ReGenerations: Healthy Communities

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June 24, 2011, Brooklyn, NY -- The Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing (FCYO) is excited to announce ReGenerations: Healthy Communities, a new funding initiative that will support youth organizing groups to address the root causes of childhood obesity with a specific focus on improving access to healthy, affordable, and culturally relevant food in schools and communities. Through a cohort based grantmaking strategy that includes funding, networking, and documentation, this initiative will also support youth organizing groups to build the relationships and capacity that will help create a movement for a just and sustainable food system. 

This initiative is supported by a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), which has set the goal of reversing the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015.  RWJF awarded the grant through Jewish Funds for Justice, a national public foundation, of which FCYO is a managed project.

ReGenerations: Healthy Communities Goals:
·    To significantly reduce childhood obesity by supporting youth organizing in the most affected communities to address the structural and root causes of this epidemic.
·    To connect local youth organizing groups working on food justice issues in order to lay the groundwork for a national network that connects local and national organizing efforts and intersects with other social justice networks.

Childhood obesity is reaching epidemic proportions and is having a particularly devastating impact on communities of color and low-income communities where many families do not have access to healthy options, like stores that sell affordable healthy foods and safe places to be physically active.  Therefore, community organizing that addresses the root causes of childhood obesity and moves towards a just food system is a crucial part in the effort to create an equitable and healthy society. Youth organizing, in particular, has shown itself to be highly effective at achieving policy victories, connecting local and national issues, and creating a sustainable base of social justice leaders. As groups that are disproportionally affected by childhood obesity, low-income young people and young people of color are well positioned to be leaders in this work. For these reasons, ReGenerations: Healthy Communities will support a cohort of youth organizing groups to develop campaigns that address the root causes of childhood obesity and food injustice. This initiative will also assist groups in creating the relationships and analysis that will serve as the foundation for a national network that connects the issues of childhood obesity and food justice to broader issues of social justice.

Through a rigorous, competitive grantmaking process, FCYO selected twelve organizations to be part of the ReGenerations: Healthy Communities cohort.  In addition, a grant was awarded to the Movement Strategy Center to provide technical assistance to the cohort.  The grantees all demonstrated a commitment to youth-led social change and the capacity to organize low-income youth and youth of color to achieve policy changes.  While many of the grantees are organizing to ensure that schools offer healthy food, other issues include land use changes that allow growing and selling of healthy food in low-income communities, encouraging incentives for stores in low-income communities to sell healthy foods, and restoration of traditional Native American foodways. 

The following organizations were selected to participate in the 2011 ReGenerations: Healthy Communities cohort:

Baltimore Algebra Project, Baltimore, MD
Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture, Flagstaff, AZ
Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools, New Orleans, LA
Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Chicago, IL
Nuestras Raices, Holyoke, MA
Rooted in Community, Berkeley, CA
RYSE, Richmond, CA
Sociedad Latina, Roxbury, MA
Southwest Workers Union, San Antonio, TX
SWARM, Raleigh, NC
UPROSE, Brooklyn, NY
Youth United for Change, Philadelphia, PA

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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, meaningful and timely change.  For more information, visit www.rwjf.org.