Monthly Archives: June 2022

This story is part of an occasional series called Extra Credit which shares the stories of non-traditional educators in Birmingham.

In Fernando Colungas class, cooking is always the activity of choice. When the 26-year-old instructor announces its time to move to the kitchen, all the kids in his class cheer and scramble to get in line at the classroom door.

In the newly renovated kitchen at Jones Valley Teaching Farm, a nonprofit in Birmingham that teaches kids about food and farming, students chop kale and cabbage, saute broccoli and onions, and pour in a savory sauce for a vegetable stir-fry thats been handmade and homegrown by 10-year-olds.

Colunga said its during activities like this one, when the kids get their hands dirty, when they learn the most.

A lot of the change and a lot of the growth doesnt necessarily happen when Im in front of the class teaching about photosynthesis, Colunga said. It happens when Im next to them chopping, when were out on the field, harvesting, weeding.

Known as Farmer Fern to his students, Colunga started working at the teaching farm five years ago aftering volunteering for a couple of semesters in college. The time spent growing food and cooking in the kitchen turned into a full-time passion for teaching about the significance of food to young people.

A lot of them think of food as something just necessary, not necessarily something exciting or something new, he said. So when you get to open up the world of food, the world of growing food, the world of cooking your own food to students and seeing that spark in their eye is just incredible.

He said its his mission to introduce kids to all kinds of fruits and vegetablesand not just because he likes cooking, but because he feels his work is helping to address the root cause of systemic issues in access to healthy foods, especially in Birmingham

Kids of color are the ones who are impacted the most with food inequality, Colunga said. So teaching students about food and letting them sort of understand and see where their food comes from allows them to be empowered and take control of health decisions down the road.

He said having control over your body through the food you eat is the first step in combating systemic issues in food inequality. According to the United States Department of Agriculture about 70% of Birmingham residents live in an area where its difficult to get affordable and quality food. Community gardens like Jones Valley help address this issue, but Colunga said its not just about how the food is grown. Its also where it comes from.

Ive been trying to be really intentional about talking about the origin of all of our foods, the origin of our vegetableswhere this meal culturally comes from, Colunga said. So giving credit where credit is due. So students can see, Wow, like this comes from all over the place. Let me be more open to those cultures.

Colunga knows about working across cultures. He was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. as a small child. He said he frequently introduces students to food from his culture.

All the kids have had veggie tamales, veggie empanadas, veggie tostadas like anything that you can think about, he said. All the food that I know is food that my mother has cooked for me. A lot of it is turning scraps into something amazing and beautiful. So thats where my passion lies with the students is looking at household staples and seeing if we can transform this into a meal that they would love.

Colunga believes food is tied to everythingcommunity, family and culture. Thats why its his number one priority to help students make those connections even if they dont become professional chefs or farmers. But he said learning about food inspires curiosity and empowers students to think beyond whats on their plates and give back to their communities.

We want the students who are coming to our camp or being part of our culinary clubs at the schools to eventually take on our roles, to eventually be the instructors that teach back to their community, he said.

Kyra Miles is a Report for America corps member reporting on education for WBHM.

Do you know a non-traditional educator in your community worth featuring as part of the series Extra Credit? Email [emailprotected].

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Food is more than whats on the plate for this Birmingham urban farmer - WBHM

The LGBTQ community and its allies could have been forgiven for taking a victory lap seven years ago this month when the Supreme Courtruled by a 5-to-4 votethat the Constitution guarantees the right to same-sex marriage, making marriage equality the law of the land.

Far from it. That milestone may feel like it happened ages ago to many advocates, who are celebrating Pride this month amid piqued hostility from conspiracy theorists, governors and legislators and an army of trolls both online and in-person. The LGBTQ community is getting more support from brands, while holding corporations to their word.

Amid this contentious environment, advocates see more thoughtful and connected allyship from brands, which they say are moving beyond rainbow washing or just buying sponsorship of a Pride parade float to forming genuine partnerships with the LGBT community. Theres also a growing burden of responsibility for brands to be authentic if they support Pride, with LGBTQ advocates and organizations ready to call them out for support of politicians with contrary views.

