Youth Teams

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

Yorktown High School

I sat in the Director for Minority Achievement’s office as she advised a young senior at her desk.
“What’s the point anyway?” asked the senior of immigrant background. “I can’t go to college. I can’t work. There won’t be options for me.”
“I recommend staying in school one year longer. For one, school isn’t free after high school,” counseled the Director. “Also, it might give time for things to change…” A silent pause ensued.

“Tell me about the background of the teachers I’m speaking to,” I asked the Director as we walked down the hall, laughing students running past us.
“They’re all ESL teachers,” she said. “Our ESL students get left out of most extracurricular activities. For one, many of them can’t stay after school. Your program would have to be during their class. We want it to be the thing at this school that is for them.”

“If you had the power to change one thing about your community, that if it changed, it would cause people to live healthier and better lives, what would you change?” I asked the teachers of the meeting the first question I ask students in our program. “After our students brainstorm problems in the places where they live that they would be passionate about changing, our Center provides them resources to create service projects to translate their wishes into reality,” I described.

“This semester, I can teach books on the themes of justice and human rights to go along with your curriculum,” said the English teacher whose class will serve as the pilot for the in-class version of the Health as Right Program this semester.
“And if it empowers the students, we can expand it to the other ESL classes next semester. These students can be the ambassadors,” added the Director. Next week, I will attend the English teacher’s class every day to get a sense of how she teaches and how the students learn. Then we will consult on how to organically integrate our program into her lessons.
“See you next week!” said the English teacher excitedly. We shook hands and parted.

I walked out of the school, a background check application in hand now that I will be a regular presence, pausing to reflect and appreciating my smallness in the face of our charge. To make our youth stronger, by helping them discover in themselves those things which no one in this world can steal; their convictions about the value of human beings, their imagination of a different kind of world, and their sense of possibility that they can create that world through service to humanity. To give them permission to express these treasures folded inside them in layers of uncertainty and fear, to normalize them until they become a culture.

I am not worthy to be the one to shape a young person’s mind. But I am here, so I’ll do my best. Friends on their way to their next classes laugh as I walk through the hallway, full of dreams and a sense of possibility about the way the world can be. My dreams for the future are wrapped up in these young people.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not.”

-Yorktown student art in the hallway

#healthasright #youthteams

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

“Next week, the Center for Health and Human Rights will go to one of the schools in our program to give free sports physicals, so the students can enroll in sports,” I told my mom at breakfast this morning.

The International High School at Langley Park in Prince George’s County, MD, is 100% immigrants and refugees.

“That makes sense. That’s a low income area,” commented Mom. She paused at her own comment, then said, “It’s funny how we categorize things, like ‘low income’ and ‘high income.’ You live here, so that must mean you act this way.”

“The coach who is also the vice-principal told me that he always feels anxious during sports practices. Since none of the students have health insurance, if someone gets injured, it is a lot more complicated,” I said. “And yet, the students push themselves just as hard to develop their skills as the youth in any of our other schools. No matter what our circumstances, it is inspiring to see that we all have the same desire to be excellent.”

The dream of CHHR is to help people be excellent. We do it through medicine, and now we’re doing it through a high school program.

“It’s hard to change a way of thinking,” said Mom as she washed her plate in the sink. “First, you have to notice your perspective, then make a shift. The easiest way is to just go with the way you’ve been taught to see without questions,” she said. Is it not the same with everything we wish to change to build a culture of health and human rights?

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

-Vince Lombardi

#healthasright #youthteams

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

When the Center for Health and Human Rights first developed our high school program, which empowers teams of students to create their own service projects to solve health problems they notice in their community, we expanded by outreaching to teachers and administrators to explain our vision. Increasingly, it is students themselves from schools where we have not yet started the program who are arising to initiate it.

Like Aravindan, president of the Biology Club at Southlakes High School, who contacted me this summer to ask if their group could take on the program so they could apply their theoretical knowledge to create practical change in the community.

