Oakland Dons Final Report
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Transcript of Oakland Dons Final Report
The Oakland DONS’ Present…
F i n a l R e p o r t f o r
Y o u t h B u i l d i n g H e a l t h y C o m m u n i t i e s A y - p a r p r o j e c t
O a k l a n d , C a l i f o r n i a F a l l 2 0 1 0
A Youth-Led project with Youth Noise, Link Media, and Youth Together
Media
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Who are the people creating the change?
Where are they?
! We are YBHC (Youth Building Healthy Communities). We are a collective group of
youth from Oakland, California who originated from an organization called Youth Noise.
Our main focus for this research project is to bring health and healthy habits back to our
community. Through research, we were able to collect data and get concrete answers
about the critical health issues existing in Oakland neighborhoods. Our team is youth-led
and advised by Lauren Hauser and Aaron Nakai, our adult allies who have helped us
along the way. Through this project, we learned what it means to have a healthy body
and live healthy lifestyles; we can now go into our communities and take action to
promote healthy living with the skills and knowledge we’ve gained.
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Our Goal
When we first started, we as youth didn’t understand exactly what ‘health’ meant
to us. Our goal for this project was to find the reasons why we as a community are
generally unhealthy. The first part of the project was to learn about our definition of health
in order to get a better grasp on the health issues in Oakland. We see ‘health’ as more
than just our physical well being, but our community well being, and having opportunities
to feel safe, valued and happy. Next, we went into the streets and found community
members who were willing to discuss health topics with us. We figured in order to help our
people it is necessary to hear the ideas and thoughts directly from their mouths. Now that
we have collected and analyzed the data, our next goal is to develop action plans to
promote healthier lifestyles for the people of Oakland.
Our Vision When we first started the project we: watched our family members struggle with
obesity and diabetes, saw our peers dealing with severe mental health issues, witnessed
racism within our schools, and noticed the lack of preventive health knowledge within our
families. After identifying these issues we learned that this is not how people in Oakland
should live, we feel our community deserves better. We envision a city where: healthy
foods are easily accessible, community members create a strong social support group
and invest in youth development, neighborhoods are free from racial violence, and where
access to health care and opportunities for success is a right and not a privilege.
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Methods
We began our research project by attending a two-day training on youth-led
participatory action research (YPAR). We came together as a group to discuss and map
what wasn’t healthy about Oakland and what a better community would look like to us.
In-depth discussions and community mapping helped us visualize what a healthy Oakland
would look like and how Oaklanders would participate in creating our ideal utopia. From
this YPAR training, we learned important concepts and research techniques that would
further help us in defining our research goals and vision for Oakland. We felt that YPAR
methodology was essential for this research project because we are the people who are
being affected by health disparities in Oakland. As low-income youth of color, we see the
health problems on the street, at school, and at home, thus, it gives us greater access to
community members and resources that outside researchers would not normally have.
With the special access we had to community members, we were able to conduct: one
on one interviews, surveys, and focus groups with over 100 Oaklanders.
Our Themes We decided, after our community mapping and analyzing our community, the four
main topics we would focus on would be:
1. Nutritional Health
2. Health Education
3. Mental Health
4. Cultural Education
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Our Research Question In our research process, we had to come up with one main question that we would
try to answer. Our question was: “How can we develop sustainable youth leaders in
Oakland to understand and model preventative health practices, have consciousness of
their own cultures and be knowledgeable of others?”
Data Analysis
Once we had gathered our data, we all got together as a group and went through
every piece, in order to come up collectively with what we felt were our strongest findings.
One process in which we chose our findings was to go through the data and see which
pieces of information connected directly back to our research question. If we felt it was
strong enough to answer our research question, then we used the data to create our
findings.
Our findings were refined even more as we continued to analyze which finding
would best answer our overall question. When our refining process was over, we put the
findings into neatly organized templates and decided what our visions for each finding
would be. In addition, we created our recommendations to make sure the finding
became an actual plan of action. Here is what we found:
!
