California’s Central Valley communities are faced with the highest pollution burdens andhealth vulnerabilities. Specifically, San Joaquin County residents live in food deserts and are impacted by multiple health disparities, despite the county’s significant contribution to California’s economy through agriculture. To address the intersectionality of these issues, Rise Stockton Coalition developed the 2019 Sustainable Neighborhood Plan (SNP), a framework forsustainable development in Central and South Stockton to translate community concerns into projects and policy proposals. While their community engagement efforts identified community priorities and outlined potential projects to be adopted by the City of Stockton and coalition partners, there has been no evaluation of the document’s impact on sustainable development. Toaddress this gap, this community-engaged research project, in partnership with Rise Stockton, aims to evaluate the 2019 SNP’s influence on the coalition’s program development and strategieswithin the context of the COVID-19 pandemic through informational interviews with coalitionpartners. A semi-systematic literature review will also be conducted in order to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the strengths and weaknesses of the framework. Datagathered will be instrumental in further updating the 2019 SNP, including to reconfirm community needs and cultivate efficient project outlines to address those priorities.
This research aims to discover how much the older adults in Central Los Angele have benefitted from an intergenerational community program. In addition, how intergenerational learning has successfully addressed various needs of these older adults because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The need for intergenerational programs has grown significantly over the past two years, with many older adults experiencing loneliness, anxiety, and depression. Intergenerational Programs provide a sense of comfort, relief, and a place where they can feel needed. They also help the older generations think a part of society and give them a sense of purpose and feelings of value. Through various intergenerational activities, the younger generation takes in information that will help them develop their levels of resilience and social identities.
In 2016-2018, alarmingly, the opioid epidemic ravaged communities of color. Forty percent of the African American national population misused opioids, which subjected them to unjust labels of “drug user.” The pattern of racially labelling African American communities as “drug users” was not only driven by implicit discrimination, but also carried over to this community’s current abuse rates of marijuana.This pattern of bias have been shown tounderstand the prevalence of marijuana mis-use rates. However, previous studies have not unearthed how marijuana abuse education and initiative creation have contributed to marijuanaabuse prevention in CA. In partnership with South Central Prevention Coalition(SCPC), this research gap is addressed by applying a community engagement research lens to implement effective marijuana education and safe drug disposal programs that can steer marginalized individuals towards marijuana abuse prevention. Through mixed methods data collection, next steps include conducting focus group interviews and devising program evaluation surveys tobetter understand substance user/non-substance users perception on types of programming available in their community as well as the effectiveness of the programming in bringing awareness to marijuana abuse prevention. Final implications will inform the dangers ofmarijuana mis-use through effective community prevention program efforts and further call for a decrease in marijuana outlet production/accessibility to youth communities of color in SouthCentral LA.
Previous program evaluation studies that assess alumni engagement are often conducted in university settings, which produce key communication strategies that optimize and enhance alumni engagement in that respective field. However, there is a discrepancy in the literature thatexamines alumni engagement in nonprofit organizations – which may contribute to the lack of alumni engagement. To address this discrepancy, a community-engaged research approach and program evaluation will be conducted in collaboration with the TELACU College Success Program to identify key communication developments and strategies to optimize alumni engagement and foster community among alumni. The next steps include developing and distributing a self-reported alumni survey that gauges their needs and interests within theorganization. The data collected from the self-reported survey will aid in the overall assessment of current communication strategies and outreach methods within the TELACU College Success Program. The results of this study will ultimately, contribute to shifting standard programevaluation methods into integrating community-engagement frameworks and practices for optimal reflection.
As the rate of homelessness increases across urban centers in America, vast amounts of unhoused people are being criminalized and being subjected to forced displacement by state authorities. Most of the existing literature written on homelessness services focus on formalservices that take place in an office setting rather than on-the-ground outreach. These present insightful learnings, but they do not provide a clear understanding of the process of outreach nor unhoused individuals’ experiences. To address this gap, we conducted a qualitative analysis,collecting narratives about unhoused individuals’ lived experiences with formal and informal systems of outreach in Koreatown, Los Angeles. We sought to understand what forms of outreach made unhoused individuals feel supported. We conducted semi-structured conversational interviews with volunteers and engaged in participatory ethnography duringweekly outreach. We inquired about unhoused peoples’ experiences with formal and informaloutreach to understand how these systems differ, what potential improvements can be made, and which initiatives have been successful. We found that unhoused individuals were able to formmore trusting relationships with volunteers than with case-workers due to consistency,expectation management skills, and respect towards unhoused people. Given our findings, future recommendations include partnerships between the formal and informal sectors, further fundingfor formal outreach, and adhering to existing recommendations regarding formal outreach reform.
The helper-victim relationship is often seen in refugee narratives in which international humanitarian organizations are the helpers and refugees are the victims. However, in parallel to this model is the neglected story of refugee leaderships who have mobilized to provide support for their own community. In this research, partnered with Tiyya Foundation, a nonprofit organization for refugees and displaced Americans, we hope to change the existing narrative by shifting the focus from the mainstream model portrayed by western media bias to the often unseen resilient-leadership narrative. We utilized a community-engaged research approach to explore active engagement from the refugee community through secondary ethnographic interviews. We also conducted a newspaper-based content analysis and we found that media, depends on their political leaning, plays a major role in influencing the refugee story by consistently portrays the harmful narratives of refugees as criminals, security threats, or burdens which often translate into a racist immigration agenda and xenophobic behavior against the community. We hope that this research will help, in a small part, shed new light and bring in new positive refugee narratives.
Early childhood care and education centers are primary and secondary prevention for children at risk for low performance. ECCE are essential in the first three years of an individual's life; the connections one experiences in such services are crucial to brain development. The various interactions encountered at child care facilities can positively influence how a child thinks, feels, acts, and connects with others into adulthood. It additionally contributes to academic readiness and decreases the rate of school dropouts. These facilities are a valuable resource to families with toddlers, especially low-income families who may struggle to offer certain resources and skills to their young ones. However, it seems that the families who need the help the most struggle the most to access them. However, research still struggles to determine constructive ways to address systematic racial barriers within early childhood development within BIPOC families. As a consequence, children are not getting the necessary child development resources. Likewise, the disparity gap within quality ECCE suggests that policies are not recognizing the importance of ECCE enough. The purpose of this community-engaged research was to examine obstacles limiting families from acquiring quality ECCE by utilizing the voices of historically marginalized communities. The second purpose was to identify ways to make a resourcefulness website accessible to the communities being affected. This study question was established with the guidance of the Advancement Project and from First 5 L.A - Best Start. The tools utilized in the study included interviews formerly conducted with the First 5 L.A. team. Additionally, inductive coding was used to analyze the interviews to identify themes.
In LA County, service providers rely on government funding to assist youth experiencing homelessness. Existing literature acknowledges the unique problems that the youth subpopulation confronts. Moreover, research notes that the most effective services for youth are youth-focused, and the availability of services is directly correlated with the supply of funding. We question whether youth funding allocations in LA County meet the reality of the youth homeless crisis. To perform an analysis, this research pursues a community engaged analysis of funding allocations from three sources—HEAP, HHAP round 1, and Measure H funded contracts—to form a representative view of the LA funding ecosystem. Further analysis occurs at the LA City Council District, County Supervisorial District, and County Service Planning Area scales. We find trends that implicate inequitable funding allocations and a concerning lack of accessible and accurate data.
Mental health and experiences with trauma inform how people interact with the world around them and themselves. The Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI), located in Inglewood, California, is an organization devoted to supporting “youth and communities of color by empowering them to enact social change through research, training, and community mobilization,” emphasizing the importance of system-level interventions. SJLI’s current programs are designed to support young men of color — this community-engaged research project seeks to fill the gap and widen the scope of the organization’s programming to young women of color. Literature reviews and analyses of existing programs designed to support young women of color have been conducted to collate perspectives and strategies for supporting young women; the community members will be included in these conversations. Supporting young women is critical to creating a more equitable and person-centered society, and this work will foundationally invest in promoting such change, specifically on the West coast, where research indicates a gap in programmatic supports.
Although homelessness, mass incarceration, and reentry to society are discussed in many different areas of research, there is little known when it comes to the effects that these issues have on elderly individuals. The barriers that elderly individuals face upon reentry to society are countless and the transition is far from smooth. This paper primarily focuses on housing, social security, and employment policies. Public and private housing can be difficult to access due to required background checks and other factors such as loss of contact with family members due to long-term incarceration. Elderly individuals who spent most of their lives in prison may not be able to benefit from social security either. Additionally, employment could be difficult as well for those who cannot engage in physical activities and for those who do not have the technological skills necessary for non-physical jobs. Together, these findings suggest that the current policies make it incredibly difficult for elderly formerly incarcerated individuals to have any kind of financial cushion upon release, making them inevitably vulnerable to homelessness.
