Five years ago, a little-used community center on Bon View Ave in Ontario sat adjacent to four acres of empty, weed-ridden land. Without the funds to offer physical activities or other programming to serve local residents, the ‘community’ part of the center remained elusive. Today, though, that same Dorothy A. Quesada (DAQ) Community Center is a hub for dance, fitness and nutrition classes. And that once neglected lot next-door is now the site of Huerta del Valle, a lush community garden that has sparked an economic and social movement that’s making waves throughout the entire city.

So what happened in Ontario? In 2012, the city became part of Kaiser Permanente’s Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Zone Initiative, an ambitious funding effort designed to engage residents in collaboration with civic and community leaders to make their communities healthier and more active. Community Partners has served as the organizational intermediary to Kaiser Permanente, helping to guide the development of each of the 10 ‘zones’ across Southern California through ongoing leadership development, providing technical assistance and helping to build residents’ capacity to sustain the effort for the long term.

“It’s creating safety in our parks, it’s creating community connectedness, it’s creating health and wellness, mental health is improving, physical health is improving, it’s wonderful,” says Karen Thompson, associate planner for the City of Ontario. “Friendships are being formed because people are connecting.” The DAQ Community Center is one of nine community centers in Ontario that now provide free, one-hour Zumba classes three times a day, six days a week. Seven Ontario residents received Zumba training and certification through HEAL and are now employed as instructors. “We literally wanted people to be able to roll out of bed and be able to walk to a Zumba class or an exercise class.

Secondly, we wanted community members to get involved in HEAL and use Zum Up! to use leadership development as a foundation to teach the instructors how to be a health champion and influence their community,” said city partner Evette De Luca, executive director of Partners for Better Health. In addition to creating the seven exercise instructor positions for residents, the HEAL initiative also employs 10 promotoras, Latino residents who are trained in health education and who augment Zumba classes by providing nutrition information and workshops, which also serves as another way to keep residents engaged with new policies and developments within the city.

Community Partners staff members Judy Harper and Arpiné Shakhbandaryan work with the 10 HEAL Zone sites and partner organizations to connect them with resources and champion their ideas to create healthier and happier communities. “Judy’s energy is amazing and Arpiné is so wonderful. She used to work for a city in El Monte, so she understands the framework that I work in. Judy has her community advocacy hat, I have my city hat, Evette has her community organizing hat and Arpiné can wear both hats! We’re creating a movement, and you come out here and you can see it,” said Thompson.

Another integral piece of that movement is Ontario’s first community garden, Huerta del Valle. Ontario resident Maria Alonso, facing the realities of living in a ‘food desert,’ became a passionate advocate for community gardens and eventually caught the attention of City officials. “I had to drive ten miles to buy organic food and it was expensive!” she said recently. “I was sad that I could not feed my family good food.” The City of Ontario provided the land, fencing and water for the space that would become Huerta del Valle, and Alonso spearheaded its development.

The investment sparked new economic and food access opportunities not only within the Zone’s 1.3 square miles, but throughout the city. Today, the garden offers free nutrition and cooking classes, sells fresh produce at local farmers markets, and maintains several contracts with local restaurants which both supports those local businesses and expands healthy food access in a region where one in three residents is considered to be overweight or obese. Each week Ontario residents visit the garden and walk away with anything from blooms of crisp kale, plump heirloom tomatoes, freshly cut cactus (a staple in Latino homes) and, if they’re lucky, a pack of soft corn tortillas: ground, rolled and patted warm right after Maria’s cooking class. The organic produce is available to the community for $1 a pound, or for free in exchange for volunteer hours at the garden.

“The HEAL Zone has laid the foundation for all of the work that we’re doing,” adds Thompson. “I think it’s why Ontario has been successful and competitive in receiving additional grant funding and investments from outside funders.” But funders are not the only ones who’ve taken notice of Ontario’s successful strategies; Congresswoman Norma Torres visited the garden recently because she wants to adopt the same model in her hometown of nearby Pomona.