!
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Finding Most Families of color that answered
our survey said they choose to eat
fast food versus cooking at home at
least once a week.
Sub-Finding Fast food diets are contributing to
higher overweight and obesity rates
among African American and Latino
families in Oakland.
Supporting Data: • When asked, ‘How many fast food meals do you and your family eat per week?’
44.8% of the people we surveyed said they eat fast food 2-6 times a week.
• “A lot of our people, especially Mexican folks, are eating like, you put grease on top
of grease on top of grease with a little piece of meat maybe one veggie, and that’s
considered healthy.” –Esteban Cuaya (Student at Chabo College)
• “You learn your habits at home. Whether their healthy or unhealthy habits, I think a
lot of that comes from the house.” -Youth Particpant In Focus Group
• “I feel like unfortunate, historically it[‘s] a trend that our communities are unhealthy
Our Findings…
Food Justice
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therefore we learn an unhealthy way of living. A lot of it also is on television, the
different things, and the images that children get fed at an early age. On one hand
they look at a commercial that says get your five servings of vegetables a day, and
then a Fruitloops commercial comes on, its just difficult.” –Lodgi (Youth Together
Staff)
• “Exercising daily and eating healthy food makes you healthy, but getting a hold of
healthy food is what the problem is.” –Malakia (Student at Oakland High School)
• In the 2008-09 school year, 29.1% of 5th and 7th grade students in [Alameda] County
were overweight. (California FitnessGram, California Department of Education,
2008-09)
• Of all 18 school districts in Alameda County, Oakland was ranked 4th, at 36.4%, for
having a high percentage of overweight children in 5th and 7th grades. (California
FitnessGram, California Department of Education, 2008-09)
• Statewide, California is home to 14,823 fast-food restaurants and 6,659 convenience
stores. By contrast, the state has 3,853 supermarkets and 1,292 produce stands
(including farmers markets) (California Center for Public Health Advocacy)
• Currently, there are no grocery stores in West Oakland (California Center for Public
Health Advocacy)
Our Vision When we were going over our results from the surveys, and reviewing our notes from
the focus groups we realized that the need for nutritional education, as well as the need
for healthier foods and access to them, was going to be one of our strongest findings
within the entire project.
It is because of this that we collectively decided to come up with a plan of real
action. In other words, we want to take extra time in order to make sure that what we
need and want on this particular finding will be solid.
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Recommendations: We have a number of recommendations and projects:
• We want to learn more about the idea of “Food Justice” in our community, and
work with other organizations to dive deeper into what this means. We want to
involve more youth in this project. We will apply to a “Just Food” program to try and
get additional grant money to complete our project recommendations.
• In order to give people other alternatives to fast food, we want to turn the vacant
lots in Oakland into beautiful gardens and have community members care for the
gardens. We feel it would be unrealistic to try and work on all the abandoned
spaces, but we can have a few to start off with. We will work with Youth
Empowerment School to create a bigger garden in the backyard that will serve as
an educational space and a place for young people to gather food.
• We want our school to have an elective class after school completely dedicated to
keeping the garden in top shape. When the garden has a consistent group taking
care of it, we will be able to expand it so that we can include a wider variety of
vegetables, and be able to use those veggies to make school lunches.
• In order to have more fresh food options, we will start a youth friendly contest
around artistic expression of local gardens. We will ask to claim a specific area for
themselves in and around their homes, schools, churches etc, and decorate it any
way they want. In Oakland, many of the boys in our neighborhoods decorate their
cars with paint, big rims and loudspeakers. There are also projects where young
people decorate their bikes. We thought, “How amazing would it be if they took
that same creativity and turned it towards their plot of land!” We will have contests
monthly to see which plot of land is most creative, and we will give prizes to the
winners like new plants, or gardening supplies. We will promote it on the website and
work with partners to get it started.
