change each week, covering nuts, grains, fruits, vegetables, etc.

The kids become inspired by what they learn, said Weaver. “In a lot of cases, our parents are participating in buying fresh fruits because their kids are saying, ‘No, no, no, we’ve got to buy this!’” and pushing their parents to make healthier purchases.

“They’re relaying this information to their parents,” he said.

George Weaver, with the Brotherhood Crusade, and I on a South LA soccer field during a "Soccer for Success" session.

George Weaver, with the Brotherhood Crusade, and me on a South LA soccer field during a “Soccer for Success” session.

Each year, about 1,500 South Los Angeles children and youth will participate in the free soccer/healthy lifestyle program. And the fact that it’s free is essential, as few of the parents could afford to pay for it.

In addition to raising awareness among the young about healthful eating choices – lessons they’ll retain their entire lives – kids are also losing weight, Weaver said. One girl lost 13 pounds, he said, and a boy 10 pounds.

This two-minute video, called “How Celeste Amaya Lost Weight….While Having Fun!” tells the story of one girl’s weight loss after she joined the “Soccer for Success” program. That weight loss allayed her mother’s fear that she would develop diabetes.

And “Soccer for Success” goes even beyond the important goals of physical fitness and healthy eating, said Weaver. It’s also about building self-confidence, acquiring life skills and turning South LA schools and recreational centers into true community hubs.

The program is funded by the U.S. Soccer Foundation, the California Endowment and other foundations, as well as city and corporate donors. For more information visit www.ussoccerfoundation.org/our-programs/soccer-for-success.

Health, Health disparities

A new community garden springs up after land group adopts health perspective

by Suzanne Bohan

October 24, 2017

Alina Bokde, executive director of the LA Neighborhood Land Trust, stands in a community garden that’s the result of new thinking about the health aspect of her organization’s work.

Alina Bokde, executive director the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, wasn’t quite sure how a new push to view her organization’s work through a public health lens would work.

She’s been acquiring open space in urban areas for years, with an eye toward conserving land, providing recreation and helping to mitigate climate change. But having a direct and significant effect human health? That was harder to envision achieving with small plots of land.

But her group had joined with dozens of other nonprofits in a bold effort to finally lift South Los Angeles, a poor neighborhood with familiar urban social ills – crime, poverty, high disease rates – onto a new trajectory that results in longer, healthier lives for residents.

The organization funding this major South LA project, which is called “Building Healthy Communities” and will run tens of millions of dollars over a decade, asked the community’s nonprofits to agree on common goals and best practices to increase the odds of achieving real success. The request of the funder, the California Endowment, reflects an emerging practice in philanthropy called “collective impact.” It asks that the many nonprofits tackling social ills in a community join together more tightly to achieve lasting change.

The nation’s 1.4 million nonprofits typically develop independent approaches to solving major social problems. But they’re “often working at odds with each other and exponentially increasing the … resources required to make meaningful progress,” wrote two authors in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.₁

The newly-shared objective around health led to a surprising outcome for the LA Neighborhood Land Trust after it began looking for the human health potential of its work as well.

Armed with this new way of viewing the organization’s work, one of Bokde’s staff approached an LA community health clinic, Clinica Romero, and asked the director – who hadn’t worked before with the land trust – if the clinic would develop a curriculum and nutritional guide for its diabetic patients, using a wished-for community garden at a nearby park to teach these lessons. The clinic director said yes, and Bokde then went to the Kaiser Family Foundation, asking if it would award a $50,000 grant to build the garden and help fund the development of the material to teach the patients more healthful living habits. It also said yes.

In the spring of 2012 the new community garden opened, with 19 raised plots – nine of which are reserved for clinic patients and the rest set aside for the community. The plots were awarded by lottery and there’s a wait list. Gardeners pay $35 a year. The fenced-in area, with a shed and its thickly-growing gardens, is a peaceful oasis off a busy LA thoroughfare. The clinic patients attend classes there, where they learn ways to cook the fresh produce. They also learn the most nutritious ways to shop for food and to cook it.

Bokde is thrilled with the outcome. “I’ve become a convert,” she said. And at no point did she feel the collaboration toward improving community health was forced. “It was very natural.” Her organization is also working with another clinic to build and run a community garden at a South LA high school.

The Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust even changed its tagline to “Growing Healthier Communities Through Urban Parks & Gardens.” And the Land Trust Alliance, a national group, asked Bokde to speak at its October 2012 annual conference in Salt Lake City on the intersection between public health and open space acquisition. She got an enthusiastic response and the national group invited her back to speak on the topic this year.

A woman named Imelda leisurely watered her garden plot one evening last summer in a busy LA neighborhood.

At the one-third acre garden site in Los Angeles one August evening last summer, a woman named Imelda was calmly watering the tomatoes, carrots and chilies she grows for her family. (Gardeners with extra can sell at a farm stand at the garden on weekends.)

Her family loves the fresh produce, but she’s also enriched by the experience. Tending her garden “takes a little of the stress away,” Imelda said.

TAKEAWAY: When nonprofits working in the same community set shared overarching outcomes, such as reducing violence, improving health or economic revitalization, they can produce outstanding results.

—

John Kania and Mark Kramer. “Collective Impact.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011. www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/collective_impact

Health, Health disparities

Controlled burns spark hope on Yurok reservation

by Suzanne Bohan

August 24, 2015

This photo, taken in Feb. 2013, shows the thick undergrowth that’s blocking healthy growth of hazel on Yurok tribal lands in Northern California.

The forests on the Yurok tribal lands in Northern California look like weed-choked, overgrown gardens, as one tribal member described it.₁

After years of fire suppression – in an ecosystem that needs fire to regenerate – the forest is filled with underbrush that crowds out desirable plants used for basket making, medicines and food. And many of the vast meadows that once blanketed the hills are gone.

Before European contact, the Yurok’s forests were cleared of underbrush by periodic fires, allowing elk and other animals to move freely, and the Yurok used controlled burns to keep trees and bushes from encroaching into meadows, where important plants grew and animals grazed.

But over the past century timber companies began planting monocultures of conifers not only on clearcut forests but on former prairies.₁ The rest of the meadowland was lost and the forests became overrun with undergrowth due to state and federal government fire suppression policies.

The result: A reduction in game and in many plants species critical to the preservation of Yurok culture.

But Del Norte County and its adjacent tribal lands in 2010 joined a statewide, $1 billion community transformation initiative funded by the California Endowment, which seeks to leave 14 California communities far healthier in 10 years. One key lever of change in this initiative is to ask community members what they most want to change, rather than the outside funder dictating terms. And then organizing members into a strong force for change.

Skip Lowry, whose mother is Yurok, led a nine-month “listening campaign” among Yuroks and non-Indians living in and around the tribal lands, which surround the Klamath and Trinity rivers. At the end, the community chose prescribed burns as the chief priority for restoring peoples’ health.

That’s not surprising to Dr. Susan Cameron, a Navajo/Hispanic scholar who works in the education department at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. She said Native Americans’ sense of well being is intrinsically linked to the preservation of their culture and community.

“Health can only be rooted in your community. There’s no other way it can be,” Cameron said. And much of what children need to learn to keep the Yurok culture alive, she noted, comes from a healthy forest.

“Since time immemorial the Yurok community honored and obeyed natural rights, true ‘laws of the land,’ which our culture depended on for the continuation of the blood of our people,” noted Lowry in a July 2012 article in Yurok Today. “And only within that culture will we find the balance and harmony once again.”

The largest bushes are cut and hauled away in preparation for a controlled burn on five acres of Yurok tribal land.

The largest bushes are cut in preparation for a controlled burn on five acres of Yurok tribal land.

The organizing campaign, funded by the California Endowment, led to the creation of the Klamath-river Local Organizing Committee, or KLOC, in April 2012. In April 2013, the Yurok tribe will start a managed burn on five acres where overgrown

These hazel shoots are twisted and bent from too much nearby plant growth. They need to grow straight for basket making and many other uses. The controlled fire will clear out the unwanted bushes and allow the hazel shoots to grow unimpeded.

bushes have caused prized hazel plants to send out twisted and bent shoots in order to avoid other plants. The Yurok need straight shoots for a variety of ancient uses, including making baskets, baby rattles and eel traps.

In a few weeks, I’ll post photos of the burn in progress. Photos taken by Melissa Darnell, the lead community organizer for the initiative in Del Norte County and the Yurok tribal lands, in this post show the site before and after preparation for the burn.

TAKEAWAY: Native American cultures have always known that health is intrinsically linked to your community and surroundings, a reality gradually coming to light in Western cultures.

—

1. Community plan catches fire: KLOC, Tribe partner to come up with 10-year cultural burn program. Yurok Today, July 2012. www.yuroktribe.org/documents/2012_july.pdf

Blog, Health, Sugar consumption

Mexico tax drives down soda purchases, as hoped

by Suzanne Bohan

June 30, 2015

Courtesy of University of North Carolina

So far, only Mexico, France, the City of Berkeley and the Navajo Nation have succeeded in passing a “sin tax” on soda or junk food, despite many attempts among various governments over the years. So there has been virtually no way to know if these taxes would actually to cut soda consumption – which nutritionists say is a critical factor behind high obesity rates and all its attendant ills.

In January 2014 in Mexico, the price of sodas and other sugary drinks went up by about 10 percent due to the new tax. (It’s generated $1.3 billion in revenue since then, which the Mexican government is using for health promotion campaigns such as adding more fresh water stations in schools.)

Now a new study, from the Mexican National Institute of Public Health and the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina, suggests that the tax is dampening enthusiasm for sugary drinks.

According to the study, during the first year of the tax, sugary beverage purchases dropped nearly 12 percent, compared with previous years. And, in news that uplifted health advocates, people drank more water as well. The drop was even steeper among poorer Mexicans, who bought 17 percent fewer sugary beverages in 2014.

To read the full story on NPR’s food blog, “The Salt”, visit www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/06/19/415741354/mexicos-sugary-drink-tax-makes-a-dent-in-consumption-study-claims

Blog, Health, Health disparities

Low-crime neighborhoods promote mental health in older Latinos

by Suzanne Bohan

December 9, 2014

This is from a new study out of the University of Illinois. It’s long known that bad neighborhoods raise stress, but this one quantifies the effect, and in terms of depression. It’s not hard to understand that staying cooped up inside, and feeling fearful leaving your house, would bring on depression. Next step, as the researcher says, is investing in neighborhoods to promote residents’ health (and for residents to start organizing to bring in these improvements):

Older Latinos living in the U.S. who perceive their neighborhoods as safer and more walkable are less likely to develop severe depressive symptoms, and the effect may be long term, a new study suggests.

Researchers examined links between the onset of depressive symptoms in 570 older Latino adults and various characteristics of the Greater Los Angeles neighborhoods they lived in, including crime, the availability and quality of sidewalks, traffic safety and aesthetics.

Participants ranged in age from 60 to 90, and 351 of them screened positive for low levels of depression at the outset of the study. When participants were rescreened 12 and 24 months later, a total of 19 (5.4 percent) of those with depression showed elevated symptoms.

However, people who perceived their neighborhoods as low in criminal activity and more walkable were less likely to develop severe depression, according to lead author Rosalba Hernandez, a professor of social work at the University of Illinois.

“Many times we look at individual-level factors or things within the individual’s family that contribute to mental health, but here we’re seeing it’s beyond that – it’s the neighborhood and other macro-systems that can impact psychological well-being,” Hernandez said.

“If there are neighborhood factors that decrease depressive symptoms, how do we figure out what those factors are and make appropriate investments, so we can have individuals who are psychologically well and environments that are flourishing?”

For the full story see: http://news.illinois.edu/news/14/1208walkability_RosalbaHernandez.html

Blog, Health

Running Keeps You Younger

by Suzanne Bohan

November 21, 2014

As a once-regular runner, this headline was intriguing to come across: “Running really can keep you young, says CU-Boulder-Humboldt State study.”

The gist of the article is that seniors who run regularly also use energy more efficiently while walking, about the same as a typical 20-year-old.

But older people who walk for exercise rather than jog burn about the same energy walking as older, sedentary adults, and expend up to 22 percent more energy walking than the 20-something crowd. The study, led by Humboldt State Professor Justus Ortega, was published online Nov. 20 in the journal PLOS ONE.

“The bottom line is that running keeps you younger, at least in terms of energy efficiency,” said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Rodger Kram of the Department of Integrative Physiology, a co-author on the new study.

The study included 30 healthy volunteers with an average age of 69 who either regularly ran or walked for exercise. The volunteers all had been either walking or running at least three times a week for a minimum of 30 minutes per workout for at least six months.

Kram believes that mitochondria — small bodies found inside individual cells known as the cell “powerhouses” — are involved. Mitochondria generate chemical energy known as adenosine triphosphate (ATP) that powers our muscle fibers to help us move about, lift objects, and, in this case, run. People who work out regularly generally have more mitochondria in their cells, providing more energy to power larger muscles.

Guess I’ll have to get back into the habit.

To read the article, visit www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-11/uoca-rrc111714.php

Health, Health disparities

Coaches turn recess into fun, constructive classroom break

by Suzanne Bohan

February 28, 2013

Kids and Playworks coaches playing roshambo.
Photo courtesy of Playworks.

The kids obviously adored Coach “Trell” as she strode into an elementary school in San Pablo, Calif., jumping around her and asking questions. The coach, Shantrell Sneed, was with Playworks, an Oakland, Calif. nonprofit whose mission is to turn recess into a constructive, fun and healthy experience.

When recess is largely unsupervised, conflicts arise on the schoolyard which interrupts class time as teachers work to resolve altercations. Or kids get bullied and traumatized.

So Playworks coaches organize play during recess so it promotes physical activity, conflict resolution, friendship and improved academic performance – which research shows all ultimately help the students live longer, healthier lives.

One game Coach Trell taught was roshambo — the “rock, paper, scissors” hand game. As kids defeat rivals, they accumulate “cheerleaders,” and all shout out the final winner’s name. One student asked if the winner got a prize.

“Yes, you get the entire class as your cheerleader as a prize,” Sneed said.

Playworks launched in 1996, and with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation it has expanded into some 15 cities and trained more than 100,000 kids in healthy play and conflict resolution. And principals are grateful for the results. The one at the San Pablo school told me that before she brought in Playworks in 2010, about five children a day were sent to her office for discipline issues. A year later is was down to just a few a week, said Alicia Azcarraga, principal of Riverside Elementary School.

A 2011 study of eight Bay Area Playworks sites found when implemented successfully it improved the school climate, supported better academic achievement, contributed to feelings of safety on campus, and improved relationships among students and between students and adults.

Schools pay some of the cost for the program, in part to ensure their commitment to its success, and fundraising by Playworks covers the rest.

Playworks is another example of the many brilliant programs underway by numerous organizations around the country to reduce disparities in health. And not by providing more medical care, which largely only addresses diseases after they arise, but by improving the communities in which people live.

Health, Health disparities

New laws reform high school discipline practices

by Suzanne Bohan

February 28, 2013

Youth in California speak in support of high school discipline reform.

This hasn’t gotten much notice, but a “listening campaign” in California communities by a major nonprofit led to a swift – in legislative terms – enactment of five new California laws to reduce high schools suspension and expulsion rates. The long-term result is fewer incarcerations and healthier lives.

“None of us had that on our radars,” said Daniel Zingale, who headed the campaign. “I’d never heard about it being an issue.”

Zingale, a policy expert with deep roots in Sacramento, now works for the California Endowment on the nonprofit’s statewide team. In September 2010, Zingale and his staff held community meetings in each of 14 communities selected by the California Endowment to join its new $1 billion, 10-year initiative to put these areas on a far healthier, more hopeful track. Hundred showed up at each meeting.

The state team asked audience members what they would change to improve the prospects for young people. Nine of the communities independently named reversing the high levels of school suspensions and expulsions for youth, particularly blacks and Latinos.

As more and more communities raised the issue, the meeting organizers shook their heads in astonishment.

“It completely came from the ground up, and they were right,” Zingale said. In the following months, the U.S. Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education caught wind of the nascent movement in the Endowment’s communities to reform school discipline. It did its own analysis and found that that California suspends 400,000 kids a year, more than those getting a diploma.

We’re suspending more kids than we’re graduating in a year,’” said Zingale. “Amazing.”

