by Roni Cleland, Fran Jemmott, Fatima Angeles, The California Wellness Foundation

Through a proactive grantmaking program of The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF), ten "wellness villages" in California have received over $1 million each over a three-and-a-half-year period. Their goal? Empowering residents to design and implement their visions for healthier communities, with young people making decisions at every level of the process. This article describes what this experience has meant to youth and adult participants, both individually and collectively.

Ramiro went into action, organizing the tenants and educating them about their health rights. "We rallied everyone in the apartment building, because they really had nowhere else to go," Ramiro said. He and his neighbors ended up suing the landlord and eventually had their pipes fixed.

The children and families living in the mold-infested building are healthier now because of the knowledge and skills that Ramiro offered to his community. But Ramiro didn't gain those skills overnight. He is part of a "wellness village" that respects and nurtures young people as leaders, who in turn galvanize their communities around issues of health and wellness.

Sidebar 1 How Does a Wellness Village Work? A Look at WV 92701

Background
Established in 1992, The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) is an independent, private foundation whose mission is to improve the health of the people of California by making grants for health promotion, wellness education, and disease prevention. Guided by this mission, specific goals are to:

• improve the quality and accessibility of health promotion and disease prevention programs and services for a culturally diverse cross section of California's children, youth and families;
  
  
• encourage the integration of health promotion and disease prevention activities into the delivery of health and human services;
  
  
• increase the availability of work-related health promotion activities for California workers and their families; and
  
  
• facilitate the development of public policies that support health promotion and disease prevention.

The Children and Youth Community Health Initiative (CYCHI), approved by the Foundation's board in 1996, is one of The California Wellness Foundation's five current proactive grantmaking programs. Its goal is to improve the health of a number of communities by engaging children, youth and adults in the transformation of their social, physical and chemical environments. CYCHI activities are focused in three areas: creating healthy physical environments, encouraging healthy and supportive social networks, and addressing health hazards posed by toxic chemicals.

Walking the Talk
Given the initiative's focus on meaningful leadership roles for young people in the wellness villages, we knew that young people had to be at the table from the very beginning as funding decisions were made. As such, TCWF formed a statewide advisory committee with 25 members, nine of whom were between the ages of 14 and 21. The young people participated in extensive, hands-on trainings to prepare them for the responsibilities they were about to undertake.

The committee began meeting one year before the first grants were awarded to provide input on the structure of the grant-making program. Based on the premise that a village of people concerned about the health of the entire community is fundamental to most cultures, the committee agreed on the idea of a wellness village. It has been well documented that people who feel connected with their communities often enjoy better health, and even live longer (Sarason, 1974; Mitchell & Trickett, 1980). We wanted neighborhoods to embrace wellness, establish roles and responsibilities, celebrate rituals and traditions, and give people of all ages a sense of connection with one another.

The advisory committee assisted program officers in the review of proposals for the program and participated in site visits to the applicants for planning grants. It was demanding but rewarding work for the young members. Leah Johnson, now 19, was 14 years old when she joined the advisory committee:

The first time I sat in the boardroom with all of those professional people, I didn't really know what I was doing or getting involved in, but I knew this was something good for people of my generation and future generations.

At age 15, committee member Justin Guinyard, now a junior at Morehouse College in Atlanta, admitted he was skeptical about the process at first. Justin recalls,

I expected [the adults] to take over the meetings, but the control was evenly distributed. I always felt accepted and they respected what I had to say.

Inviting youth to participate in TCWF's advisory committee process was not always easy-from the logistics of rearranging meetings around school hours to the complex tasks of redefining roles, building trust, and challenging attitudes. But program officers knew this work could yield important lessons, and the wellness villages themselves would face similar challenges.

Managing the Learning Curve
In September of 1997, the board of directors of TCWF approved grants of $125,000, over 18 months to 16 communities, to design plans for wellness villages. Ten of the original 16 would later receive an additional $1,050,000 grant to implement their plans over three-and-a-half years. The planning phase consisted of developing leadership, establishing relationships, identifying strengths and assets, and developing plans for improving community health.

"I think some people [didn't] think youth were concerned about their health issues, but youth are really making a positive difference now."

-Claudia Castro, 15, Andrew Hill Wellness Village

Young people who had been informally involved in writing the proposals were now creating logic models, hiring staff, and building their skills in asset mapping, community organizing, and program evaluation. Most importantly, they learned how to communicate effectively with adults and work as equals with them as difficult decisions were being made.

Evaluation of the planning period revealed that young people took the lead in developing their wellness village plans. In total, almost 600 young people participated in the planning process, and their communities valued their work.

According to Priscilla Saiz, a 15-year-old wellness village leader in a small rural farming community in central California,

We learned how to work together as youth and adults, because a lot of times we have the same idea but phrase it in a different way.

Mikela Jones was 17 when he first became involved with a wellness village consisting of several northern coastal Native American tribes in Mendocino County. In the beginning, Mikela explained, the problem wasn't as much gaining acceptance as it was meeting adults' high expectations before the youth developed the skills and knowledge they needed to take on their new roles. He continued:

They had to give us some time to get comfortable. We were used to adults taking charge, and it took time for us to learn how to be leaders. Now we have the skills and the confidence we need to be equals in the process.

Creating Healthier Communities
In March of 1999, ten lead agencies received grants to operationalize their plans. Some of the villages were in rural areas; others were in urban areas. Stretching from Butte County in the north to San Diego in the south, each one faced its own unique health issues. A few key characteristics, however, united all ten of the villages.

An expanded definition of health. Adults and young people in each area struggled with the definition of health. Prior to joining the program, many believed that the pursuit of health took place in hospitals or doctors' offices, and that prevention consisted of diet and exercise. Over time, they learned that good health includes a healthy environment-safe places to work and play, supportive networks for sharing knowledge, and air and water that is free from harmful chemicals. Each community worked on specific environmental improvements-a process that led to the development of deeper relationships among community members.

Somai Sayavong, 19, of T.E.A.M. Chapman Wellness Village near Chico, learned that health is the environment . . .

and the people you are around can detract from or enhance your health. [It is also] the social and physical environments. If you live in a house that's always dirty, that's not healthy.

September Hargrove, 15, of Del Paso Heights Wellness Village in Sacramento, said that the only time health came up in her family was when she was sick:

Before I thought [health] was about your body, but now I know it's [also] about your community and your environment.

Education and revitalization. Young people in many villages were committed to the task of educating others and making things better in their neighborhoods. In South Los Angeles, the most important project involved the removal of lead paint in the Jordan Downs housing complex. Revitalizing community pride was also important in Goshen, where participants began with graffiti removal and now organize community-wide health fairs and events. In the largely African-American neighborhood of Del Paso Heights in Sacramento, youth and adults incorporate health and wellness messages into plays, dance performances, murals, and articles in The Villager, a youth newspaper.

In San Diego, 17-year-old Eder Jonathan Escamilla has a newfound appreciation for the importance of safe working environments:

I learned about the shipyards in San Diego and I have family who work there. I didn't know that the conditions were so horrible . . . My eyes have been opened and started a fire inside of me.

As part of the education process, each wellness village committed to selecting and training a minimum of four residents to serve on an evaluation team. A manual designed specifically for youth by Imoyase interns, Devrin Anderson and Emilia Bass helped young people learn evaluation skills to help build their wellness villages. In the summer of 1998, 33 youth-representing all of the villages-converged at Loyola Marymount University for a Youth Evaluation Institute. For one week, from 6:45 a.m. until lights out at 10:30 p.m., village teams learned evaluation techniques, quantitative and qualitative research methods, and data analysis techniques. Because of the Institute training, youth in Ukiah were called upon to assist with city survey research. In other villages, youth use their skills to provide in-house evaluation expertise for their villages.

Bringing people together. In the city of Ojai, just inland of Ventura, one of the most important social environment issues identified by the wellness village leaders was the racial tension that divided their community. Jessica Grans, 17, who is white, thought that planting an organic garden would bring Latinos and others together:

Everyone agreed that an organic garden would get people involved and provide community jobs and give back to the community in lots of different ways. I can now walk by and stick my hand in the dirt and know it's there, and it really gives me a good feeling.

In San Francisco's Chinatown, community members struggled with tensions such as garbage collection, unsanitary conditions on the street, and gambling problems. In addition, 18-year-old Bill Ung realized that families are often isolated from one another, and have trouble organizing around health issues. To deal with this problem, wellness village leaders implemented a Chinese-language radio broadcast as well as a Chinese-language newsletter, so monolingual Chinese speakers could take part in the issues affecting their community. According to Bill,

The gambling problem has decreased and there's fewer people getting divorced because of it. The radio show we broadcast also helps the parents get in touch with their kids.

Community participation. All of the wellness villages have yielded some degree of positive transformation. In addition to the specific health issues addressed by the villages, changes have been made in the way the residents view themselves and their neighbors. Most significantly, youth have been at the forefront of those changes, with adults serving as partners, mentors, and counselors. Local colleges and universities, health care providers, social welfare agencies, and community organizations have joined the effort. September, of Del Paso Heights, had this to say:

I think [the residents] like what we do. They see a difference and improvement in our community.

Twenty-two-year-old Beverly Thomas of South Central Los Angeles adds:

Our racial issues have improved. At first there were no Latinos involved. Our advisory board used to be just African-Americans, and now it's both Latino and African-American.

Somai of Chapman sums it up with this statement:

The most important thing that has happened in our community is getting the people to know each other. When they open up, it reduces the fear and lets them interact with each other.

Nurturing Leadership
As stated previously, the ultimate goal of the Children and Youth Community Health Initiative was to improve the overall health of a number of communities by engaging children, youth and adults in the transformation of their social, physical and chemical environments. Evaluators with The Imoyase Group, who are tracking this process through a participatory action model, are monitoring changes in the density of social networks-an important indicator of community health. Some researchers (e.g., Sarason, 1974) argue that a person's psychological experience of community is the most important criterion for judging the effectiveness of community change efforts. The use of network indicators may help evaluators understand how different neighborhoods foster supportive social networks to give people a sense of belonging and community. Higher density in these village networks may also represent a more general capacity for communities to effect community change and social action.

Many times traditional youth development efforts give children or teens a specific project to work on, or young people are invited to participate in programs planned, implemented, and evaluated by adults. Wellness villages, in contrast, put decision-making power in the hands of a youth/adult partnership, which fosters greater collaboration around difficult, real-life problems in their communities. The youth themselves will tell you that this has changed them in significant ways.

The concept of the wellness village puts decision-making power in the hands of a youth/adult partnership, which fosters greater collaboration around difficult, real-life problems in their communities.

Marshall Slade was 18 when he became a youth planner in Del Paso Heights:

I came from a difficult background, and I was doing the whole gang affiliation thing, but I was able to turn my life around. I was invited to be a part of the wellness village because I had a love for my community and I had a heart, and they gave me the skills I needed to really make a difference . . . In a way, they gave us the tools and told us to build the house.

Not only have young people in the wellness villages been able to find their voices, develop skills, and discover a sense of empowerment, they found a purpose. In addition, young people have become a mediating force among races, ethnicities, and generations. Through their work bridging subgroups in their neighborhoods, they have become assets and role models. Yolanda Casillas, an 18-year-old Native American youth from the Alliance of Adult and Youth Wellness Village in Ukiah, explains how other agencies now come to her and her peers for advice:

A lot of community adult members [ask] us how to start youth groups. They invite us to share what we're doing with their youth, like public speaking and facilitation. They come to us to help them get started on youth groups.

Seeing themselves as leaders and being respected for the quality of their work has brought an improved self-image to the Native American community.

Sidebar 2 Lessons Learned

Reaching Across the Generations

"I don't know if [the adults] realize that we've gained a whole new perspective on the contributions they make . . . It gives me hope that, even though it will take time, together we can make changes in our communities."

- Leah Johnson, a Foundation Advisory Committee Member

Unlike other programs, which bring people together to help youth, the wellness village brings youth together-in partnership with adults-to address the health issues of their communities. Consequently, young people are reaching out to all ages to create a stronger, healthier population. Nathan Garza, 21, is working with his neighbors in Goshen to reduce the health risks of pesticide use:

Whenever a new health subject comes up, I try to get the word out, particularly to the elderly who can't come to the normal meetings regularly.

Just as importantly, the young people are also reaching out to help the generations of children that will come after them. This concern for the future is a sure sign that children and youth can be full partners in our collective journey to build a healthier, happier society. Beverly Thomas sums it up, as she shares the skills and information she's gained with members of her community:

The good stuff is hard to hold. We've started something here that will go on for years and years-that the children today can carry on after us.

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