Youth Advisory Board Application

I applied to the Youth Advisory Board for the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. This is my application.

Extracurricular Activities:

1. We want to know a little bit about you. Give us the “Top 6” list that best describes who you are and what you’re all about (organizations, interests, talents, goals, causes, etc.)

Example: I care about my family’s health, so I got my parents to buy more fruits and vegetables and less chips or I really like soccer and I am captain of my soccer team.

- I really care about my community so I work on an urban farm in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward to help provide healthier food choices to my family and neighbors.

- I want others to learn what I have learned about food and farming so I help teach composting and farming workshops to youth and adults and am a team leader and co-teacher in my school's after-school programs.

- I care about community development, so I wrote a petition to help get an educational variance for my organization so that we could expand our facility and work we are able to do for the community.

- I enjoy public speaking, so I talk about public heath to inform the community about the dangers of unhealthy food and how we can build local solutions.

- I think about and work on new ways to improve education and keep youth in school, so I participate in community and city-wide discussions, panels and conferences on high school reform.

- I know that it will take a national movement to make the changes we need in all of our communities so I make connections with youth leaders from around the country.

2. Listed below are skills that may be beneficial to the Youth Advisory Board. In what skill areas have you had experience? You'll need to check all that apply.

    Video Production

X  Photography

X  Community Service/Service Learning

X  Public Speaking

X  Blogging/Podcasting Texting

X  Recruitment/Community Organizing

    Mentoring

    Web Design/HTML

    Tutoring

X  Fundraising/Grant Writing

    Writing/Editing

X  Advocacy/Activism

    Government

X  Other (please specify)

     - Innovative urban farming

     - Healthy food advocacy

     - Workshop facilitation

3. Please list any honors, awards or recognition for community, academic or school activities that you've received. (If none, please put N/A for none applicable)

I am a youth member of the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group whose mission it is to empower and inspire farmers, individuals, and communities in the South to create an agricultural system that is ecologically sound, economically viable, socially just, and humane. Last fall I was invited to participate in the Kellogg Foundation's New Orleans Convergence which brought together all of the foundation's grantees throughout the region to develop solutions to the problems facing New Orleans youth and communities. For my work in urban farming I received the Community Gardens as Apple seeds Award and in March I was a youth panelist discussing how to empower youth to make New Orleans "the city that ended hunger" through innovative practices in urban farming and sustainable community food systems. Other panelists included Macarthur Genius award winner Will Allen from Growing Power, Brian Geutreax of Geutreax family farms, Liz Tuckermany of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and New Orleans celebrity chef, John Besh.

Short Answer Essays

3 Essay Questions:

1. Why do you want to be a part of the Youth Advisory Board?

The reason I want to be on the Youth Advisory Board is because it will give me the opportunity to influence national and local policy affecting healthy youth and communities while bringing attention to the ongoing struggles in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward concerning unhealthy eating and limited food access. Through this experience I hope to gain new perspectives and meet new people with the same interest and goals as me: creating a better school system, decreasing violence, and providing meaningful healthy opportunities and experiences for youth in my community and others around the country. This will be an educational experience that will test what I know, the chance to learn more, and will ultimately benefit me in the long run. Also through this experience I hope to travel and experience new things, gain valuable perspectives. I appreciate the opportunities I have had to meet new people from all over the country who have visited New Orleans to support the redevelopment in our neighborhood, and I think this will be an opportunity to share my story and learn from others even more. The Youth Advisory Board will also give me the opportunity to provide needed exposure to my work in New Orleans.

2. What do you do to try to stay healthy? Have you faced any problems or hurdles to being healthy and what have you done to overcome them?

Access to healthy food was limited to the community I live in. The Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans is a food desert. Food access is limited to two corner stores which sell mostly alcohol, cigarettes and junk food. The closest grocery store is 2.5 miles away in the next parish. While living in Griffin, GA the closest store to my house was a corner store almost 2 miles away. Being surrounded by unhealthy food most of my life has contributed to my weight issues. Now that I have been learning about healthy foods and growing my own food with my friends and neighbors on our urban farm, I have been eating healthier, getting exercise composting and working on the farm, and feel much more healthy and better about myself.

3. If your future job was to design ways to help other youth become healthier: What creative and new ideas would you include in schools to help kids eat healthier and be more physically active? What would you do in other places within the community?

I want to make youth healthier through school gardens that provide opportunities for youth to learn how to grow good food, cook healthy food and eat out of the school garden.  In other places throughout my community, I want to transform abandoned lots into more community gardens, engaging other youth growing food for neighborhoods with limited access to healthy food, making this a safe, resource-rich environment.  School and community gardens can increase student engagement, decrease school dropout rates and in the long-run we’ll have kids who are not only physical healthy but mentally healthy and with a higher confidence because they’ve been contributing to making their communities stronger and more healthy.  Since Hurricane Katrina, youth from around the country have visited New Orleans and the Lower Ninth Ward learning and working with our communities. I want to develop a program that creates opportunities for teenagers from New Orleans to travel and connect with other youth and community empowerment organizations around the country, teaching and learning from workshops and experiences with each other, and preparing them to come back to New Orleans and build on what they have learned making their communities a stronger, better healthier place.