During his or her lifetime, the average high school dropout will cost taxpayers $292,000 in lower tax revenues and incarceration costs, and that doesn’t include health care costs.

Zingale began educating lawmakers about the issue.

In the spring of 2011 seven bills were introduced by several lawmakers that made it harder to suspend or expel students for nonviolent offenses, and to offer more counseling and other supports for kids who are acting up.

To support the bills, youth from the 14-neighborhood initiative circulated a petition, gathering 15,000 signatures to deliver to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk.

They also went to Sacramento to testify in support of the bills. Others attended a day-long hearing in Los Angeles.

Russlynn H. Ali, assistant secretary for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education, was the keynote speaker at the LA hearing. She told the audience that her office had recently launched an investigation into school discipline practices nationwide.

“Time after time, students for the very same offenses, with the very same offense histories, receive very different punishments,” she said. “It’s both about what we tolerate, and of whom.”

After suspension, students didn’t feel as connected to the school or that there were adults on campus who cared about them. High school provides a critical opportunity to get guidance and support from adults to steer them to a better future.

In September 2012, Gov. Brown signed five of the new laws. These made it harder to suspend or expel students for nonviolent, non-drug related offenses, and pressured schools to provide support services to youth acting up, such as counseling. One also provided a path back to high school for those in the juvenile justice system.

In a victory press release, Dr. Robert Ross, the CEO of the California Endowment, praised the youth who raised the issue and doggedly advocated for it. “You came together. You pushed. You were smart and strategic. And you would not give up,” wrote Ross.

TAKEWAY: This is another powerful example, in addition to several others in this series of blog posts, that portray the stunning results from truly listening to what ordinary people want to improve their lives and health.

Health, Health disparities

LA residents advocate for second chance for ex-offenders

by Suzanne Bohan

February 28, 2013

Vanessa La Blanc at the Lorenzo construction site in August 2012. She’s so impressed her supervisors that they want her to stay for the entire project; She left prison two months earlier, after never working a full-time job.

This is Vanessa La Blanc, 34. This photo was taken on Aug. 24, 2012, and it’s on a construction site in South Los Angeles where a remarkable construction project is underway. It represents a win for the developer, the community, and former convicts like La Blanc who want a new start.

On June 18 – two months earlier – she’d been released from prison in Chowchilla after serving 13 years on a robbery conviction. It stemmed from a crime in South Los Angeles she committed. She grew up there, leaving high school in 10^th grade and joining a gang, which she said became like family. But Vanessa grimaced when asked about the “Jungles” tattoo on her arm, which is a daily reminder of her former life.

She was 20 when she entered prison, and at first she was just bitter. But at 27, Vanessa had epiphany. “Do I want to remain caged up all my life, around all these miserable people?” she asked herself.

The answer became obvious when she began devoting herself to getting out as soon as possible and learning all she could while in prison. She particularly credits an instructor in one class, “Mr. Ed Hamilton,” she said, with teaching her skills that landed her current job.

Vanessa La Blanc pointing at the Los Angeles skyline.

After Vanessa got out of prison, her parole officer referred her to the UAW WorkSource Center’s Prison Reentry Incentive program. After she completed it, the program paid for 120 hours of job training and also asked an organization called PVJOBS to assist in her job search. PVJOBS contacted GJM Engineering, a plumbing contractor, who gave Vanessa a chance, hiring her to inspect pipes on a major construction project in South LA. Vanessa was hired on a short-term basis, and she so wowed her supervisors with her work quality and professionalism that they’re keeping her on for the 12 months remaining on the project. Workers on that project receive a minimum of $11.95 per hour.

And it was the work of South LA community advocates that helped ensure she had a chance for such a job.

Here’s how that unfolded: Several nonprofits funded advocacy training for residents in South Los Angeles who objected to the conversion of a former health care facility into high-end condominiums most residents could not afford. The project was dubbed “the Lorenzo Project.”

After organizers and locals spoke at city meetings and ran campaigns, the developer agreed to create a community clinic, support small-business development in the complex, set aside one-third of the construction jobs for locals and another 10 percent for “at risk” residents such as Vanessa, and 5 percent of the 900 apartments will be priced for low-income tenants. City planners in early 2011 approved the revised proposal.