Also Aundia and Sogand from Virginia Commonwealth University who posted a question to their classmates in their school’s Facebook pages: “What would you change in our community if you had the power?” Their questions have sparked numerous responses from students passionate about problems such as homelessness in their area, whom they will now invite to become a Health as Right team.

We are also beginning to expand to different states through students such as Jackson from Hillsborough High School in Tampa, Florida, who is bringing together a group of friends passionate about service to form a team. The image is the poster they made for Club Rush Week, when the clubs talk with new students about their activities.

“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 vast and endless sea.”

-Anonymous

#healthasright #youthteams

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

The other day, I met with a friend who founded a non-profit to teach local refugees English through language immersion to consult with her about how to improve our high school curriculum for our cohort of ESL students. Our program empowers teams of students to create service projects to address the public health problems they notice in the community, and also to cultivate their power of expression to talk about the kind of world they want to create.

“One thing you should realize is that different backgrounds have different conceptions about things such as government, law, and rights,” she commented as we went through the part of the curriculum where students learn their legal protections according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

She told a story from one of the Syrian wives in her program of a time her husband was pulled over by police. In Syria, it is customary to get out of one’s car and walk to the officer out of respect. When this husband did it in Maryland, an entire squad was called on him. “Perhaps part of your curriculum could just be educating immigrant and refugee students about the social norms and conceptions of law here,” she suggested. It is fraught with tension, this process of diverse peoples learning to live together. Perhaps we can play our part in making this movement of the world and mixing of cultures a little easier, I thought to myself.

“What have you learned from doing this curriculum with students?” she asked. I paused.
“When you ask a question such as, ‘What would you change about the community if you had the power?” I began, “there is usually silence because youth aren’t used to being asked these questions. But once the first person speaks, it becomes an outpouring,” I described. It’s a question that deep down, youth yearn to be asked, but when someone finally does, they don’t expect it. What kind of world do you want to live in? But once they discover their power to express their imagination of the future, they get excited, and fall in love with that power of expression. A person who has imagined the world they want to live in and put it into words has accomplished the first step in creating it. That is the vision of our program, to create a culture of conversation about the future of our communities.

“It reminds me of when we ask our Syrian wives what they want in this country,” said the friend. “When they talk about the present, it is about finding good schools and transportation. When they talk about the future, it is about the hope that their children will help create a better world. Because they suffered from the condition of this world as it is now,” she said.

In the afternoon, I had a phone call with the director of after school activities in Fairfax county middle schools. “Service learning is a big part of what we want for our students,” said the director. “Will you speak at our meeting next month? We would like to help you expand this program to our 27 middle schools.”

Here’s to a new culture of health and human rights.

“There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen.”

-Sean O’Faolain, short story writer

#healthasright #youthteams

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

When I was hired as coordinator for the Center for Health and Human Rights’ high school program, my boss told me to lie awake at night and dream of things I would change or solve about the community then I’d be qualified to help raise up a network of local youth with the same sleeplessness.

Our program focuses on high schools, but we have one club in George Mason University. University students can take on projects of higher complexity because they are taking up their part in the ways that society works related to their professions, either perpetuating them or changing them.

The conversations I’ve been having recently for work with other people and groups whose jobs are to be sleepless have planted some ideas for projects our university leaders could pursue next year.

One problem in our community is the struggle of refugees who cannot effectively express their medical issues in English to get effective health treatment. Consider a case where a Spanish-speaking refugee told his doctor that he was “intoxicado,” who then put him in detox. That patient ended up having a brain aneurism rupture, leaving him completely paralyzed because he didn’t get the treatment he actually needed. “Intoxicado” means “nauseous,” not intoxicated.

