First day seeing patients at the Community Health Clinic, our new center in Falls Church which offers free and discount medical services to homeless families with children.
“Building a Clinic”
-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator
“This is exactly how we imagined it,” said Dr. Henry, one of the doctors who will staff our new medical clinic for homeless families with children, as she walked into the room where Ken, the fundraiser for the Homestretch shelter, and I were screwing nuts and bolts into a medical bed.
“When we said we would build a new clinic, we would literally build it with hammers and screws,” she said. We laughed.
With Center for Health and Human Rights, Homestretch, and A Place to Stand building our new Community Health Clinic in preparation to see our first patients.
Homestretch staff build a medical bed.
“Student Hunger”
-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator
Talk Center for Health and Human Rights gave this evening to the Student Health Advisory Committee, an group of individuals with a stake in the health of Fairfax public school students who use their influence to move policy:
Hunger amongst students seems to be on the minds of faculty at all the schools we work with. Specifically, we are worried that students who benefit from free lunch are still hungry throughout the day because it is not enough for them, and there is also a minority of students in need who do not sign up for free lunch. Teachers and faculty we have spoken to say they know of students who are still hungry throughout the day, and they often take personal measures to address this, such as buying a stock of snacks out of pocket to keep in their class to give to students whom they see are hungry. One teacher from Marshall High School told us:
“I know that several teachers keep food in their rooms out of pocket for kids who are hungry. I have two former students who have been coming to me for breakfast for the past several years. I just keep a box of granola bars in a drawer and they help themselves. I’ve also given money to students for lunch or the vending machines. If I receive special treats or pizza, I’ll put a little aside for some of my kids who are always hungry.”
We think this issue deserves more visibility and have two recommendations for how to improve the situation:
1. One recommendation is to raise awareness about the free lunch program and the problem of student hunger amongst students and faculty. For example, we have been told that new students might go without lunch for months simply because they are not aware there is a free lunch program. Other families never sign up because they misunderstand the nature of free lunch. A Marshall High School teacher said, “We have kids whose parents don’t want to apply for free or reduced lunch because of pride or immigration fears, so the kids don’t have food during the day.” These gaps could be easily addressed by measures such as putting posters in hallways to make the existence of free lunch common knowledge, and that information collected is only used by the school, and there is no need to fear it will be used by federal programs.
Students’ rights should also be made common knowledge. For example, I once observed a conversation between a front desk staff at Herndon Middle School and a student who was sent there by her teacher because she was hungry in class. The staff asked, “Why didn’t you pack a lunch from home?” The student answered, “There’s no food at home.” The staff asked, “Can’t you go to the cafeteria to get lunch?” The student answered, “I didn’t have money, so they told me I couldn’t get lunch.” In FCPS, it is illegal to turn away a student for lunch even if they don’t have money. They should be able to incur a balance on their account if necessary, and this is something both that student and the lunch staff should have known that.
2. The second recommendation is to learn what measures schools already have. For example, at Marshall High School, they keep a stock of snacks in the Student Services Office, and if a student ever comes to get snacks because they are hungry, a social worker and a counselor come together to create a long-term plan to help that student not feel hungry during the day. Herndon Middle School has something called the H3 Program where students get donated non-perishable foods on Fridays for the weekend. Annandale High School has a food pantry which is stocked by community donations, and they do occasional tours so that members of the school know that it is there.
After learning about the programs that already exist at the schools, measures should be taken to fill in their gaps, such as by simply making it common knowledge for students that these resources are available. For example, many schools have a food pantry that most students and even faculty are not even aware is there. These pantries could be revived by making it common knowledge to the school community that they exist, and then raising support from the community to stock them.
If needed, our organization would be happy to use our presence in the schools to work with them to implement these recommendations.
____________________________________
Results: The Committee is very interested in exploring ways to raise awareness about the issue of student hunger in the schools and in exploring creative ways to ensure that students don’t have to be hungry during the school day.
(Image: Dr. Milani, also a board member of SHAC, at the meeting.)
“This Week at the Health as Right Program”
-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator
So much is happening inside the schools at our Health as Right Program this month that there often doesn’t seem time enough to write it all down.
One of our Health as Right teams is at Yorktown High School, VA. They are an ESOL class which has integrated the program into their class curriculum rather than doing it as an after school activity. Their service project is to film a video to raise awareness about the experiences of immigrants and prejudice. This week, the Writing team sat down and drafted a thoughtful story that they cared about. In one scene, student actors will hold signs that read, “I am Muslim,” “I am Christian,” “I am Jewish,” “I am Buddhist,” “I am Hindu”, and others. They will then turn the signs around to show the words, “We are all the same.”
Another of our teams is at the International High School in Langley Park, MD, which has a student body of 100% immigrants and refugees. This team would like to provide a service to local refugees for their service project. This week, they wrote a letter to an organization that helps refugee families connect to housing, work, and legal services once they arrive to ask if they have any needs our students can assist with. In the process, our ESOL students learned about letter-writing conventions in the US.
The newest addition to our program is Liberty Middle School, VA. This week they decided their service project: a clothing drive for local children in need. They also started our Health as Right curriculum, which teaches them about health and human rights and empowers them to cultivate their power of expression to talk about the kind of world they want to create. “I like this curriculum because it asks us about our ideas for the world, and it makes me smile,” said one of the students Tori afterwards with a big smile on her face.
“Progress at Yorktown High School”
-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator
Our Yorktown High School Health as Right Club started their service project this week, producing a video to raise awareness about the experience of immigrants. During their Monday class, they split into teams to do pre-production roles such as research, writing, and promotion.
On Wednesday, they continued our curriculum on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This week’s theme was rights related to immigrants. As an ESL class, they had much to say on the topic.
“What do you think most Americans misunderstand about the experience of immigrants?” I asked my discussion group.
“They think it’s easy,” said Santos quickly. “What they don’t know is that people come because they lack the basic necessities.”
“They don’t know the feeling,” added Raul. When I asked what he meant, her elaborated, “They have always had freedom. They don’t know what it’s like to not have freedom.”
A lot of the youth also mentioned the numerous shots they had to get, sometimes only to find that they weren’t accepted because they took them in the wrong month and had to take them again. “I had 18 shots in my own country, and 8 more shots here,” Gobinder from Punjab commented with a laugh.
After learning human rights such as the right of every person to leave and return to their country (Article 13) and the right of every person to seek asylum in another country (Article 14), they drew pictures about their experience of immigrating and were asked if any of their human rights were violated.
“This might have been their best discussion yet,” reflected Ms. Smiles, the teacher who facilitated the second discussion group. Chinua from Mongolia in her group drew a picture about feeling like navigating a new culture was like being in a dream, and any minute she should wake up to a world where she wasn’t confused. Ayla from Turkey drew a picture of a face with a smile, the one she shows to the world, but behind it is a face of sadness, what she truly feels inside.
“People don’t appreciate what these kids go through. I don’t sometimes,” Ms. Smiles reflected. “I also underestimate their capacity for nuance. But this program is bringing out a really thoughtful and empowered side for some of them. And for those two or three that it affects, this is all worth it.”
“Do you know what a foreign accent is? It’s a sign of bravery.”
-Amy Chua
(Image: Gobinder’s drawing.)
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