• We will also try and start a coupon program. In Oakland, people pass out ‘free fast
food’ coupons on the street. We thought, why don’t we pass out “free apples’ or
other fruits and vegetable cards with cooking recipes instead. We will partner with
local gardens to see if they would donate a number of foods, and then more
people will know where to find healthier foods.
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Health Education
Finding There is a lack of education around
primary prevention in schools and in
households as well as primary
prevention promotion in Oakland.
Sub-Finding Youth and families in Oakland do not understand the levels of prevention, nor do they
know where to seek health education to prevent health issues such as, substance abuse
and smoking, risk of chronic illness, teen pregnancy and STDs, and obesity.
Supporting Data: • Although 54.2% of the people surveyed said they do not know what preventative
healthcare meant, over 57.3% of the people surveyed believe that by focusing on
prevention and preventative healthcare, their community’s health will greatly
improve.
• 82.4% of the people surveyed know someone who currently does not have
healthcare coverage.
• “There needs to be education, especially health education [in our schools]
happening.” –Fela Thomas (Director of Youth Center at YES)
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Our Vision We envision a visible and active health education system in Oakland where people
know were to seek services at all levels of prevention. We want people in Oakland to
understand the practices of prevention so they can keep themselves and their families
healthy. For example, community health education will be emphasized in schools,
churches, and other community engagement outlets by developing pamphlets that will
educate community members how prevention practices prevent premature death.
Additionally, we have a vision that all Oaklanders will have access to affordable health
care and no one can be denied services.
Recommendations: In order to make small steps toward our vision, we will provide community members
and our peers with resources about how to stay healthy using prevention practices we
suggest:
• Develop a prevention education pamphlet on various health issues, such as
smoking, obesity, diabetes, etc. and distribute them in neighborhoods, churches,
and mail boxes.
• Partner with local clinics and other health-related agencies to increase health
promotion around safe sex, ATOD prevention, and obesity prevention on the streets
of Oakland.
• Host a health fair at the schools to promote prevention practices around sex, ATOD,
and obesity.
• Start a social network blog or group that discusses preventative health care
practices, and sites resources for these practices in the community.
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Finding Youth in Oakland believe that
discussing mental health issues
with their families is not done,
leads to conflict, or is not
supported in the household.
Sub-Finding Family communication about youth to adult transition subjects is non-existent and/or
poses more severe mental health issues or consequences.
Supporting Data: We only added one mental health question to the survey because when we were
building the survey, mental health didn’t seem like that big of an issue, but when the
people answered the question, and when we spoke with our friends, we realized that the
lack of knowledge behind the issue was a problem and needed to see the light of day.
This is why we decided that mental health should be one of our findings.
• 95% of those surveyed said they would take their mentally stressed family member to
a hospital as opposed to dealing with the issue at home.
Mental Health
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• According to the data, when those surveyed were asked where they would take
them if one of their family members was to fall mentally ill, all of them said mental
health clinics around the area. Leading us to believe that discussing issues within
families is a problem.
• When asked what he or she would do with a family member who was mentally ill,
every person who answered said they would take him or her to a hospital or a
mental hospital, and not one single person who answered the question said they
would talk to a family member.
• “ I think we first started focusing on the mental health topic because we realized
how hard it was for upset students to talk to other about their problems. There were
a lot of fights at school, and we sat down and tried to figure out what the real
problem behind the fights were. We decided that the lack of communication
between students and their peers or family members regarding their issues was the
real reason. The lack of support for these problems was what was causing the fights
in the first place.”-Maria
• You can’t talk to your parents, and sometimes you can’t even talk to your friends
about your problems. There needs to be someone you can go to for help before all
the anger and stress builds inside you to a point where you can’t even behave
correctly around people.”-Maria, Youth Health Ambassador
Our Vision We want to create a peaceful space in the back of school next to nature where we
can have discussions. Our ideal dream would be to put these spaces within our
community gardens so that we can see our beautiful gardens as we have open
discussions about our issues.
