YES (Youth Envisioned Streets): Youth driving a community’s health

“In South L.A., youth are out in the community on a daily basis more than any other segment of the population, making them prime catalysts for community change. In our highly-monolingual population with adults who work multiple jobs, kids are the voice of the neighborhood.”

This idea is the basis for the National Health Foundation’s project YES (Youth Envisioned Streets) for a Healthier South L.A., a one-day pop-up event that will take place on Central Avenue between Adams and Vernon. Organizers Mia Arias and Alba Peña want the neighborhood’s young people to be the event’s community ambassadors and activists—the ones who’ll demonstrate and help implement new interventions along the corridor that will promote healthy lifestyles and a “complete streets” philosophy.

Youth Envisioned Streets

“A lot of projects try to get youth involved, but it’ll be for one small part,” says Mia. “We’re doing it on all levels: they’ll be planning, engaging with our community partners, marketing, fundraising… They’ll get in on all the aspects so they know everything it takes to make something like this happen. We’re not going to just say, ‘Here, Tweet this.’ ”

The main activities the young volunteers will take on include:

1) working closely with Los Angeles Walks and the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition to design and create temporary street design treatments that will illustrate how a safer streetscape could be achieved in the corridor;

2) partnering with safe haven A Place Called Home to design an organic vegetable garden and plan cooking demonstrations for the day of the event;

3) imagining and building Creative Expression Outlets: activities and entertainment including health-themed art contests, music and dance performances, and live mural demonstrations by local artists, all targeted to attendees of all ages.

“All of these activities will demonstrate how public space can be reimagined to be safe, vibrant, and active for all members of our community,” says Mia.

“When people think of healthy lifestyles, they usually think of eating vegetables and going to the gym,” says Alba, “not necessarily about the built environment. But we know that if there’s a nice wide sidewalk, you’re more likely to walk. If there’s a bike lane, you might think of riding to work. It’s all connected.

“For many years, our public health approach has been ‘downstream’—for example, counseling people with diabetes. Now, we know we need to create environments that foster health instead of raising barriers. These are ‘upstream’ solutions, focused on prevention. Public health has begun adopting planning issues as their own, which is very exciting. And this is where reimagining the built environment comes in: it’s the synergy between public health and planning.”

“Southeast L.A. is a food desert with a lack of open space and a lot of health problems,” says Mia. “When we can rethink and re-create public spaces that can help people become more active and healthier, we improve the health of the whole community, the whole city, the whole state, the whole nation. That helps our workforce, it helps our schools. No matter the size of the setting, any community will expend less resources when they have less unhealthy people to support.”

Alba hopes their work will inspire others. “We’d love to see these trends spread across the city,” she says. “We want to bring attention to our government about what our needs are, and get communities talking about what they want to see.”

“Making our neighbors, especially our young neighbors, aware that things can change—for the better—is a huge part of this,” says Mia. “The idea that you do have the power to make change, and you can be involved. So we’re doing a lot of asking in our process: Do you like this? What else would be beneficial to you? We’re collecting testimonials and data of all kinds to inform whatever will happen next.”

“In order to make lasting change,” she says, “you really have to collaborate.”