Kavian Milani

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

“How’s your day so far?” I asked Javier, the student who had been sent to the front office to take me to his ESL government class at Annandale High School.

“My government grade is not so good. My brain has a hard time with history,” he answered honestly. “Also, class is the only time I have to study. When school ends, I run to the bus and go to work,” he said. It is this way for many ESL students, immigrants and refugees who work to support themselves. Javier came to Virginia without his parents, so he lives in a basement and pays rent.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“No, it’s good,” he answered. “In my country, we say that God only gives you what you can support. If you don’t support it, than you don’t grow up.” I complimented his attitude. “I always try to stay positive. I have to represent my mother’s values, since she doesn’t live here with me,” he said.

ESL students make up the leaders of many of our high school teams for the Health as Right Program. As in all first meetings with a new team, I asked the youth what they would change in the community if they had the power.

“I would teach a class on U.S. law. Many people who come to this country don’t know the laws. So when they get in trouble, they don’t know what their rights are,” said Abdul-Rahman.
“I would start an English academy. It could be in the evening, when people have time to come,” said Jobaer.
“I think there should be free medical services. I have medicaid, but many of my friends can’t get treatment because they don’t have- what’s the word… insurance,” said Roxana. She thinks like our doctors, who created the Center for Health and Human Rights program precisely for this purpose.

We picked a service project that they could do before the end of this year. They chose Amparo’s idea: to film an educational video about the health impacts of smoking. They have a research team, a script-writing team, and an acting team, each of whom has a deadline to pass on their material to the next team so that the finished production can be done by next Friday. Then they will send it to an elementary school.

“Put me as the director,” said Jobaer.
“We’re going to need good looking people for the acting team,” said Paul, one of the teachers.
“Mr. Ron, what team will you join?” asked Jairon.
“I’ll support all the teams. In other words, I’m the boss,” I answered with a smile. We laughed.

The research team took out computers and split into their own table right away to start finding the health impacts of smoking for the last 30 minutes of class. Two of the students, Jobaer and Roxanna, have also enthusiastically volunteered to be our student leaders to launch the Health as Right Club at Annandale for next year.

“There’s a radical – and wonderful – new idea here… that all children could and should be inventors of their own theories, critics of other people’s ideas, analyzers of evidence, and makers of their own personal marks on the world.”

-Deborah Meier

#healthasright #cultureofhealth #youthteams

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

Community building isn’t hard. Much of what is needed to grow any social movement can be said in two easy rules.

Step one: sit in the right rooms. These rooms aren’t hard to find because the doors are always open. They are the weekly worship services of synagogues, churches, mosques, and others. They are the numerous community events and spaces of conversation to talk about problems that people care about, which are readily available to the public if you look for them. The doors are open because people yearn to share our perspectives about what it takes to build a better world. Everyone is just waiting for everyone else to walk into their space to hear their perspective. Every room is the right one. Be the first to be interested to go inside, and you’ll make many friends.

Today, I joined a meeting of the NoVA Coalition for Refugee Wellness, our last to plan a conference we have organized for the end of June to network medical practitioners and social workers serving refugees in our area to share experience. How did I become a part of this Coalition? I went to an interfaith event at a synagogue, then someone from there invited me to another meeting about refugees, then someone from there invited me to this Coalition. The door wasn’t hidden. All I needed was to be interested.

“What organization are you with?” I asked the woman sitting at the table when I arrived.
“With Prince William County Community Services,” she answered. I told her about our own Health as Right Program to empower youth in high schools to create solutions to the pressing public health problems of our community.
“Have you reached out to Prince William schools yet? Let me connect you with my colleagues, who can connect you to many of them,” she said as we traded cards.

At the end of the meeting, I gave a short presentation about our program to the group and handed out flyers. “I am connected to many of the schools in Arlington County. I would be happy to connect you with them,” said another of the friends who found me on our way out.

The second rule once you get into those right rooms: talk to everyone.