One solution is for medical providers to work with interpreters, but many resist because it goes against how they were trained. Certain orgs, such as Volatia Language Network whom I shook hands with the other day, are starting to work with universities in VA to integrate the use of interpreters into the training of med students. “We don’t have a program at GMU yet. We just need a connection,” said Baraka, the Volatia rep. That is project idea 1: to work with the GMU med department to integrate the importance of using interpreters into their curriculum.

Another problem particular to Fairfax is that we have about 50 low income children in the community who qualify for preschool, but there are simply no slots available for them. The preschools set aside for students of their socioeconomic level are simply full. “That’s a lot of kids who are going to be behind once they start school,” said Susan, a community builder amongst Fairfax NGOs during another meeting. “Perhaps a space could be made available at GMU, and then early education students could run a class,” she suggested. That’s project idea 2.

A little constructive sleeplessness, combined with a group of friends who share your insomnia, equal the power to change something you wish would be different, rather than accepting it. The purpose of programs like ours is simply to create that culture of sleeplessness.

“Legend says, when you can’t sleep at night, it’s because you’re awake in someone else’s dream.”

-Anonymous

(Image: a conference for orgs serving refugees, one of the spaces CHHR helped organize.)

#healthasright #youthteams

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

I join our Health as Right team at Mt. Vernon High School every Wednesday, who for their special passion decided to continue having a weekly meeting through Skype over the summer to discuss service projects for the coming year. Today, we discussed two of their ideas: finding ways to make cheap solar panels and starting a food truck to drive to the homes of students experiencing food insecurity.

“Do we know anyone knowledgeable about solar panels?” I asked, sitting outside my house with my headphones in.
“We should talk to Catherine (another of the club members). She is really interested in technology,” said Elizabeth, the student leader who takes initiative to rally the group to the weekly meeting.
“I just remembered. The husband of my boss at an old job has a solar panel installation company. I could ask him if he could lend his expertise to doing a solar panel workshop,” I added.
“Are you thinking we could learn how to build solar panels from scratch?” asked Anthony.
“There are communities around the world that host workshops for ordinary people to learn how to assemble household solar panels from certain parts, then you can take them home and plug in your iPhone. We could host a workshop like that at the school,” I said.
“Catherine could learn from that person,” commented Elizabeth.
“Then I’ll contact him. And if he says he can, we can put a date on this workshop and plan logistics,” I said.

Elizabeth has organized a meeting for her and me to sit down with the school’s social worker in August, who said the food truck idea could help certain students she knows.
“Are we going to have a taco truck? And who would drive it around?” asked Anthony.
“I don’t know how many of us have our licenses,” I laughed. “You are always free to ask me to drive it, and I could use my car.”
“At another school, a lunch lady once showed me that they threw out all the food that they didn’t sell, like the apples and fruits. She took a bag full of burgers and put it in the dumpster. It is probably the same at our school,” commented Anthony.
“That could be one way to supply our food truck. Ask the school cafeteria if we could use the food they would throw anyway,” I said. “There are also restaurants that are happy to give away the food they don’t sell at the end of the day because they would throw it. We could ask them if we could use their food.”
“We could ask local businesses to sponsor the truck,” said Elizabeth. “I can call the Dollar Tree to ask when their manager is available. Then we can call them together during our next meeting to talk about our project.”

“Wow, that was a productive meeting,” said Anthony at our designated end. “We went all the way from baby steps to having a taco truck.” We laughed.
“We all deserve a gold star,” joked Elizabeth.
“And pats on the back,” I added with a smile. “Remember, next Thursday is our first summer service project: our hike slash trash pickup of a nature trail,” I said. With that we parted so Elizabeth could run to her weekly leadership course.

How wonderful, what a group of youth can accomplish when they make time each week to simply get together and imagine. It is the kind of satisfaction that makes you wonder why we don’t do these things as a culture all the time. Not only could it benefit others, it’s also a lot of fun. We’ll make it a part of the culture we are creating together.

“Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

-Einstein

#healthasright #youthteams

(Image: Elizabeth’s weekly email reminder)