Recommendations • There will be a group that would meet every week, they would go to the space,
and act like a support group for students who felt they needed to talk to someone
about their problems. All information talked about would be kept confidential, and
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the students will be able to talk to their peers about solutions to their problems.
• Also, along with the support group, we want to start to implement a conflict
resolution team at school. The team would be students who were trained to solve
conflicts between other students. We want to be able to get the students to resolve
their own problems between each other rather than rely on an adult to solve the
conflict.
Finding Racism is causing violence in Oakland
schools and neighborhoods.
Sub-Finding There is a lack of cultural education
amongst various ethnicities in Oakland
schools and neighborhoods. This leads
to violence and not feeling safe in our communities.
Supporting Data: • When those surveyed were asked if they would want to learn more about cultural
education, 83.5% said that they would.
• When those surveyed were asked if they believed that race matters, over 50%
answered saying yes, they believed that race does matter.
Cultural Education
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• When asked what they felt was an important issue in their community, one survey
participant answered, “lack of self knowledge, lack of a sense of the legacy of
struggle…” -Eden (Teacher at Eastside Arts Alliance)
• When asked what they felt was one thing they could do to improve their
community, one survey participant answered, “if I had a way to organize something
fun, I would take a bunch of people from different communities and put them
together, imagine the relationships and the bonds that could be put together.” -
Anonymous student in Oakland
• “If you want to know where you came from, you need to go back.” –Janelle
(Student at Youth Empowerment School)
Our Vision We envision Oakland schools and neighborhoods will be more informed of other
cultures, as well as, celebrate and educate a different culture every month other than
African and Xicana history.
Recommendations: In order to increase cultural education in our schools we suggest:
• Having cultural assemblies on multiple cultures and ethnicities other than African
and Xicana history.
• We will work with partners and our schools in Oakland to advocate for ethnic studies
classes to be a part of the curriculum, we will lend support to those organizations.
• We will have guest speakers from other cultures who currently experience or have
experienced racism and segregation to motivate young people; we will host a
series of talks.
• Hosting a silent challenge day where students can share a secret in their life with
one another without using spoken words. We will devote a day where we will let the
students draw or write down one thing they want to anonymously share with other
students. They will post what they want to share on a wall for everyone to view. A
professional mental health provider will conduct a debriefing.
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We decided after much deliberation, that the easiest way to bring cultural awareness
to the community and school would be to include it in the school setting, and have it be a
celebration rather than a lecture.
We want to have cultural assemblies every month, and invite members from the
community to join us as well. Every month will highlight a different culture, and allow
everyone to participate with the culture’s native customs, questions, and culture. It will
allow them to learn about someone else while learning a little about themselves in the
process.
Limitations and Lessons Learned We learned a lot about research, and data collection through this project. We as
youth had never come across things like survey monkey before, or how to organize a
survey. With the help of our adult allies, we were able to learn how to put together a
survey, and also, we were able to learn how to do a successful and professional focus
group. We also learned that not all the data you collect in a survey is useful data. We only
needed to use the data that connected back to our research question, and in the end,
we were able to create some very strong findings from the data.
Throughout this research process there were areas where we could have made
improvements and methods we could have used differently. For example, we could have
widened our target population to a more diverse group of people and use a larger
sample size during the surveying process. Also, just being able to reach more people with
the surveys we collected would have been useful, because then that would have allowed
us to get a greater variety of people, and just more data in general. If we would have
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been able to collect the necessary data needed, feel like our findings would have been
able to become a little more structurally sound. We felt like trying to put together a great
amount of focus groups, was a little stressful, and when we tried, there were always
people who had previously confirmed, but then had dropped out last minute, leaving us
with no focus group.
Also, the time limit of two months that we had to collect the data, and organize it was
a little time constraining. If we had more time to gather more data, we would have been
able to go through the research and locate some more findings. We also felt having some
interviews with liquor store owners, teachers, and policy makers; as well as including more
pictures would have been a good thing to include in our final report.
