Youth Teams

Beautiful Conversations

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

“Saving the world is a team sport,” said Kevin Krisko as we introduced ourselves. He is from Images for Good, a non-profit that uses photography to tell important stories, and one of our photographers for today. And the others who sat in the packed lobby of our clinic were the student leaders from the various Health as Right clubs we have started this year. Today was the pizza party to celebrate launching the Program in 9 schools.

The student leaders also came to pilot test the curriculum that accompanies the Health as Right Program. The curriculum has no teacher. It is a work book of discussion prompts and open-ended questions, designed to teach the students how to have conversations about health and human rights.

“What are human rights?” one of the students read the first question.
“I think that there are a lot of things that make people different, like religion, race, sex, or class,” said Tarlan from Marshall High School. “But underneath, we are all human and have the same needs. I think human rights are the things that everyone deserves, once you take away our differences,” she said.

In each section, the student leaders read Articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first document that tried to codify these universal needs that everyone deserves.

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood,” one of the students read Article 1 of the Declaration, which covers the subject of dignity.

“Describe a time when you saw people treat each other ‘in a spirit of brotherhood,'” they read the question that followed. There was a thoughtful pause in the room.
“I was in New York photographing two homeless people once,” started Tenzin, one of the student photographers from Images for Good. “One of them went to the other and gave her a few dollars to buy food, even though she had nothing herself,” he said.

“Did you all hear on the news about the Muslim girl beaten to death this past month?” asked Clark from Marshall High School. Nabra Hassanen, a 17 year old high schooler who was on her way to meet her friends for suhoor, the morning meal before the fast. “Her family made a GoFundMe to raise funds for her funeral. When I saw it, it had raised over $60,000 in just a few days. It wasn’t just from people in this community, but people from all over the country,” she described. Kevin pointed out that Hassanen was a student from South Lakes High School, where we recently started the newest of our Health as Right Clubs. Sitting next to me was Aravindan, representing that school.
“See the pain and hope together in one building. Which one will win? That is up to people like you,” said Kevin to the room of youth.

“I once met a homeless man selling roses, but he didn’t want to sell one to me. He just wanted to talk,” chimed in Aundia in her nurse scrubs, student at VCU and one of our clinical interns. “At the end, he told me that he had 420 pennies that he didn’t know what to do with, so he wanted to know if I wanted them. All I could do was cry because this man had nothing, and it was still so easy for him to offer something to me,” she said. It brought smiles to the room.

There was an electricity in the room, the kind when people have discovered their own power to put words to their deeper ideals. A beautiful conversation. “When you read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it describes a culture that doesn’t exist,” I said to the leaders. A culture that is just and fair, that gives expression to our highest ideals and aspirations as human beings. “Then it is your responsibility to create it. But what should something that no one has ever seen look like? Perhaps the first step of creating a new world is simply learning how to talk about the kind of world that we want to create,” I said to the smiles of the leaders. This is why the curriculum has no teacher. It designed not to give an answer, but to cultivate power of expression because it is each of us who will stand up to dream of such a world who are the answer.

The friends planned some activities to do together during the summer, including a hike/trash pick up of a nature trail and volunteering together at soup kitchens. In the Fall, the teams will return to their own school projects, ranging from empowering foster youth to finish high school, to creating more resources for homeless students, to making female hygiene protection more accessible to students who can’t afford it; but with a new identity as a network of friends working for change. Today, we create a culture of beautiful conversations. Tomorrow, we create a beautiful reality.

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world… as in being able to remake ourselves.”

-Mahatma Ghandi

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Show the Their Powers

-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator

Our Health as Right Clubs have different styles for addressing our community’s public pressing public health problems. Our Fairfax HS Club picked one issue to focus all their efforts on: empowering youth in the foster system to finish high school. Our Annandale HS Club picks small projects to do one at a time. Currently, it is researching, writing, and shooting an educational video about the health impacts of smoking, which they will send to an elementary school. Other teams with a great amount of zeal and capacity, like the Mt. Vernon HS Club, create several service projects and divide into teams to work on all of them at once.