Ontario’s success is just one of many examples of how Kaiser Permanente’s HEAL Zones Initiative is empowering residents around Southern California to make healthy choices easier, more abundant and more accessible in their communities.

Growing up in Hawaii, Paula Daniels was taught the importance of malama aina – stewardship of the land – by her grandfather, and heard her father’s stories about being raised on a sugar-cane plantation.  After becoming an entertainment attorney, she eventually made her way back to environmental concerns, serving as president of Heal the Bay, as a member of the California Coastal Commission and on the California Bay-Delta Authority, the state water-resources board.

That community work led her to realize how food policies affect agriculture, and to see that in Los Angeles many don’t eat locally grown produce and low-income adults often don’t have access to and can’t afford nutritious food.

To address this issue, Daniels was instrumental in helping former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa create the Los Angeles Food Policy Council in 2010. Two years later, it became a project of Community Partners.

“More and more we’re recognizing that the whole system needs to work better to address the struggling and broken ends ─ both the lower income consumers and small and mid-size farmers,” says Daniels, who currently serves as LAFPC chair.

Already, LAFPC is seen as a model for the approximately 200 food policy councils nationwide, according to Daniels.

Its successes have been significant, including encouraging the Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest food provider in the city, to increase its local purchases of fruit and vegetables from nine percent to 70 percent of its $20-million annual produce budget.

That was achieved through LAFPC’s Good Food Purchasing Program, which asks large institutions to sign a pledge to buy food that supports local economies, is environmentally sustainable, values workers, protects animal welfare and is nutritious. A total of seven institutions have signed on.

Another cutting-edge LAFPC initiative seeks to change fast-food dominated convenience stores into healthy food community markets. Store owners receive technical, financial and community-outreach assistance to transform their businesses.

Through all of LAFPC’s efforts, “Community Partners has given us a lot of guidance in fund development, basic human-resources processes and relationship-building,” Daniels said.

Looking to the future, Daniels sees “food councils linking together nationally to have a significant influence on agricultural policy.”

Standing Together On New Ground

As the child of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother who converted to Judaism, Rabbi Sarah Bassin developed a deep interest in interfaith relations. During rabbinical school, that interest translated into an internship in Jewish-Muslim relations. “I felt that the conversation between those communities had never really started,” she said.

Meanwhile, Edina Lekovic grew up in a culturally Muslim home, had Jewish friends in high school, but was troubled by interactions between Muslims and Jews in college. “At UCLA, I felt tension with the Jewish community, and later watched as the Muslim-Jewish relationship was largely defined by overseas conflict rather than local shared interests,” said Lekovic, who is now director of policy and programming for the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles.

Today, Bassin, Lekovic, and a growing number of others in the Muslim and Jewish communities are enlightening each other and working together through NewGround, an organization that fosters healthy dialogue and social change between the two groups. Bassin serves as the organization’s executive director and Lekovic is chair of the board.

Founded in 2006, New Ground has developed innovative programs embraced by both communities. Its work has flourished and expanded under the fiscal sponsorship of Community Partners.

“Joining with Community Partners gave us a seal of approval,” said Bassin, who began leading New Ground in 2011, when the sponsorship began.  “And with Community Partners taking care of finances, legal matters, and insurance, I’m able to focus on fundraising and programs.”

NewGround’s core program is the Emerging Leaders Fellowship. Each year, a diverse group of 20 Muslim and Jewish young professionals learn conflict-resolution skills and how to apply them to discussions about Israeli-Palestinian relations, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and more.

“We create a space for people to build trusting relationships, treating conflict as a natural part of any relationship,” Bassin said. “Some of the methodologies are based on marriage counseling, where being in a committed relationship is not a matter of whether you fight, but how.”

New Ground engages high-school students through its MAJIC program (Muslims and Jews Inspiring Change) and was named by the Office of the Governor of California as “California’s 2013 Faith-based Organization of the Year.” Another recognition of the organization’s expanding role and impact was an invitation to last year’s White House Hanukah celebration.