Here’s a link to an LA Times article on the successful outcome, posted on the website of SAJE, or Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, which led the effort in partnership with other nonprofits and foundations.

After a full-day’s work on the construction site, Vanessa heads to an evening job as a janitor at a Farmer’s John meat packing plant.

“Definitely my future is brighter,” she said.

TAKEAWAY: Community organizing yields remarkable results, including securing good jobs for ex-offenders looking for a new start in life.

Health, Health disparities

Another teen dream lifted up in Del Norte

by Suzanne Bohan

February 27, 2013

Benjamin Thomas stands with his mother, Michelle Thomas, along the coast in Crescent City, Calif.

Benjamin Thomas, 18, once felt like most other Del Norte County youth: He wanted to exit the scenic but economically depressed county right after he graduated.

“The teenage dream is to get out of here as fast as possible,” the high school senior said.

But like Makenzy Williams, whose story is described here, Benjamin joined a youth project organized and funded by the California Endowment as part of a countywide initiative. And that completely changed his outlook.

The Los Angeles nonprofit in 2010 invited Del Norte County in Northern California to join a 10-year social experiment in community transformation, one that’s committed to leaving residents healthier and far more hopeful about the community’s future.

Del Norte was once an economically robust area, when the logging and fishing industry were strong. But those jobs have disappeared, and many now live at or near poverty and suffer more health problems than the average Californian.

The transformation initiative – called Building Healthy Communities – works on multiple fronts to forge lasting changes. And one of those fronts is community organizing – that is, getting citizens together to identify issues that need fixing, and then training them to professionally research and present a solution. Armed with those skills, the community organizers then invite those with the power to change the situation to a public meeting, where they present their research and their demand. And a yes or no answer to the demand is expected at the meeting.

In February 2012, Benjamin joined the Sunset Student Organizing Committee, which was guided by a community organizer working for the Building Healthy Communities initiative. Sunset High is an alternative school, with about 100 students. They then chose their top issue, and one that could be quickly remedied: The lousy lunches served at school.

The big day came on May 15, 2012. School district officials, including the superintendent, arrived at Sunset to hear the organizing committee. “I was extremely nervous,” said Benjamin, who as leader had to open the presentation.

But the jitters didn’t last long. He began to feel the conviction of his words.

“There was a really powerful sentence and I looked out at the crowd and they were looking at me,” Benjamin recalled. “And I was like, “They’re listening to me. They’re not here to listen to some principal. They’re here listening to me! Yeah.”

Other students described the school’s regular offerings of frozen processed burritos, corn dogs, pizza, hamburgers, and chicken nuggets. They only had a salad bar one day a week, and it often ran out and had just a few toppings. In comparison, the youth told the officials, at the larger high school, Del Norte, students every day had a fresh salad bar with many toppings, and multiple freshly-made hot entrees.

And 84 percent of the Sunset students qualify for free or reduced–priced lunches, as they come from low-income homes. For some, students said, the school lunch may be the most nutritious meal they get all day.

At the end of the hour-long presentation – which starts and ends on time in respect for others’ schedules – the school officials said yes. Within a week Sunset lunches vastly improved.

After experience, Benjamin became more respectful toward authorities, and with his new skills talked to a school official directly about another issue and got a positive resolution. That wouldn’t have happened before, he said – he just would have vented and gotten frustrated. Benjamin also now has a zeal for improving Del Norte and Crescent City, the seat of the county. Because he knows he has the power to do so.

After college, he wants to return to Crescent City and become a community organizer, or take some other civic leadership role.

“Every time someone asked where I was born, I always wanted to say it was somewhere else,” Benjamin said. “And now I say ‘Here. I was born here.’”

“And now I see that I want to change Crescent City and make it a place that everyone can be proud of to be part of.“

Dishing out nutrition lessons during soccer practice

A new community garden springs up after land group adopts health perspective

Controlled burns spark hope on Yurok reservation

Mexico tax drives down soda purchases, as hoped

Low-crime neighborhoods promote mental health in older Latinos

Running Keeps You Younger

Coaches turn recess into fun, constructive classroom break

New laws reform high school discipline practices

LA residents advocate for second chance for ex-offenders

Another teen dream lifted up in Del Norte

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