The Mt. Vernon students start each meeting with progress updates from each of the teams.
“We found cards we could buy for the teachers and janitors,” said Catherine from the team working to make school staff feel more appreciated.
“I got the psychiatrist to come speak to us next week,” said Elizabeth from the team working to raise awareness of the school’s counselors.
“We got the administrator we were talking with to meet with us today to talk about our condoms project,” said Esther.

Then that administrator appeared in her suit and sat down.
“I would like to hear your agenda,” she said.
“We wanted to ask about the possibilities of putting condoms in the bathrooms or in the nurse’s office, to reduce teen pregnancy,” started Esther.

The admin nodded thoughtfully. “What is it you have all seen that made you start this project?” she asked. There was a pause.
“Well, a lot of my friends use a lot of condoms,” chimed in Elizabeth. The group laughed. “But when they run out, they just decide not to use them. If there were free condoms, it might be easier for people to make smarter choices,” she said.
“Also, I know a lot of people have strict parents who won’t even talk about condoms. If you can’t even talk to your parents about something, you end up making really stupid decisions. This would help make better decisions easier,” added Esther, as the group gained courage.
“The point isn’t to encourage more people to have sex. It is to communicate that students should be making healthier decisions, and having the condoms their educates people about better ways to do things,” said Anthony.

The admin’s face lit up, seeing their drive. She explained the position of Fairfax County Public Schools not to provide condoms, to stay out of the heated debates of parents who believe students shouldn’t even be exposed to such things. She turned to Esther and Miranda, the team for this project who invited her to come. “If you’d like, I would be happy to meet with you again to show you the County’s actual policies. Then you could use that to find another way to do this project, such as educating students about not having sex in the first place,” she said. “I always believe in student movements. Change is much more influential when it comes from you, versus grown-ups like me,” she said.

“I’m interested. What are the other projects you are working on?” she asked.
“We noticed that teachers and janitors seem really under-appreciated. So we’re going to do fundraisers to get gifts to give to them to say thank you,” said Catherine.
“We want to use that storage room that never gets used to make a new food pantry. We would stock it, then manage it for students who need it,” said Anna.
“We also want to put basketball hoops around the trashcans,” said Esther with a smile. “There’s always a lot of trash outside the trashcans, because all the boys try to be LeBron James and throw their trash around. If we put hoops around the cans, it would encourage people to actually make it in the trash so the school can be clean,” she described. We laughed.

The administrator was uplifted, hearing such passionate young people express their ideas about how to make their school a better and healthier place. “If you will do me this honor, keep me up to date on your efforts,” she said. With that she left.

There was a reflective silence at the table.
“That was awesome,” said Esther.
“We should get more adults involved in what we do. Not to do things for us, but because we don’t know yet how to do things and it’s enlightening to hear what they know,” said Anthony in his wise way. It is a beautiful moment to witness when youth experience for the first time their power to create dialogue about the kind community they want to live in.

Before we parted, the leaders discussed yet another project they are working on: to talk with the school’s athletic directors and medical staff about making physicals for sports more affordable for students who can’t afford it.
“We [our medical office] do that,” I said with a smile. “Free physicals for students to get enrolled in sports,” I said. Their faces lit up, and together we reworked their project to raise awareness about our services for marginalized students wanting to do sports.

One of our CHHR staff said recently that she believed our youth teams could one day save lives that possibly no doctor could save. The vital work of doctors is to heal injuries and sicknesses once they become visible problems. But for those who dream of a healthier world, the vital work is to create a new culture that supports health and human rights.
“We’ve never done this much before,” said Elizabeth of herself and her friends, surprised by the capacity they had discovered in themselves as we walked out of the library together. Every youth has the power to become a champion of that culture. The task is simply to show them they have it. And then you’ve ignited a social movement.

“The sun shines not on us, but in us.”

-John Muir, environmentalist

(Image: Mt. Vernon leaders wearing CHHR’s “Health as Right” bracelets)

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No Smoking Video

-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

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Just Do It

-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

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The Movement Grows

-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

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Sisyphus

-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.)

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The Right to Personality

-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)

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The Greatest Wrong

-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

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