Longtime LGBTQ rights activist and communications leader Cathy Renna is noticing the annual rainbow tsunami of social media posts as Pride 2022 kicks off with celebrations and advocacy across the country. What shes also seeing is more year-long support from brands and what she calls deliberative and substantive discussions with companies.

What I am seeing that is a big difference is more substantive support for organizations: [donation] numbers that have six figures in them and not five and more visible support and more conversations, says Renna, the principal of Targetcue, an LGBTQ-focused PR firm.

Michael Kaye, associate director of communications for North America, Europe and the Middle East at OKCupid, concurs that brands Pride efforts are trending toward more in-depth and less preformative.

Its become a little bit less superficial, a little bit more into moving away from rainbow washing, which is what weve seen from corporate America, and changing logos and calling it a day, he says. Were seeing brands start to partner with actual experts on the ground who are doing the work and fighting for the equality movement.

OKCupid has partnered with equality-focused organizations Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD, and Kaye has also noticed other companies and organizations working with those groups, as well as the Trevor Project, which is focused on suicide-preventiion services for members of the LGBTQ community.

On its own platform, OKCupid was a pioneer in allowing users to post their pronouns prominently and express their gender and orientation options in dozens of ways. More recently, the companyadded in-app compatibility questionsto help users determine if a possible match supports the LGBTQ community.

Allyship is a major opportunity for brands, notes Kevin Wong, VP of communications at the Trevor Project, who cites the organization's national survey of more than 40,000 LGBTQ youth. Its research found that more than half of respondents say brands that support the LGBTQ community positively affect how they feel about being LGBTQ. He also recommends that brands champion helpful behavior, such as being welcoming and kind to LGBTQ youths friends and partners; talking with them about their identity and supporting youths gender expression.

Macys is a longtime partner of the nonprofit, recently working together on the Styles of Pride initiative, which encourages LGBTQ youth to proudly express themselves through fashion and other methods.

Where are brands missing the mark in connecting with the LGBTQ community? For one, LGBTQ consumers know which companies have been supportive long-term and which have not, yet brands often mistake a quick-hit sponsorship or new partnership for allyship.

There have been so many marketers and comms people who have seen some missteps. The reason why is they want to be intentional; they want their brands to succeed and connect with communities and resonate, says Wong. I think they have heard our message. If you want to market one month out of the year, thats not allyship, and brands are coming around to that.

Brands could also support the LGBTQ community by not only sharing news of their external partnerships, but what they are doing internally for their own employees, notes Kaye.

Campaigns are great for visibility, and as someone who identifies as gay, it does mean a lot to see companies supporting the community, but I also want to know what brands and corporations are doing internally, Kaye says.

Renna also notes more local businesses getting involved in municipal Pride events. And while Pride-themed merchandise is easy to find, such as My First Pride onesies at retailers such as Target, Renna is also noticing more brands on shelves with deeper connections to the LGBTQ community. Case in point: the emergence of merchandise from brands such as gender- and size-inclusive activewear brand Tomboyx and The Phluid Project by designer and futurist Rob Smith at mainstream clothing retailers.

The greater availability of LGBTQ-friendly products reflects more accepting attitudes by the broader public toward marriage equality. In research published this week, the Gallup Poll found that 71% of people approve of marriage equality, up more than 10 points from when same-sex marriage was legalized nationally in 2015.

Yet that support is far from universal. While Floridas Dont Say Gay lawhas taken up the lions share of oxygen in terms of the restriction of LGBTQ- or gender-themed discussion in schools, more than a dozen stateshave proposed similar measuresthis year. More than 100 legislative actions nationwidehave also been proposedthat would limit the rights of transgender individuals. Trolling and abuse of LGBTQ social media users, their allies and often anyone who opposes anti-LGBTQ legislagtionhas also surged, as have in-person confrontations, with school board meetings occasionallybecoming especially argumentative.

In this environment, advocates are ensuring that brands are staying true to their support. Organizations that support the LGBTQ community are going well beyond just checking a companys score in the Human Rights Campaigns Corporate Equality Index, which ranks policies and practices pertinent to LGBTQ employees. Advocates are also combing through companies political donation records, ensuring they are not trying to stealthily support both sides.

