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FACES for the Future – Hayward Students Attend Retreat
Vesper Society is committed to improving the well-being of youth. So, we link arms with leaders and organizations creating long-term solutions in their communities. FACES for the Future at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward, CA, was founded in 2007 as a two-year program to motivate and prepare underrepresented youth for careers in the health industry. Partnering with the Eden Area Regional Occupations Program in Hayward, FACES provides high school students with unique opportunities to learn from healthcare professionals in various hospital settings and explore career options in the health professions. Students benefit from academic enrichment opportunities, including individualized tutoring and college preparation activities, leadership training, and multi-faceted psychosocial support services, including one-on-one case management. The program also assists FACES alumni with job and internship placements, academic and career guidance, and ongoing life coaching. In December 2017, the students of the FACES for the Future-Hayward program had the opportunity to attend an overnight retreat in San Francisco. The retreat, offered in partnership with St. Rose Hospital Foundation, Vesper Society, San Francisco State University, and Vision Quilt, taught the students about public health issues and to develop their skills as advocates for their own communities. And of course, they had a lot of fun, too! Students began their retreat by participating in a Ropes Course at Fort Miley where they cheered each other on, spot-checked their peers, and faced their fears of heights. Later that day, students visited at San Francisco State University (SFSU) and were welcomed by Dr. Leticia Marquez-Magana, Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology, and Director of the Health Equity Research Laboratory. Dr. Marquez-Magana taught them about the field of Public Health, and got them thinking about the reality of health disparities and social determinants of health. The students completed exercises to understand how they can influence the... Read More
Street Level Health
Vesper Society believes in a simple idea: a just society begins when everyone is well, and respected as a human being. Every day, we link arms with leaders of overlooked communities that want to create a healthy future, and help them devise ways to do it. Street Level Health is one of those leaders in Oakland, improving the health and wellbeing of underserved urban immigrant communities in the Bay Area. Over the past 15 years, their Health Access Program has supported thousands of low to no-income adults in the Fruitvale District of Oakland where 48 percent of households live below the Federal Poverty Level and 16,000 adults live at risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Known to many as the “safety net of the safety net,” Street Level Health’s center in the Fruitvale District serves a marginalized population excluded from the Affordable Care Act. According to the California Department of Health Services, through a Whole Person Care Model they triage clients who are 93 percent foreign-born with 43 percent having resided in the U.S. for less than three years. This population of Limited Language Proficient adults face a multitude of barriers that include language and literacy skills, legal status, unemployment, and lost work opportunities due to long wait times at Federally Qualified Health Centers. Increasingly, they also serve a growing number of the working poor who are unable to afford Covered California and have incomes that exceed the eligibility requirements for public benefits (138% – 200% Federal Poverty Level, which for a single person is $16,395). In September 2016, Vesper Society partnered with Street Level Health to respond to the lack of access to culturally and language responsive behavioral health services. These services focused on immigrants who face psychological and physical threats associated with extreme poverty, emotional trauma, and the... Read More
Los Angeles United Methodist Urban Foundation
Vesper Society is committed to improving the well-being of youth. So, we link arms with leaders and organizations creating long-term solutions in their communities. One of our incredible partner organizations, the Los Angeles United Methodist Urban Foundation (Urban Foundation) encourages the efforts of other faith communities to find, embrace, and support overlooked youth and young adults who dream of attending college. The Urban Foundation’s Kid City Hope Place program recognizes the problem of educational inequity and severe economic hardship among the communities it serves in downtown and south central Los Angeles. With programs in leadership development, music and arts, college access, and college completion, Kid City provides mentoring, college knowledge, high-level math tutoring, and guidance through admissions and financial aid applications. As a result, students are better able to access opportunities, explore their intellectual curiosity, and discover their ability to advocate for themselves and their communities. Teens and adults find their voice and become self-empowered leaders. The program has helped over 200 college students apply and enroll in college, and up to 50 high school juniors and 50 high school seniors are welcomed into the program every year. Once in college, the commitment to community continues. Kid City’s approach to college success is about more than just getting a diploma. It includes helping students through inevitable struggles, honoring a commitment to lifting up the community, getting the most out of educational opportunities, and becoming leaders, change agents, and contributing members of the world. By empowering each person to “take responsibility for the things they care about” (Kid City’s definition of leadership), the benefits can be felt in communities long after a student has left the program. Vesper Society supports The Urban Foundation’s Kid City Hope Place program because we believe that by serving youth, we establish long-term solutions and are... Read More
