Youth Development
Overall Summary of Youth Development in the First Cohort Final Report:
- Three sites had student involvement in pantry operations and material development (recipe cards)
– One site tasked their Youth Advisory Committee with providing feedback on recipes - Another site had their youth intern give feedback for another site
- More youth involvement needed and wanted across all sites
Food Access Poem
De’Mon Burse Wilborn, a Youth Advisory Council (YAC) member at Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s West High School SBHC (Columbus City Schools), wrote a poem highlighting the importance of combatting food insecurity. De’Mon’s poem was in response to work Nationwide Children’s Hospital is conducting to address food insecurity through SBHCs, as 1 of 7 SBHC grantees in the Ohio School-Based Health Alliance’s Statewide Food Access Innovation & Learning Network.
Specific Quotes Involving Youth:
“Student Council and our High Roads School has given students an opportunity to volunteer by making up boxes of food for distribution, organizing, and cleaning the pantry area.”
“Improved capacity and access to professional development opportunities for school district youth who were engaged in food insecurity activities, including the Giving Garden (school district program).”
“Students participating in internships related to this program were engaged in conversation frequently to collect feedback and improve the program.”
“Families and youth were able to provide feedback by utilizing our surveys about their needs.”
“Students have great ideas and love to be involved, so do not be afraid to involve them in planning your programs.”
“In order to increase student involvement in the pantry, there are different groups of students who help in the pantry. The Agriscience students were instrumental in unpacking and putting together our metal shelving and stainless-steel tables for the space. The Family and Consumer Science students collaboratively make recipe cards to hand out to the community after looking over the food in the pantry and generating meal ideas. The middle school students help every month unpacking and stacking the food delivered. This has made a huge impact on how the students view and use the pantry. These same students have invited and drove older family members to the pantry after seeing the items available for pickup.”
“The Youth Activity Committee (YAC) is a group of students 9-12 grade who help the School Based Clinic (CAMP) gain insight into a student's perspective. In an attempt to pick simple recipes for the stored pantry 25 students came and tested 5 recipes. Each student gave feedback on taste and simplicity of the recipe and if they themselves would make this for a dinner or snack. That created our 5 recipes for the stored pantry.”
“Spring rollout of 3 youth advisory councils (YACs) at 3 high schools in our catchment area. Students were enthusiastic in response to our prompts and generated numerous ideas for future work.”
“Many students were surprised to hear about the breadth of SDOH screening and resource connection our team engages in, and they began quickly sharing their own families’ needs with staff.”
Interest in YD Initiatives:
“The SBHC team received valuable feedback from the Orr Academy civics teacher, who identified several opportunities to obtain student input. Due to SBHC staffing capacity and timeframe restrictions, the SBHC team needed help coordinating with the civics class to complete this in CY2022. The team can revisit this opportunity for future programming.”
“Youth and parent voice were missing from our process during this grant period. This realization, including other Learning Collaborative members sharing the power of youth and family voice in their work, has 7 Health Strategies Reporting influenced us to seek funding to establish youth advisory councils for future School Health Program health and food access services.”