Were sitting down and having conversations about donating to anti-LGBTQ politicians. Even if its for other reasons, its still not ok, and we will have conversations with these folks about the Dont Say Gay law or another state bill that would, for instance, deny children gender-affirming healthcare, says Renna. Its no exaggeration to say this is a full-scale emergency in terms of the level of attack.

Read more from the original source:

Brands forge deeper connections with LGBTQ community, while activists hold them to their word | Marketing - Campaign Asia

The Cheyenne River Youth Project is launching a new track in its nationally recognized teen internship program. A pilot project made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lakota Culture Internship will begin on Wednesday (June 15, 2022) under the direction of Youth Programs Assistant Danielle Reynolds.

The seven-week internship is the sixth to be offered at CRYPs hokta Wihni (Center of Life) teen center. Called Oklakihiye (Coming Together As Friends) in the Lakota language, it joins the youth projects established internship tracks in Art, Native Wellness, Native Food Sovereignty, Social Enterprise, and Indigenous Foods & Cooking.

We are accepting 18 young people ages 15-18 into this first cohort of Lakota Culture interns, said Julie Garreau, executive director. We worked closely with Lakota elders in our community to build the curriculum, which will give teens valuable opportunities to learn from our elders, culture bearers, and language preservers from across the Oceti Sakowin. Were all excited to get started.

The curriculum is designed to cover a broad range of topics, from Lakota Nation relatives throughout the natural world to traditional arts, cultural practices, and sacred sites. The first week will provide an introduction to the internship and share why connection to culture is vital for strong, healthy individuals and communities. It also will incorporate the Lakota language from Day 1.

In recent years, weve made a very intentional shift here at CRYP to incorporate the Lakota language in everything we do, Garreau said. Weve changed our logo to include our Lakota name, which is Wakp Wat Ta Oklakihiye. Were giving our programs Lakota names as well, and we work hard to ensure that relevant Lakota values and life ways are reflected in each initiative. This new internship continues that effort, but on a much larger scale.

In the second week, interns will learn about the concept of viewing materials and resources like water and land as relatives. In weeks three and four, they will focus on plant relatives, healing medicines, animal relatives, and cultural practices such as making a spirit plate.

Week five is devoted to specific arts and cultural skills, such as quill work, moccasin making, beadwork, ledger art, parfleche, drum making, ribbon skirts, star quilts, traditional foods, songs, and more. In week six, the interns will shift to ceremonies and their protocols.

Week seven is our opportunity to discuss sacred sites and even visit a few, including Pipestone National Monument, Garreau said. The interns will learn the sites history and their significance to us as Lakota people. This knowledge will allow them to deepen the connection they have with these places when they visit.

When CRYP began its teen internship program with the Native Food Sovereignty track in 2013, it graduated 10 interns. As of January 2022, that number reached 1,526.

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Cheyenne River Youth Project will launch new Lakota Culture Internship this week - Drgnews

In his speech last Thursday about the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas, President Joe Biden spoke about a young student whod averted the shooters attention by smearing her classmates blood on her face.

Imagine what it would be like for her to walk down the hallway of any school again, he said. Imagine what its like for children who experience this kind of trauma every day in school, on the streets, in communities all across America.

We dont have to imagine that: We have data on what its like.

Between 11 and 62 percent of children who witness a mass shooting have post-traumatic stress, according to a 2021 review of the literature. The range is broad because different studies use different assessments for symptoms and study their participants over different time periods, among other variables.) The negative impact of firearm violence on children is so strong that some experts have advocated formally classifying it as an Adverse Childhood Experience, a distinction that would denote its proven negative effects on lifelong health.

Although every death causes pain to a circle of loved ones, shooting deaths appear to have a particularly terrible impact on the mental health of the families and communities where they occur.

Most of the research on grief responses following violent deaths (not exclusively limited to gun violence) suggests losing a loved one to violence makes bereavement especially intrusive and difficult. And gun violence seems to have a uniquely detrimental effect on the mental health of young people: In one survey, children in urban and rural areas were at higher risk for post-traumatic symptoms if they saw or heard gun violence not necessarily in a school setting even if they were also exposed to other types of harm, like physical abuse, bullying, or being a witness to family violence.

The costs of gun violence go well beyond deaths, and its not just witnesses and children who bear these costs. Shootings have a ripple effect far beyond the person who was actually shot within a community, said Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and researcher at Brown Universitys medical and public schools who has studied firearm violence extensively.

Deaths from gun violence may be what shock us the most and they should. But as health consequences of gun injuries go, deaths are only the tip of the iceberg.

In the US, the complications go well beyond the immediate loss of life and limb that occurs when bullet meets flesh. Gun violence is a public health nightmare that inflicts lasting damage on physical and mental health. Its devastation casts long shadows over time, intertwining with other determinants of health like education and community deprivation. Firearm injuries and deaths have downstream repercussions on the health of people who werent directly exposed to gunshots at all.

Understanding the broader health implications of these injuries could compel us to more urgent action.

Part of the reason why violence is a public health problem is because of the significant and lasting health consequences for victims, said Thomas Simon, who directs research priorities at the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions division of violence prevention. The other reason its a public health problem is because its preventable.

Not all firearm violence is the same, and different types suicides, homicides both intentional and not, mass casualty incidents, and law-enforcement-related have different causes and different potential solutions. But regardless of its exact circumstance, each death due to firearm injuries has a durable and destructive impact.

When firearms injure or kill a person, hurt and loss radiate outward to affect concentric circles of people around them. Victims families and close friends sustain different harms than their communities and society at large but the pain spreads far and wide in both predictable and surprising ways.

The innermost circle are those killed or injured by firearms. Between 2015 and 2019, more than 76,000 Americans survived gunshot wounds annually. In addition to coping with the long-term functional limitations resulting from their injuries, these survivors are at increased risk of chronic pain, psychiatric disorders, and substance abuse and their families were also more likely to face challenges to their mental health.

In the next circle are the victims loved ones. When victims of gun violence die, grief and its aftereffects ripple outward, with sometimes startling effects on health and well-being.

Everyone who loses a loved one experiences grief, but theres evidence that losing a loved one to gun violence hits harder. Although most of this research comes from outside the US, its still instructive: In the general population, around 2 to 7 percent of the bereaved experience complicated grief a persistent and pervasive sense of loss accompanied by other emotional problems as a consequence of a loss. That number is much higher estimated between 12 and 78 percent among people mourning loved ones lost to violent deaths (those figures are not limited to gun-related deaths, but gun deaths certainly fall in the violent category).

In the US, more than 45,000 people died of gunshot wounds in 2020. Each firearm-related death has the potential to pull this dark veil over the lives of the people it leaves behind.

Grief can impact physical health too. In the weeks and months following the loss of a loved one, grieving people are more likely to suffer from deteriorating physical health or death, much of it due to cardiovascular causes. Grief literally wears on the heart, as one recent, wrenching example showed: Two days after a teacher was killed in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, her husband died of a heart attack.

If you develop very high levels of depression or post-traumatic grief, youre much more likely to develop Alzheimers in later life, for instance, and more likely to pass away at a younger age than would otherwise be expected, said Ashton Verdery, a Pennsylvania State University sociologist who has studied the health effects of bereavement.

When children lose a loved one to gun violence, the long-term effects on their lives are often particularly profound. A recent Washington Post analysis estimates that more than 15,000 American children lose a parent to gun violence each year. Each of those children is likely to have lower educational attainment as a consequence of their loss. Education is strongly linked to health outcomes like chronic conditions and disability, so these losses are likely to lead to poorer health.

Its not just that childrens grief disrupts their ability to focus on schoolwork. Deaths cause financial hardships. A child could lose their primary caretaker and provider, leaving them with an obligation to support their surviving family and choose work over education. Or it might not be a choice: The loss of a parents income may create insurmountable financial barriers to attending college, said Verdery.

Again, think of that number: At least 15,000 children lose a parent to guns every year. Thats 15,000 people whose lives their financial and physical well-being may be forever set on a different course.

But its not just the loss of a parent that can lead to worse outcomes for kids. Losing a sibling also lowers educational attainment for children especially girls and makes them less likely to reach adult milestones like establishing an independent residence, getting married, and having children of their own.

The ripple effects of gun violence stretch well beyond those who lost loved ones, often affecting entire communities.