“In the Muslim community, they used to call us naïve and idealistic,” said Lekovic. “We have a record number of Muslims signing up for NewGround programs now. Personally, having to face others and ourselves in all our nuances and contradictions is mind-opening and possibly heart-opening. The world is changing and we [Muslims] have to be a part of that.”

What comes to mind when we think of motherhood? Most probably think unconditional love, bonding, and unparalleled joy (with a dollop of sleep deprivation thrown in for good measure.) But that Hallmark version is elusive for some mothers who see that promise of joy slipping through their grasp no matter how hard they try not to let go.

Postpartum depression is a serious issue for one in six new mothers in Los Angeles, but too often goes undiagnosed. Working to bring the issue out of the shadows is a project called Maternal Mental Health Now, a network created about a decade ago.

Los Angeles attorney Kimberly Wong struggled for years with severe postpartum depression. Though she had a partner, was surrounded by friends and family, and had both resources and health insurance, her condition still went undiagnosed due to well-meaning but uninformed providers. Wong eventually did receive the help she needed. But her experience led to the realization that if diagnosis was that difficult for her, despite her resources and privilege, what was it like for those more vulnerable than she? She sought a way to take action.

Wong made cold calls to various departments within LA County to find out if anything was being done locally to address maternal mental health. Cynthia Harding MPH, who was the head of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health at the time, told Wong that postpartum depression was one of the department’s top concerns, but there didn’t seem to be an organization spearheading the effort. Harding offered Wong a meeting space if she could round up a group of stakeholders and volunteers to brainstorm a model for an organization.

The Los Angeles County Perinatal Mental Health Task Force grew out of that effort, bringing together researchers, providers, hospitals and clinics from both private and public sectors. Responding to the fact that a full 53% of women are not screened for depression at post-partum check-ups, the task force embarked on an education campaign called “Speak Up When You’re Down,” which included the distribution of pamphlets designed to encourage women to seek help if they are having symptoms of postpartum depression. Printed in both English and Spanish, they were made available throughout the county’s hospitals, clinics and child development centers.

In 2009, the task force joined Community Partners and brought on its current executive director, clinical psychologist Caron Post. “Our relationship with Community Partners has been fantastic. We get so much help in so many realms, from high-level strategic thinking to billing, budgeting and contract management. Everyone is helpful and does a lot of good for us,” said Post.

With a name change to Maternal Mental Health NOW, the project is now the leading collaborative in the country that provides training and technical assistance consultations for healthcare and community-based organizations on the screening and treatment of postpartum depression. Thousands of pediatricians, obstetricians, family doctors, midwives, doulas, early childhood education providers, promotoras and mental health providers have been trained by the organization either in person or online through their training institute. Thanks to their advocacy efforts, in 2010 the state of California declared the month of May as Perinatal Depression Awareness Month. Their work also spans into advocacy, public awareness and stigma reduction. It’s the public awareness component that remains closest to Post’s heart.

“It was very upsetting to recognize the disparities that exist in the world and in our city in terms of having access to (needed) help…To see all of those factors play out in women’s and young children’s lives is heartbreaking and motivating to try to do something about it.”

One of MMHN’s groundbreaking efforts is the creation of the Los Angeles County Maternal Mental Health Resource Directory. The first of its kind, the online directory provides lists of providers who have been trained to recognize and respond to women experiencing postpartum depression and anxiety. In addition, every year around Mother’s Day MMHN holds a family festival where mothers can receive some pampering, like manicures and massages, and kids can dive into face painting or arts and crafts, and other activities for the whole family. It’s a relaxed environment for also offering MMHN resources and facilitated workshops to help moms and dads recognize the signs indicating professional help is needed, and to know that they’re not alone.

“Seeing how treatable these conditions are, and seeing a woman who has recovered share her story to help another mom who is struggling, is most meaningful for me,” said Post. “The power of these women’s stories is what keeps me going.”