Strengthening Youth Voices in the Imperial Valley
Vesper Society is dedicated to long-term solutions that help communities help themselves. In the Imperial Valley, Vesper Society partners with Renaissance Journalism to empower youth to tell their own stories, in their own voices, as a way to visualize a better future and promote positive social change. (At Left: Adalberto Lopez, Brawley Union High School, sets up video camera.) At its first Youth Voices Digital Institute this June, 10 high school students traveled 600 miles north to take part in a week-long crash course in multi-media journalism at San Francisco State University. Most of the students are of Latino heritage, so the program is designed to help them recognize the value of their cultural backgrounds and to utilize the bilingual reality that exists in the Imperial Valley. The students were sent out on assignments, such as interviewing San Francisco Supervisor David Campos, covering an Oakland A’s baseball game and meeting with the staff of El Tecolote, a bilingual newspaper serving the Mission District. Their 12-hour days were jam-packed with video lessons, interviews with community leaders, daily deadlines and countless hours of computer work to produce stories about their experiences. By the end of the week, each of the students produced a video story about their experiences. The stories were screened during an emotional graduation ceremony that was broadcast over the Internet so that their families and friends could watch from their homes in Imperial County. With this intensive experience under their belts, the students can return to their respective schools and help teach other students the power of storytelling. Local journalists will continue to work with the students. As the program progresses during the regular school term, you can expect more students to start posting their stories. Young people will actively engage their community with new communications tools that can... Read More
Imperial Valley 4-H
At Vesper Society, we are dedicated to long-term solutions that help communities help themselves. One example of this is the University of California Cooperative Extension’s (UCCE) 4-H youth development program in Imperial County. Around the world, 4-H encourages young people and adults to volunteer. Through service learning—a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection—members learn civic responsibility and strengthen their communities. 4-H youth who excel in leadership and community service are selected to serve the 4-H Youth Development Program as a 4-H All Star—a leader among the organization. And Imperial Valley 4-H’s five-day Team Camp Council program helps youth foster awareness and behavior change in areas related to environmental sustainability. Each day at camp, campers plan, develop, and implement projects related to land, air, energy, water, and food. In doing so, they take on the responsibilities of leadership when it comes to the environment, which is important to ensuring a healthy community. 4-H also provides leadership opportunities further from home. Last summer, four Imperial County 4-H members were selected to attend the 2015 Citizenship Washington Focus Conference in Chevy Chase, Maryland. At the conference, they had the opportunity to identify individual citizenship rights and responsibilities, identify issues facing youth and explore causes and possible solutions, and establish communication with lawmakers and witness government in action. Of particular interest to Imperial County, having the highest number of diabetics in California, local delegates worked collaboratively with San Diego State University-Calexico to initiate a healthy living workshop on diabetes for Imperial County Youth. The 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development, conducted by the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University, shows youth engaged with 4-H are: Nearly two times more likely to get better grades in school Nearly two times more likely to plan... Read More
Introducing IVROP Project RISE
Bordering on Mexico, Imperial Valley youth work towards a better future. In a county with a 21% unemployment rate, and where agriculture accounts for 49 percent of all employment, the Imperial Valley Regional Occupational Program (IVROP) is a public education service that introduces students to new career opportunities and teaches them technical and life skills. It was formed by seven unified school districts in collaboration with the Imperial County Office of Education. One of IVROP’s projects, Project RISE (Relationships Inspire Success and Excellence), aims to create an asset building culture that contributes to the educational developmental of young people. They do this by engaging schools, social services, health care organizations, and businesses in Imperial County. In January 2015, with support from Vesper Society, Project RISE surveyed over 1,100 Imperial County high school freshmen attending Brawley Union, Central Union, and Southwest. The survey, the Developmental Assets Profile (DAP), was developed by Search Institute and has been administered to more than 5 million diverse children and youth to date. It identifies a set of skills, experiences, relationships, and behaviors that enable young people to develop into successful and contributing adults. As a result of Project RISE’s survey in Imperial County, a group of freshman students created the Brawley High School Asset Ambassadors “Wild Cats in Action” after attending a three-week Leadership Asset Training course. Their projects included attending the Brawley Parks and Recreation Summer Camp in 2016, where they were each assigned a group of young people to mentor and were able to apply their leadership skills in group activities. Vesper Society believes that the future well-being of our communities lies in the hands of our youth. Tomorrow’s leaders need support and encouragement to make maximum impact on our communities. With support from Vesper Society, IVROP’s Project RISE has established long-term... Read More