Next Steps and Actions The Youth Ambassadors will be hosting their Youth Health Summit (YHS) in
December. The YHS will allow them to discuss their findings, and talk about their next steps
for the project. We will recruit more young people to be involved in our action plans.
We need to choose one or two of our recommendations and create a campaign
around some of our main findings. We plan to start to figure our how we can get those
goals met, and really start to strategize on how we are going to get funding for the
projects we want to implement.
We need to figure out how, after the project is done, we could possibly make the
Ambassadors a more permanent team, so that they could in return, teach other students
about how they got their goals accomplished in this project. We want to become youth
health educators and trainers for more youth.
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We will be creating our master plan for the next three months or so, figuring out
what our next big goals are for the action projects, and more ways to promote our work.
Meet the Oakland DONS... Maria Cuaya
Hello! My name is Maria Cuaya, and I’m a senior at Youth Empowerment
School! I chose to join this project because I wanted to create change in
my community and leave something for the students who go to my school
after me. I like to play soccer, and I’m going to play it professionally when I
get out of high school! Senior baby! CLASS OF 2011!!!!
Bella Montoya
What’s up! My name is Bella Montoya, and I’m a Junior at Youth
Empowerment School! I wanted to be in Youth Building Healthy
Communities because I wanted to create a healthy school for my fellow
students. I wanted to be able to have a school with healthy food, and a
healthy environment. I just want my school to be a safe healthy place to
come to everyday.
David Lara
Hey People! My name is David Lara, and I’m a Youth Health Ambassador
also known as the Oak Town Don’s. I’m a freshman at Youth Empowerment
School and I think it’s important to have healthy food at my school. We
need healthier foods for lunch and less fighting at school. YBHC lets me
work with my friends and make change at our school, that’s why I do it!
Yadira Arrevolos
Hello! My name is Yadira Arrevolos and I go to Youth Empowerment
School. I’m a sophomore, and I joined Youth Building Healthy Communities
because I wanted to create healthy changes for my school. I want to start
eating healthy in our cafeteria, and I want there to be more cultural
education for our students. I like to draw, and I love my family and my
boyfriend very much.
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Alejandro Martinez
Hey what’s up! My name is Alejandro Martinez, and I’m a Sophomore at
Youth Empowerment School in Oakland, CA. I can be kind of shy, but I
love my friends, family and girlfriend very much. When you get to know
me, I’m the life of the party. I joined YBHC because I was concerned
about cultural education at my school. I wanted to make a change, and
that’s why I’m a youth Health Ambassador.
Fortino Vasquez
What’s up People! My name is Fortino Vasquez and I’m a Senior at
Youth Empowerment School! I’m a youth organizer, and have been a
youth organizer since my Freshman year of high school, and I will
continue on after graduation. I want to go to college at UC Santa
Cruz, and I am one of the most ambitious people you will ever meet. I
can always bring a smile to any one's face.
Mary Tuinauvai
Hey everyone! My name is Mary Tuinauvai and I currently attend City
College of San Francisco. I am a Dance Major with a Minor in Kinesiology.
I am honored to have been apart of YBHC because I feel it is an effective
way to have my voice heard as an advocate for social justice for our
youth and our communities, local as well as global. As a youth health
blogger, I am excited to have the ability to outreach, influence and
impact change for the better while attracting an audience who share my
concerns. I have been working around social justice issues for two years and have been
involved in multiple organizations that focus on specific social justice issues, such as
violence prevention and community justice.
Jessica Gonzales
Hello, my name is Jessica Gonzales, and I’m a sophomore at San
Francisco State University. I’ve been organizing since my Junior year of
high school, and ever since then it has become a passion. I really love my
family and I love to make people laugh. I joined YBHC because I felt that
after growing up in the Oakland School District, changes needed to be
made to the schools regarding health, and health issues in our
community. I had the opportunity to work with the best team and
organizer could ever ask for, and the changes that we’re going to bring to our schools are
going to go down in history. We are the movement. We are the change.
Special thanks to the Kresge Foundations for the financial support for this project!