Apple Corps seeds nutrition & fitness

The Apple Corps 2010/2011!

Last week Solid Ground’s Apple Corps AmeriCorps team showcased its efforts to counter childhood obesity through nutrition and fitness education and activities.

The eight Apple Corps Members each discussed their work during their one-year term to provide school and community-based nutrition and fitness education and awareness.

Team Members are actively engaged in local neighborhoods hardest hit by the obesity epidemic. They teach in schools, create family community market nights, coordinate cooking classes, garden clubs and walking challenges, and use other tools and partnerships to effect change.

Lessons Apple Corps Member Jen Yogi learned in school

Team member Heidi Evans brought Cooking Matters classes to the public housing facilities she worked in on behalf of Solid Ground’s Partners in Caring program. As one class member wrote in her evaluation, the “classes increased my confidence that I can cook healthy meals.”

In addition to developing and providing programming, Apple Corps Members received training and support in how to manage their projects, many of which involved significant community partnerships, and applied an anti-racist analysis to their work.

“I tried to not privilege certain ways of speaking about nutrition,” Heidi said, “and to value what others bring and the important role of cultural food traditions.”

Apple Corps Members will wrap up their projects over the next month or so, with a new team forming at the end of the Summer! You can learn more about the Corps and donate to support it on the Apple Corps webpage.

Tell your senators you care about AmeriCorps

Along with cuts to Title X Family Planning programs, on February 19 the U.S. House of Representatives voted to eliminate funding for the Corporation for National and Community Service, which in effect means doing away with the AmeriCorps and RSVP National Service programs. If passed by the Senate, these cuts will impact King County by devastating programs and services that work to prevent violence, increase literacy, build community and reduce generational poverty in our community, including programs at the Seattle Police Department and more than a dozen other local criminal justice system agencies, schools and social justice organizations.

For example, JustServe AmeriCorps Member Antoinette Spillers, placed at the Seattle Police Department, increased dialogue between community and police at a time when several high-profile incidents created significant concern about police brutality and community-police relations in Seattle. Antoinette carried out the canvassing and networking efforts to engage more community members in the Seattle Police Department’s Native American and East African, Muslim, Sikh and Arab Community Advisory Councils. And JustServe AmeriCorps Member Monique Franklin has played a major role at Open Arms in supporting mothers with young children to lead community-driven violence prevention, infant mortality prevention and early childhood education projects.

Antoinette Spiller

JustServe AmeriCorps Members like Antoinette and Monique positively impact our community in countless ways as they work to reduce violence and poverty in King County. Working closely with our partner sites, JustServe AmeriCorps Members have made a difference in the lives of more than 2,000 people in the last few months alone.

Just a few highlights include:

• ­ Youth Violence Prevention & Intervention: 519 youth at risk of violence or incarceration gained leadership and conflict resolution skills, participated in service learning activities, and connected with positive skill building programs that have shown to reduce the risk of violence.

• ­Victim Advocacy: 427 domestic violence survivors received crisis intervention services and advocacy through JustServe AmeriCorps Members based at the Seattle Police Department Victim Support Team and the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

• ­Alternatives to Incarceration: 523 adult defendants with low-level misdemeanors participated in JustServe service activities as an alternative to incarceration – led by AmeriCorps Members based at the Seattle Municipal Community Court Program.

While eliminating funding for National Service programs would be a short-sighted move with dire consequences, this outcome is not set in stone. Please contact your senators to let them know that you care about the health and safety of our community.

In Washington State, contact:

Patty Murray: toll free 1 .866.481.9186 or via murray.senate.gov.

Maria Cantwell: toll free 1 .888.648.7328 via cantwell.senate.gov.

A bipartisan argument for National Service

Check out this recent op-ed by Eric Tannenblatt about how National Service is a strategy that can be embraced by both Democrats and Republicans to meet our country’s most vital community needs: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47652.html.

Tannenblatt, who describes himself as a “lifelong Republican,” notes that:

1) AmeriCorps taps into the strengths and skills of grassroots community members to solve community problems.

2) AmeriCorps is a highly cost-effective program.

3) AmeriCorps has a transformative effect on its participants, “often putting them on a lifelong path of civic engagement.”

