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Accomplishments
Access To Healthy Food
YLI is leading a cooperative effort among 50 agencies and 100 of their youth leaders in the Central Valley and Eastern Coachella Valley to help them improve the significant health disparities in these areas through policy and systems change work, thanks to the California Endowment's Building Healthy Communities (BHC) grant.
YLI youth championed a mobile truck policy in Novato, California. Food trucks promoting unhealthy food to students and the safety of those around these mobile venders were concerns for adults as well as youth. Through the persistence and support of YLI's Marin County Youth Commissioners, school administrators, food administrators, council members, the Marin County Board of Supervisors, local coalitions, adults and students, the new mobile truck policy passed. With the implementation of the Mobile Truck Policy, food trucks are not permitted to be within 1,500 feet of Novato schools and must be 500 feet away from other food trucks. To learn more about the policy, see this article from the Marin Independent Journal.
YLI released 3 bi-lingual and bi-cultural short documentaries: Making Waves, Making Change, community coalition building; Youth-Problem Gambling in the Filipino-American Community in Daly City; and one on our Cornerstore makeovers. YLI youth advocate Luis Ortiz was featured on Cheryl Jenning’s show "Beyond The Headlines," whose media advocacy skills landed him an internship with ABC news.
In 2007, youth working in Novato and San Rafael school districts developed 46 specific recommendations for district wellness policies that, among other things, sought to improve access to healthy food on campus. Almost all of the recommendations were incorporated into the wellness policies approved by the two school boards.
Youth Leadership Institute has led the charge to increase the availability of local, affordable, and healthy food on school campuses in Marin County. In 2010, the Youth Leadership Institute partnered with San Rafael City School District to establish a youth and adult advisory group called Building a Master Foundation for Food (BAMFF). BAMFF administered the REAL Food Assessment, making San Rafael High School District the first public school district in the nation to use the assessment. The REAL Food Assessment provides a district-wide framework that calculates and monitors the level of healthy food purchased and served on school campuses. In June 2011, the BAMFF advisory group presented findings and recommendations gleaned from the REAL food assessment to the school board, including specific recommendations to improve the existing school wellness policy.
Civic Engagement
In March, 2012 the Youth Leadership Institute launched the video release of "YOU(th) Can Make A Resolution: Steps for a Smoke-Free Hollywood.” The video is a capstone of YLI’s larger Smoke Free Hollywood civic-engagement work to motivate the Motion Picture Association of America to remove tobacco depictions in G, PG and PG-13 rated films, which are responsible for half of the teen smoking epidemic according to the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control, Research and Education. YLI’s Smoke Free Hollywood initiative seems to be working. In fact, half of the Motion Picture Association of America studios have drastically reduced their depictions of tobacco in movies targeted for youth. Read more >>
In 2011, the Marin County Youth Commission (a youth-led advisory body, staffed by the Youth Leadership Institute) successfully partnered with County Supervisor Charles McGlashan to champion the proposed countywide Single Use Plastic Bag Ban. The policy prohibits merchants from issuing single-use plastic bags at retail stores in Marin County, California.
San Francisco youth worked with the Youth Leadership Institute on a two-year evaluation of the effectiveness of the Mayor's Youth Employment and Education Program. In 2009, the youth evaluators presented their findings to the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families.
Education Equity
YLI’s Students United to Create a Climate of Engagement Support and Safety (SUCCESS) program works with schools and communities to increase the number of Fresno Unified School District students who are in school and ready to learn. The team identified key points of concern, which included a clear racial divide for the numbers of suspensions and expulsions, then organized a conference to discuss effective school discipline how to reduce suspensions and expulsions while supporting student development. Conference participants came from throughout the community, including city officials, school and district officials, community organizations, and concerned young people and adults. YLI is currently crafting an advocacy strategy for building supportive school environments in Fresno, which will roll out in Spring, 2012.
Since 2007, the Youth Commission has selected education equity as one of its engagement issues culminating in a 2010 survey of nearly 1,000 Marin County high school students that examines their motivations for college attendance, awareness of preparation, admission, and financial aid information, and access to sources of information including college readiness programs. The results are being disseminated widely among educators in concert with the Marin Community Foundation’s strategic initiative to close the education achievement gap.
YLI is in its second year of the College for All Partnership (CAP), a program designed to help the most academically at-risk students at San Rafael and Novato High Schools increase their ability to reach college. In partnership with three other education-centered non-profits, YLI works with youth, parents, and schools to ensure college preparedness. The program is already showing positive outcomes, including 50% of youth reporting that because of their involvement in CAP they now plan on continuing their education beyond high school.
School Climate
YLI youth created and administered the 2011 School Climate Survey to understand the equity and safety of school environments for LGBTQ students in San Rafael, Drake and Redwood High Schools, receiving 3,045 responses. The youth are now making recommendations to both school boards for school policy and safety changes to address their findings.
