Youth Outreach Program

Annually, the Initiative’s Youth Outreach Program provides health leadership training to over 100 high school students in the 15 program sites. Under the guidance of adult mentors, student leaders called Youth Outreach Workers (YOWs) develop peer health education workshops and school-wide health promotion events aimed at increasing students’ knowledge of healthy behaviors. As ambassadors of the Wellness Programs, YOWs help ensure that all segments of the school population are aware of the services available through the Wellness Programs.

Examples of YOW events:

• Lincoln High School’s “Health Idol” engages students in a wellness competition in challenges of physical fitness, mental acuity, and social savvy. The program spans 10 rounds of challenges distributed across the second semester that each end with the elimination of contestants. Challenges include tests of strength, balance, memory, rock climbing, a mile run, interviews, sit-ups, push-ups, sudoku, a health quiz and many more. YOWs utilize the publicity around each challenge event to provide related health education to their peers.
• “Healthtopia” is an annual spring school-wide health awareness event at Raoul Wallenberg High School hosted by the Wellness Center, Youth Outreach Workers and the Health Promotions Committee. The event, focused on promoting physical activity and healthy eating, features fruit and vegetable tastings, cooking demos, music and dancing, an obstacle course and a 30 foot climbing wall. Students and Wellness staff spend months preparing for the event, which is attended by 350-400 students and teachers.
• Teens Tackle Tobacco Regional Conference: Each year, the Wellness YOWs participate in this conference that was established to engage students as leaders in educating their peers about the dangers of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs. Many YOWs develop and share workshops to help others learn about not only substance use, but also issues such as nutrition, safe relationships and safer sex. Some workshops offer skill-building in engaging presentations, public speaking, event planning, leadership and ice-breaker games. The conference focuses on both content and skills to help students become the most effective peer-health-educators that they can be.
• The ROOTS conference was designed to compliment and honor Downtown High School’s Violence Prevention/Intervention Initiative. In its 5th year, ROOTS is a day of interactive workshops where the school is transformed into a mini conference in which all students participate and learn about issues of social justice, culture, identity and alternatives to violence. Downtown’s YOWs do much of the planning and presenting and YOWs from other schools are invited to attend. The day includes lunch, workshops by a wide variety of Community Based Organizations and cultural activities and a film festival. In 2010-11 the theme was “Where we’re from, where we’re going” focusing on violence prevention concepts and healing through identity, culture and community.
• To address the high incidence of negative body image in today’s world, Lowell High School YOWs worked to educate and promote a healthy body image to their peers in a campaign called “Love Yourself.” The YOWs researched the topic, collaborated with local community organizations, and created a campus-wide event that focused on media literacy and self acceptance. Participating students were encouraged to challenge the media’s conception of beauty, take a break from looking in the mirror, and celebrate their many beautiful qualities. The event was such a success, several YOWs developed an hour long classroom presentation about the topic, which they delivered to over 200 students.

“It’s a life changing experience. I never had to play the leadership role and it was pretty cool for me to do.” –YOW, Ida B. Wells High School

Being a YOW means “gaining more information and helping others to be more aware and getting to know a bunch of people that you didn’t know before. I mean, this is my first year being a YOW and I have met the other Youth Outreach Workers and really bonded with them and I think it’s just making good connections and friendships.” –YOW, Galileo Academy of Science & Technology