Fitness and Nutrition Center
The Renaissance University for Community Education (TRUCE)
Harlem Children's Zone
Harlem, New York

Promoting Health in Harlem
The Renaissance University for Community Education (TRUCE) Fitness and Nutrition Center (TFNC), one of the many components of the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), annually targets 110 youth within an active population of 200 students ranging in age from 10 to 14. There are more than 40 parents registered in the program who are either participating in the Parent Action Committee or in intergenerational activities including martial arts, aerobics, and chess. The families are from the Central Harlem area, where the household median income is less than half that of New York City as a whole.

The TFNC program operates year-round as an afterschool program, including weekends and summers. It has two primary objectives: (1) to elevate the level of awareness of health, fitness, and nutrition among youth and (2) to subsequently prepare these youth for health advocacy. TFNC maintains that when youth are encouraged and empowered to make healthier decisions, they enrich not only themselves, but the community in which they live.

Steady Progress
It’s been shown that poor nutrition among American children is on the rise, particularly among black and Hispanic children, who make up a majority of the Harlem Children’s Zone. The TFNC program promotes regular physical activity, healthy eating, and the creation of a supportive environment that can reduce obesity and other unhealthy conditions that impact the overall quality of life. TFNC uses a tiered program structure so youth see themselves steadily progressing through levels that confer increasing social status and responsibility.

Youth Managers
Youth participants enter the program with a title that suggests leadership: Youth Managers. As Youth Managers, students between the ages of 10 and 14 are given the opportunity to participate in structured, team-based activities centered around health, nutrition, fitness, martial arts, and academics. Team activities support areas of critical thinking, research, presentation, self-defense, and conflict resolution. Programs for Youth Managers include:

• Martial arts
• “Motivation Monday”: Youth regularly present information on a health topic they have researched or investigated to their TFNC peers
• Annual TFNC Health Fair: Youth are engaged in preparing a variety of public-health-related activities
• Annual HCZ Summer Youth Olympics
• Community Mapping: Teams of TFNC youth conduct surveys of health-related issues in their community

Ambassadors of Health
Who better to articulate issues of health and fitness to young people than young people? As TFNC youth progress through the Youth Manager program activities, they emerge as Ambassadors of Health, focusing on peer leadership and community responsibility. Health Ambassadors are engaged in the Teen Advisory Board, the Gang Violence Town Hall Meeting and Task Force, talent shows, and the Annual HCZ Awards Banquet. Part of their responsibility is to manage the budget of these major events. The Health Ambassador’s program includes a community outreach component, made up of elite activities for youth who have earned the privilege of representing TFNC externally at community health fairs, in ongoing health surveys, and in community environmental advocacy.

One of the Health Ambassadors, Orlando Suazo, was a featured roundtable panelist at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ 2004 National Youth Summit in Cleveland, Ohio. He referred to his community mapping work while addressing the health issues of inner city youth, particularly the impact of diet and nutrition on obesity. Health Ambassadors also are engaged in a number of advocacy efforts, including petition drives and formal presentations before elected officials and community board meetings.

In 2005, there are three exciting projects for Youth Managers and Health Ambassadors:

1. In the Harlem S.O.U.L. Food Project, Youth Managers are working with New York City’s Community Food Resource Center (CFRC) to conduct a nutrition survey of their community. Survey results will be used in promoting improved nutritional access to fresh fruits and vegetables within Harlem. As a result of the consistently high-quality harvests of organically grown produce at the TRUCE Carrie McCracken Community Garden, CFRC will begin paying the program’s young people for their vegetables, thus enabling TFNC youth to raise funds to support their ongoing community education and development work.

2. The TRUCE Carrie McCracken Community Garden has gained national visibility and international recognition primarily through Garden Mosaics – a nationwide program supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Cornell University. The Garden Mosaics national program director has recognized the TRUCE Carrie McCracken Community Garden as a model for other potential Garden Mosaics program sites and has asked the TRUCE program to assist in national and global expansion efforts. The TRUCE Carrie McCracken Community Garden is a direct extension of the nutrition team’s activities, specifically their community mapping work, which underscored the community’s need for improved access to fresh fruits and vegetables (see www.gardenmosaics.cornell.edu/actionprojects/newyork/truce).

3. The TFNC Community Mapping Project is collaborating with the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research at the Academy for Educational Development (AED) in Washington, DC. As a result of their outstanding community environmental mapping work in Central Harlem, TFNC youth have been invited to serve on the AED National Youth Advisory Board on Community Youth Mapping.

Collaborative Decisionmaking
TFNC utilizes a participatory management structure that encourages input and consensus from all program constituents—administrative staff, direct services staff, and youth (through the Teen Advisory Board). Within each Youth Manager and Health Ambassador team, decisionmaking is a collaborative effort between team coordinators (staff) and the team members (youth participants), who are encouraged to assume as much responsibility for their choices as possible.

Harvesting More Than Vegetables
“We knew we were leaders when we celebrated our first Umoja Day of Harvest in 2003, where our young people harvested and donated one hundred pounds of collard greens to the Community Food Resource Center’s Community Kitchen of Harlem and when we later celebrated our first Thanksgiving Family Harvest Day, also in 2003,” a TNFC youth says.

The harvests were a watershed experience for TNFC—demonstrating that youth were able to do something positive to address the health-related issues in their community, particularly around nutrition access. The positive recognition that they received from various adults—community elders, political leaders, parents, and residents of the community—empowered TFNC youth to become even more civically engaged as environmental advocates on behalf of their community garden.

When TFNC youth have conducted workshops in the community or at conferences, the response has also been overwhelmingly positive:

• After TFNC youth conducted a youth gardening workshop at an international conference on community gardening convened by the American Community Gardening Association in Toronto, Canada, in the fall of 2004, an organization from California indicated that they were interested in visiting and interviewing TFNC staff and youth about ways to promote youth social responsibility.
• After Orlando Suazo spoke at the 2004 National Youth Summit in Cleveland, Ohio, the TFNC program was contacted by a Summit attendee interested in setting up a satellite garden program in Louisiana.
• Following a community health fair, local community youth wanted to know how they could become Health Ambassadors or start a Health Ambassador program in their own neighborhood.

Notably, the program’s success is also demonstrated by pre- and post-testing, which occurs annually (conducted by an independent research firm), as well as by an internal process of testing that occurs at the beginning and completion of each team phase or cycle. Additionally, all students receive a fitness assessment at the beginning and end of each phase or cycle (10 weeks) based upon the President’s Challenge (President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports).

Most important, success is shown in the personal growth and development of the youth participants. Youth are progressively challenged to apply what they are gaining and learning to their own lives. They also share what they’ve gained and learned with their families. One of the best measures of TFNC’s success is the number of families applying to enroll their youth in the program—it exceeds the number of available places.

Then comes the biggest challenge of all: asking youth to use their knowledge to develop sustainable solutions to health problems within their community!

What Works

• Working with youth at the developmentally crucial period in their personal growth: pre- adolescence and early adolescence.
• Developing a tiered program structure so youth see themselves steadily progressing through levels that confer increasing social status and responsibility. At TFNC, youth begin as Junior Youth Managers, progress through Youth Manager status, and ultimately become Ambassadors of Health.
• Engaging youth in hands-on learning. Structuring activities so that they are experiential, with an emphasis on interactivity.

Spread the Word
TRUCE, TFNC, and all Harlem Children’s Zone programs reach out through word of mouth within the community. Teens talk to one another and to their parents; parents carry the word forward to other families. Plus, TFNC maintains robust working relationships with local schools that are seeking support services for their students. HCZ has also received attention in the national media.

The Harlem Children’s Zone has developed a Practitioner’s Institute expressly designed to facilitate the replication of its programs.

Funding
The HCZ and TFNC receive funds from government agencies, private donations, foundations, and fund drives.

Contact
For more information on any of the Harlem Children’s Zone programs, contact TFNC Program Director Will Norris or Youth Coordinator Raymond Figueroa, or visit the Zone’s Web site at www.hcz.org.