Prevention of Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Use
Between 2000 and 2009, the Institute's youth leaders organized and successfully campaigned for the passage of more than 20 ordinances to reduce social and retail access to alcohol and tobacco in communities, increase parent accountability, and increase highway and pedestrian safety. These include social host ordinances that hold parents accountable for underage alcohol consumption in their homes.
In 2004, the Institute was designated as the exclusive national trainer for Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol (CMCA), a model program in the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices.
Youth from the Institute's "League of Youth Voices" partnered with a leading international advertising agency, Grey SF, to craft an award-winning multimedia marketing campaign, "After Too Many," giving a new uncompromising voice and vision to substance abuse prevention. The campaign was well received both online and on campuses.
In addition to YLI's in-person and webinar-based trainings throughout the United States, YLI and the California Friday Night Live Partnership completed dozens of California statewide trainings on how to implement the Friday Night Live Roadmap - training adults who will in turn teach thousands of youth how to abate alcohol, tobacco and other drug use in their communities.
The Institute’s youth-led council, “the Smoke Free San Mateo County Advocates” successfully advocated policies to limit smoking to designated areas at College of San Mateo and Skyline College. These young adults then went on to successfully advocate a policy that made all Bay Area farmers markets smoke free.
YLI youth at San Francisco’s Washington and Thurgood Marshall High Schools created media campaigns to promote positive decisions including teaching the student body that not as many students drink as what is perceived and therefore changing social norms. The campaign has received accolades from school administrators and the San Francisco Unified School District.
YLI's Tobacco Use Reduction Force (TURF) youth visited Stanford University and interviewed Lisa Henriksen, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist and Ellen Feighery, Associate Director, for International Research regarding their Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids work, rounding out a series of high-level political and educational interviews to inform their strategy for tobacco use abatement in San Francisco.
The Youth Leadership Institute trained and collaborated with youth leaders from the Tobacco Use Prevention Program in Pacifica, California. In 2008 they successfully petitioned the City of Pacifica to pass strict new tobacco retail licensing standards, now the strongest in San Mateo County. The policy enacting these standards also dedicates funding for law enforcement officers to curb underage tobacco sales.
In 2008, the Youth Leadership Institute produced three short films featuring the ways youth experience and engage in changing their communities in Fresno County. Part of a statewide effort, Betting on Our Future looks at where media messages promoting gambling are placed in Fresno County, and how youth and communities respond. Ripples of Change documents youth-led social change in Fresno, including efforts to modify the youth curfew at River Park shopping center, and new local policies that limit where youth access alcohol. Ya Basta! examines the prevalence of alcohol advertising in rural Fresno County retail environments and the impact of these messages on youth and the community.
In 2008, the “Project Cambios” youth council conducted a social marketing campaign in Half Moon Bay, California called "It Doesn't Just Affect You‚". The group produced five different palm cards with methamphetamine prevention messages in English and Spanish. The campaign used local data collected by the group's Youth-Adult Meth Action Team.
At the urging of the youth advisory group “Be The Influence”, the Tamalpais Union High School District in Mill Valley, California, has taken a tough stance on alcohol sponsorship and promotion at school events. In June 2011, the district adopted a policy that limits alcohol promotion at school events like fundraisers, PTA events, and athletic events. The new policy also bars the district from sponsoring alcohol related products or events, and accepting funds from the alcohol industry.
In 2010, Marin Youth Health Advisory Council (a youth-led council staffed by the Youth Leadership Institute) partnered with the City of San Rafael, California, to limit youth access to alcohol and youth exposure to alcohol promotion at special events and festivals. With support from the Advisory Council, the City of San Rafael adopted alcohol sponsorship and service guidelines for city events. The guidelines include limits on cup sizes, limits on the number of beverages served per customer, no alcohol advertising, mandatory responsible beverage training to all vendors serving alcohol, and limits on areas where alcohol may be consumed.
Over the last eight years, five young leaders from the Youth Leadership Institute’s programs in San Mateo County, California, have received the California Youth Advocacy Network’s Erich Jenkins Memorial Youth Advocate of the Year Scholarship. This award is granted every year to outstanding high school students for their accomplishments and leadership in California’s tobacco control movement.
The Institute convened the Y-Impact youth grants board, a youth philanthropy team comprised of representatives from youth groups in northern San Mateo County. In 2009, Y-Impact awarded $10,000 in mini-grants to local youth-led health and wellness initiatives.
YLI is partnering with Marin Academy in San Rafael, California, to develop and implement a youth grants board. In its pilot year, the youth grants board has funded 20 youth-led projects throughout Marin County, totaling $16,500 in grants. Two example projects are:
- A project teaching cooking and overall health and wellness to young residents of San Rafael’s underserved Canal neighborhood (awarded to Educational Excellence & Equity)
- A Photo Voice action research project to engage community members in understanding the root causes of underage drinking in Novato, California (awarded to Novato Friday Night Live)