Voices for National Service, a national advocacy organization that works to educate the American public and our nation’s leaders about the power and impact of National Service, notes that funding for National Service has been included in the President’s 2011 fiscal year budget. Go to their website to learn more!

(Editor’s note: Tera Oglesby runs Solid Ground’s JustServe AmeriCorps program. JustServe AmeriCorps Members work with youth at risk of violence, support victims of domestic violence, help create alternatives to incarceration, support people coming out of the prison system, and mobilize community members of all ages to get involved in violence prevention.)

Local community organizer needs support at Immigration Pardons Hearing on June 10th!

If you haven’t seen this video yet…please take a minute to learn about Giday “Dede” Adhanom, a local community organizer who is facing deportation (based on a conviction that she received when she was a young adult):

 

Carpools will be going from Seattle to support Dede at her Pardons Hearing in Olympia, on Thursday morning, June 10th.

I have worked very closely with Dede over the past two years, and she is an extremely talented, committed and inspiring woman. She has dedicated years of her life to serving her community, including serving at the Village of Hope from 2008 to present, helping people who are coming out of incarceration to find jobs and housing. Dede has also been a powerful and thoughtful member and leader over the past two years within the JustServe AmeriCorps team. Dede is also the mother of two beautiful and happy little girls, and she is due to have a baby boy in June.

Dede has given so much to our community, and now she needs our support.

If you can come out to support Dede in Olympia on June 10th, please contact JustServe AmeriCorps at 206.957.4779 or the Village of Hope at 206.937.2701.

For more information about the federal legislation impacting Dede and others in our community, see this PBS report.

I loved my experience at JustServe AmeriCorps

Alex Montances served with Solid Ground’s JustServe AmeriCorps program from 2007-2008. His placement was the Asian Pacific Islander Women and Family Safety Center, helping to coordinate the Annual Vigil for Victims of Domestic Violence at the King County Courthouse, and leading educational peer groups with high school aged Asian and Pacific Islander young men on anti-oppression topics, dating violence and sexual assault.

Read below to hear how Alex was impacted by his participation in JustServe AmeriCorps at Solid Ground–and the powerful work that Alex is doing in the community, today:

“Today I am a second year graduate student at California State University Long Beach in their Applied Anthropology program. My focus is on advocacy and social services for Filipino American immigrants, organizations, and communities. I hope to do advocacy and research consulting for non-profit organizations, state, city and federal institutions so that they can better serve Filipino immigrant communities. I also work with a Filipino American Youth group called AnakBayan Los Angeles that teaches youth about Filipino culture and history while fighting for youth rights and human rights for Filipino communities around the world. Currently, with AnakBayan I teach educational workshops on Filipino culture/history, anti- imperialism, and human rights to Filipino youth and students in the greater Los Angeles county area.

I learned so many great things about people’s movements, anti-oppression, non-profit work, and community activism through JustServe AmeriCorps. There were things I learned about racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, age-ism, able-ism and other forms of oppression in those team meetings that I would have never learned in school or though my friends and family. I learned on the job about humility, patience, and hard work. I learned more about active leadership and teamwork at my placement site, and how people navigate through systems to do real community work.

If anyone is thinking about joining an AmeriCorps program you should really consider JustServe. Its focus on anti-oppression and anti-violence is extremely valuable and will give you many tools to work with communities. Be open to challenge yourself and what you know about marginalized communities and you will definitely grow as an individual and a leader in this program.

If you are a current JustServe AmeriCorps Member, thank you for your service! You will never forget or regret the work you do here! If you are unsure of what to do after your service, talk to your placement site, teammates, team leaders and others in the community, and you may find some unexpected opportunities waiting for you. If you are interested in Filipino communities and human rights, please contact JustServe team leaders and ask for my contact information, I would love to chat.

I loved my experience at JustServe AmeriCorps, and I know that real social change happens when you work together and empower local people to change their communities for the better. Thank you to Solid Ground, Just Serve AmeriCorps, and the Asian Pacific Islander Women and Family Safety Center whose guidance and friendship helped me to serve my communities in meaningful ways.”

A life-changing experience

Maria Marshall has had a life-changing experience through her national service year with the Washington Reading Corps. Here’s what she has to say: