Welcome to Youth Building Healthy Communities!

YBHC is a year-long program that gives young people the chance to flex their community organizing muscles to address critical health issues. At YBHC, we understand how health disparities affect communities, and we're taking action to make sure that everyone can lead a healthy and happy life.

YBHC will partner with community-based organizations (CBOs) to support young leaders in our three target cities of Detroit, Albuquerque and Oakland. Through YBHC, youth leaders will build campaigns using digital media and on-the-ground activism to fight health disparities in their neighborhoods. Together, we will push for better living environments, find solutions to addiction and gang violence, and advocate for safer sex, a commitment to fitness, more green spaces, good nutrition, and healthy lifestyles.

Throughout the four phases of the project, YBHC will provide resources, employment, mentoring, and training opportunities to empower young people to become key project organizers in their communities. YBHC participants will conduct research, analyze the root causes of local health disparities, and build both online and offline campaigns around key health issues of their choosing. To build effective campaigns for youth-selected issues, city teams will develop tools, take actions, create media, and suggest policies. From YouTube vids to blog posts and from Facebook status updates to political action, YBHC youth will use everything they've got to spread the word about important health issues.

YBHC believes that strong community movements and broad social benefits can be achieved when we combine powerful organizing tools with compelling multimedia storytelling. Throughout their health campaigns, YBHC leaders will have the unique opportunity to learn how to create effective media and publish their works in both online and broadcast media through Link TV and YouthNoise. The program will host online "Monthly Media Challenges" which will be open to all young people. YBHC will also engage and encourage diverse youth to use creative applications to spread the word about their causes through relevant art, culture, and other forms of expression. This will increase the visibility of critical youth-selected issues to peers, local communities, and mass audiences.

 

Supported by a Kresge Foundation grant, Youth Building Healthy Communities will use best practices in traditional community organizing, social issue media, and online tools to facilitate youth-led social change. YBHC will use an innovative and replicable model where youth in low-income communities are empowered to be catalysts for social change around critical health issues, which in turn will inspire young people from all over the country to join our movement. YBHC knows that young people across the nation care about health, and that these youth are ready to take action.

Join YHBC and help us build healthy communities together.

 

So How does Youth Building Healthy Communities Define "Health"?

According to the World Health Organization, health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not just the absence of disease.

We agree. Health goes beyond hospital visits and prescriptions. Rather, the idea of 'health' includes factors such as education, environment, income, housing and personal choices that impact the health of both individuals and communities. According to our partners at Policy Link, 'where you live affects how you live.' If your community suffers, you may have a higher risk of health problems that impact individuals. At YBHC, we want to change this. We want to see better opportunities for every community to grow up and stay healthy. We believe that a new generation of engaged young leaders can make a difference and that together we can build healthy communities.