July 2012


www.hamptonroadsmessenger.com


Youth Poets Launch Social Justice Campaign Against Diabetes


BY ZAINEB MOHAMMED Amidst rising


rates of diabetes in teenagers, youth are leading a new campaign to combat the social and environmental factors that created the epidemic.


“This campaign is


more about the social determinants of the disease,” said Sarah Fine, project director for the Youth Speaks UCSF Public Health Literacy Project. “We want to change the conversation to what are the social forces exacerbating the epidemic and what can we do to affect change.”


The rate of diabetes is increasing among teenagers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


well as a desire to, “raise awareness amongst my community about what’s fed to them – not just food.”


Jose Vadi, another youth poet from A recent study by the Centers


for Disease Control and Prevention, published in the May 21 issue of the Journal of American Academy of Pediatrics, revealed that one in four youth between the ages of 12 and19 have pre-diabetes, versus one in 11 a decade ago.


Even more alarming is the finding


that 50 percent of youth are at a greater risk for developing diabetes within the next five years.


And according to the American


Diabetes Association, Type 2 diabetes, which is the most common form of the disease, is more prevalent among African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders.


June 5, marked the kickoff of The


Bigger Picture, a youth led campaign organized through the San Francis- co-based non-profit, Youth Speaks and UCSF’s Center for Vulnerable Populations to raise awareness about the disease.


Youth poets participating in the


campaign will go to five high schools in San Francisco and five in Oakland in the fall to conduct writing workshops and encourage other young people to upload a poem or video sharing their story to the campaign’s website, as several of the youth poets have already done.


These will be judged, and the


winners will receive educational scholarships. Organizers hope that this two-year pilot program will eventually become a national campaign.


After studying environmental


science in school and understanding the correlation between food systems and neighborhoods such as his where he grew up, Joshua Merchant, a youth poet from East Oakland, became interested in knowing more about the widespread prevalence of diabetes.


He wrote his poem, “A Product of


His Environment,” to, “acknowledge that we want to be healthier people but we need healthier things available to us.”


In his spoken word performance


describing the limited food choices available to his 13-year-old friend James, Merchant says, “Because of this twisted food system he’s slaved to, his body is systematically inclined to break down like the buildings that are [broken] down for new shopping centers, forcing his neighbors into homelessness.”


Merchant’s other motivation for


becoming involved in the campaign is his father’s struggle with diabetes, as


Oakland, saw a density map of San Francisco, which showed that diabetes is most prevalent in poor communities.


“That’s not where the farmer’s markets are,” he said.


He went on to describe the lack of


food options in his own neighborhood: “I can’t think of a grocery store in West Oakland.”


In Vadi’s spoken word video,


“The Corner,” produced as part of the campaign, he says: “We’re standing on the corner between healthy and heart attack, not sure which way to cross.


store, the other, deep-fried death. Our bodies pull us away from the produce aisle into value meal heaven, ignoring the question of what part of a chicken is a nugget anyway.”


According to Dr. Dean Schillinger,


professor of medicine at UCSF and chief of the Diabetes Prevention and Control Program for the California Department of Public Health, “diabetes is linked to one station or place in life. People with low-income, or only high school, education have a five times greater chance of getting Type 2 diabetes.”


The hope for the campaign is that


the videos produced by youth will go viral and “consume the internet,” said Vadi.


Vadi, Merchant, and Jade Cho,


another youth poet with Youth Speaks, all commented on the ineffectiveness of previous PSA campaigns on such health issues as substance abuse.


“PSA campaigns can be ineffective


by putting the blame on you,” said Cho. “We’re focusing on systemic stuff instead of healthy behaviors.”


“We were the generation most hit


with the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program. It was a failure,” added Vadi.


Being the product of various


anti-drug campaigns, which used tactics like frying an egg in a pan and saying “this is your brain on drugs,” made Vadi eager for a campaign made for youth by youth.


“We speak to each other [during


the campaign] the way we speak to each other on the train,” he said. “DARE over-exaggerated as a fear tactic and this issue [diabetes] is so inherently scary and terrifying, we can just speak the truth.”


“This campaign is not adults telling


us what we should or need to do,” said Merchant. “We think critically about this, we’re aware of our needs, and we want to change.”


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The Hampton Roads Messenger


More African Americans Than Ever to Teach for America


BY JENÉE DESMOND-HARRIS Each year the Teach


for America program recruits recent college graduates to work for two years in urban and rural public schools, hoping to inspire a lifelong commitment to education. It does the job well: A 2011 study found that the program creates more founders and leaders of education organizations than any other organization or program.


Members of Teach for America’s


“teacher corps” collectively reach 750,000 students -- 50 percent of whom are black. And this year, the organization announced in a press release recently, a higher percentage than ever of the educators are themselves African American. But according to Heather Harding, Teach for America’s senior vice president of community and public partnerships, that number (700 out of 5,800) isn’t high enough.


“If we’re going to reach the day


when every child receives an outstanding education, we need a movement of leaders who are diverse in every respect and committed to changing things for kids,” she said. “While we’re proud that


our current teacher corps is racially and economically diverse, we still have a ways to go. Our goal is to keep steadily increasing the diversity of backgrounds and experiences among our teaching corps.”


According to Teach for America,


more than 48,000 people applied to the program this year, including 1 in 4 seniors at Spelman, 11 percent of the graduating class at Clark Atlanta University, 10 percent at Hampton University and at Morehouse College, 8 percent at Howard, 6 percent at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and 4 percent at the University of Florida. At the Ivy League schools, 1 in 7 African American seniors applied.


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