People who live, work, or attend school in communities with high rates of gun violence face health challenges of their own, even if they havent lost loved ones to firearms. Being exposed to gun violence leads to a variety of mental health issues, including problems with social function, anxiety, and depression. In part because chronic stress exposure impairs immunity and cardiovascular health, the ripple effects of gun violence also threaten physical health.

In Philadelphia, researchers conducted a study looking at reasons local children were coming to emergency rooms, and how close those children lived to sites of neighborhood shootings. They found that the closer children lived to places where people had been shot, the more likely they were to have a mental health concern.

Firearm injuries in schools can also lead to bad outcomes for the school-aged children exposed to it, even if they are not hit by a bullet. A recent analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that exposure to school shootings led to increased absenteeism and reduced graduation rates and college attendance among students in Texas. Given the importance of education as a predictor of health, these outcomes likely contribute to a lower quality of life for young people over the course of their lifetimes.

Some of those effects hold even for students not directly exposed to school shootings, said Simon, the CDC researcher.

Before a pair of students killed 12 students, a teacher, and themselves at Columbine High School in 1999, about 4 percent of high school students nationwide said they had missed one day of school in the past month because they felt too unsafe to go, said Simon. After Columbine and this is nationwide 10.2 percent, he said, and weve seen that percentage stay pretty high since then. The latest pre-pandemic number was at 9 percent, he said.

In another study, adolescents in Los Angeles who expressed concern about school shootings 40 percent of those surveyed were more likely to later show signs of anxiety and panic or other mental health disorders.

Communities with high numbers of firearm injuries or deaths tend to have higher rates of anxiety and depression, said Ranney, the emergency physician and researcher.

And then theres this larger societal effect of a firearm injury, she said. There are also very real economic consequences for the larger society, whether its health care costs, lost work, or criminal justice costs.

In 2018, the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform tried to estimate the total cost per shooting to six American cities. In their calculations, the reports authors included expenses ranging from the cost of crime scene cleanup to the money spent on the law enforcement response; from the health care, legal, and incarceration fees to the revenue lost by taking both suspects and murder victims out of the general public. On the low end, a shooting leading to an injury in Mobile, Alabama cost the city an estimated $583,000. On the high end, Stockton, California was projected to lose as much as $2.5 million for each shooting homicide.

Thats money a city cant spend on programs that improve the lives and health of its citizens. The City of Philadelphias controllers office found that a single homicide reduced sale prices by 2.3 percent for homes within three-quarters of a mile (the vast majority of the citys murders involve a firearm). The report estimated that lowering homicides by 10 percent for one year would increase the citys property tax revenue by $13 million several times the annual budget of many community health centers or food programs.

The burden of all of these health effects is not borne equally by all Americans. Black Americans die from firearm injuries at rates higher than any other group, and nearly three times as high as white Americans. That means the grief, loss, and disadvantage following gun-related deaths fall disproportionately on Black families; the mental health symptoms that persist in communities after shootings affect Black communities more; the neighborhood divestment thats both a cause and an effect of gun violence drains human and financial capital largely from Black neighborhoods.

That means theres enormous potential for gun violence reductions to have far-reaching positive effects beyond even saving lives for the American communities that have long faced its worst inequities. Restorative violence-prevention programs rooted in Black communities strengths and paired with reinvestment in depleted communities hold promise for meaningfully reducing community shootings and improving educational and employment opportunities for residents. Over time, reducing gun violence in depleted neighborhoods could lead to reinvestment and renewal.

Programs to reduce school shootings by assessing students behavioral threats and intervening early are rare, but effective. Used more widely, they could broadly improve youth connectedness and mental health just by asking students to notice when their classmates are suffering.

Again, the public health crisis of gun violence stretches so much farther than school shootings, or mass shootings.

Here in the US, we dont really have one gun violence problem, we have at least four, tweeted Thomas Abt, an expert and author on violent crime, which includes suicides, mass shootings, and domestic and community gun violence. Each requires different solutions, he wrote, but they all have one thing in common: They all depend on the easy accessibility of firearms.

That one area of convergence means that broadly reducing gun availability could have a big impact on both gun deaths and the long shadows they cast. While the impact of every gun-related death may reach far and wide, so can the impact of prevention.

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The health effects of gun violence go beyond deaths - Vox.com