Community building isn’t hard. Everything needed to start can be said in two easy steps, then you figure out the rest while running. We’ll teach them to all of our high school leaders, then we’ll have a hundred more community builders; a hundred movements dedicated to building a culture of health and human rights.

All you need is to want to start. Just do it.

“Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.”

-Tennessee Williams

#healthasright #youthteams

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

Today, I joined a meeting of the Fairfax County’s Committee on Children and Youth to discuss such local issues as human trafficking and domestic violence.

“Hi Ron!” said the various county representatives in their cubicles, who hugged me in my suit and tie as I walked through the hall of the government building to the meeting room. We are always the same faces at many of the community’s spaces of conversation to talk about change. Overtime, we greet each other as old friends.

I gave a short presentation about the Health as Right Program during the meeting. “So far we have youth teams in 6 high schools and have started having conversations with 17 others,” I said.

“Let us connect you to a coalition of school administrators in the county. They should hear about this program,” said one of the committee chairs. They will also put us on a directory of the community’s resources.

And so the Health as Right movement grows.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vastness of the sea.”

-Anonymous

#healthasright #youthteams

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

One of the human rights books I had to read for my job talked about Sisyphus, the Greek hero condemned to push a boulder up a mountain, only to watch it roll to the bottom before he ever reached the top for all eternity. His punishment was for a trick he played that involved chaining up death so that suffering ceased in the world for a period of time.

“Today, I’d like you to write a case study about the gang MS13,” I said this morning to Yosaph​, our intern who has been helping me write a human rights and public health curriculum for the student leaders of the high school teams we are starting. You might have seen Yosaph recently on a CHHR video where he gave a passionate, impromptu speech about the imperative to serve marginalized populations. He will be leaving us at the end of this week to graduate from Mt. Vernon High School, where he launched one of our Health as Right Clubs, then start at Harvard Medical School. His dream is to become a neurosurgeon.

“The vice-principle at one of the high schools where we are starting a club said that a large problem amongst the students is that many want to join MS13,” I explained. “I want you to write a discussion for our curriculum that talks about the human rights they have violated, to appeal to the youths’ sense of justice to change their values about joining,” I described.

“The other thing I’d like is for you to think of things we could do to promote our budget for the youth teams in these last 3 days of the fundraiser,” I said last. “We probably won’t reach the goal because we’re so behind. But might as well try, right?” I asked. He nodded, then spent the day busy with these things. As we packed up to leave, he looked up from his computer with a smile and said: “I believe [everything we’ve done] is going to change the world.” I agreed by smiling back.

You won’t win everything, but I am here for the ride. We are happy to try and fail, and try and fail like Sisyphus, taking joy in the knowledge that we strive to alter something about this world. If our boulders should roll down the mountain, we will be there at the foot to push even harder. We are happy because the dream of a better world is worth it.

“Sisyphus’s silent joy is contained therein… [He] teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks… The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”

-Camus

(Image: leaders from the GMU Health as Right Club, whose projects include improving resources for homeless students, and organizing collaboration between the school’s service groups.)

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights often says that an individual has the right to a culture that supports the “free and full development of their personality.” What does the right to the growth of personality mean to a refugee high school student in Maryland, versus a student in the well-resourced schools of Northern Virginia?

This morning, I planned the implementation of the Health as Right Program with administrators at the International High School at Langley Park, MD. Every student here has one thing in common; they had to leave their country because of poverty, conflict, or other disastrous social condition. IHSLP was founded two years ago specifically for immigrant and refugee students.

“All of our students are either in an ESL program or have recently left ESL,” said the vice-principle and co-founder Daniel Sass as we sat in his office, which was also the sports locker. “Our students represent 25 countries and speak 15 languages,” he described. Every student here has their own story of trauma and experience of witnessing the violation of human rights.

They were equally excited about the program’s concept: to empower youth to imagine solutions for the public health problems of their community while at the same time fostering conditions in their lives, such as a strong sense of integrity and involvement in service, that reduce risk behaviors such as sex, drug and alcohol use, and gang participation.

We spoke for a few hours about implementation. One version of the program will be offered during a 45 minute block reserved for clubs during the school day, for the students who cannot stay after school due to the need to work to support their family or for lack of transportation. A more robust version will be offered after school for 2 hours, on the days when Langley has access to busses that can take the students back to their houses. “If you want, you can take a break during that time by walking with your students to the 7/11 to get a snack,” commented Daniel. We laughed. The sense of solidarity at this school between classmates, teachers, and programs like ours offering spaces for the “free and full development of one’s personality” is ennobling.

Next, I drove back to VA and planned the program with George Mason High School, my former high school. “The realities of the different schools I am visiting for this program are so diverse,” I commented to an old teacher who hugged me in the hallway. But everywhere I go, the passion to work for a better world in all the youth I meet is the same.

Before meeting with the service coordinators, I strolled nostalgically through the halls. Mason is well-painted, clean, and expansive. The International School at Langley is composed completely of trailer classrooms. I walked past an alcove where my friends and I used to sit at lunch block. Who would have known then I would be connecting my own school one day with a school like Langley, I thought to myself. “I love how this program empowers students to do so much more than just throw money at problems. They have to create meaningful solutions,” said Se‎ñora Planas, the service coordinator and Spanish teacher, during our meeting. The realities of youth are diverse but the desire to serve, to contribute to something bigger than ourselves is what unites us.

Before leaving Langley, Daniel and I talked about planning an event before next year for the students to get physical exams at our clinic for sports. “So you have experience working with patients without insurance?” Daniel asked. “Every sports practice is like walking on eggshells because getting injured is so much more complicated when you don’t have insurance; things I took for granted when I was a kid. You just hope everyone gets back on the bus without incident,” he said. We laughed. Despite this, sports is something they emphasize for their students because they refuse to let added obstacles deprive them of their right to explore such interests. The right to the free and full development of one’s personality. The drive of people to practice such rights, whatever the circumstance or setting, is uplifting and unmistakable.

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

(Image: an encouragement board at Langley)

#healthasright #CHHR #youthteams

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

One way we are offering the Health as Right after school program to high schools is through partners such as Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services, who resettle hundreds of refugee families in our area each year. They are observing that the youth they work with experience great emotional turbulence as they are thrown into a new culture, as they carry trauma from atrocities they have escaped at an age in life that is turbulent as it is. So our partners are connecting us with the schools where their resettled youth are enrolled. Perhaps our program could create a support group for them to cope with the pressures of a new culture, in addition to empowering them to take ownership of this community.

The other day, Catholic Charities and I visited Annandale High School, which has a large ESL program for CC’s clients.
“Our clinic provides free medical services to anyone without insurance. We also do free physicals for students to get enrolled in sports,” I said to the meeting of teachers and counselors. At schools where the refugees will be our student leaders, these services are equally relevant as our empowerment program.
“Do you do dental care?” asked one teacher.
“Do you do eye care?” asked another. “We have one student who is always squinting because he needs glasses but can’t afford a pair. Then he tells me that he has a headache, and it’s no surprise,” she described.
“I will bring these questions back to our physicians,” I took notes.

“Yes, we can provide all of those,” said our director Alhan once I got back to the office. Either we have a specialist in our network willing to provide their services to our patients or we will cover the costs for our patient to see a specialist. I sat down there in the clinic kitchen and happily relayed the response in an email to our teachers and counselors at Annandale. “We would also be happy to cover the cost of your student’s glasses if need be,” I included. I should have known the answer because the greatest wrong at our office is to utter “no.”

Tomorrow, I visit the International High School at Langley Park in Maryland, where 100% of the student body is immigrants and refugees.

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home… they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends, the factory, farm or office where he works… Unless rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.”

-Eleanor Roosevelt

#healthasright #cultureofhealth #youthteams