The month of May has been declared by the state of California as Perinatal Depression Awareness Month due to Maternal Mental Health NOW’s advocacy efforts. 

As an A-student at a large public high school in Bell, CA, Milla Anderson did picture college in her future. But coming from a low-income family, none of whom had ever been to college, that future and how to get there was fuzzy at best.

But an older student referred Milla to College Match, and her journey to college and all that entailed was brought into sharper focus. College Match, started in 2002 by Harley Frankel, a former director of the National Head Start program, helps high-achieving, low-income students at Los Angeles public high schools navigate their way to the country’s top colleges and universities – places like Harvard, Brown, Stanford, Dartmouth, UC Berkeley and other top-ranked schools, campuses where many of the program’s participants had never imagined they’d find a place.

“So many of the kids we serve, they’re the first in their families to attend college,” says Harley, whose enthusiasm for his students never seems to wane. “These are excellent students, the brightest! They just don’t have the kind of support and understanding of the process that their wealthier, more connected peers have. College Match helps to bridge that gap.”

The program, which currently operates at 24 high schools and this year includes 185 juniors and 175 seniors, supports students through the often bewildering two-year process of SAT and AP testing, applications, essay-writing and financial aid. And the formula clearly works. All College Match students are admitted to four-year institutions, and three-quarters of those are top 25-ranked. This year’s crop of students saw 33 acceptances to Middlebury College alone.

The program also includes visits to numerous campuses around the country, something students with limited financial means can rarely do on their own.

“That was one of the most valuable parts of the program,” said Milla, who visited about a dozen campuses through the program, and learned that she could aspire to an Ivy-league school and pay less than a UC. Between top choices Harvard and Dartmouth, she ultimately chose Dartmouth.

Though thrilled with her choice, the culture shock of a new life at an elite college made her miss the support she’d had through College Match. So she tapped into the growing network of College Match students at campuses around the country, recruiting 97 upperclassmen from 31 colleges in 14 states and matching them with freshmen. A new mentorship program was born, along with the start of a critical alumni network.

“People were really interested in giving back to the program,” she said. “We all come from the same kind of communities. We’re all really talented and smart low-income students figuring our way through campuses made up of mostly white, upper class students…being able to talk to someone who understands your struggle really goes a long way to helping minority students.” This summer, Milla will work at College Match to strengthen and expand the program for fall semester.

As College Match continues to grow and expand, Harley finds it still to the program’s benefit to continue operating under fiscal sponsorship. “I think Community Partners is one of the big reasons why we’ve done so well,” he says. “I don’t have to worry about all that complicated stuff.” It allows him to focus on other challenges that present themselves. This year, especially, required special attention to the needs and concerns of DACA students and their families, including discussions with immigration lawyers about the safety of out-of-state travel. In response, Harley is putting increased focus on exploring California schools. “We have to,” he says.

“These are wonderful human beings who’ve been living in the shadows their whole lives, and now that they have a chance for a great education, along come these…constraints. There’s a lot of fear.”

Once a year, on a summer’s evening, the Writers Guild of America Theater fills with dozens of teen girls. Armed with their well-worn journals, pens at the ready, and with supportive older mentors at their sides, their excited voices echo throughout the theater’s walls as they anxiously prepare for their first public readings. It’s the final showcase for WriteGirl, and as an alum of the high school writing program, it’s an evening I won’t soon forget.

I remember looking over my poem one last time with my mentor. I couldn’t wait to get on stage to wow my family, and this feeling alone was a huge milestone for me. A year earlier the thought of public speaking would have consumed me, and most of my fellow aspiring writers, with absolute dread. But after a year of monthly writing workshops that embrace each participant in a warm glow of encouragement, support and sisterhood, you can’t help but carry a sense of newfound confidence right out onto that stage.

This summer’s final showcase marked WriteGirl’s 15th year. It was celebrated as a quinceanera, and included an all-female Mariachi band and inspirational speeches from state and local electeds.  For founder and executive director Keren Taylor, each milestone in the life of her organization serves as “a rallying cry towards our next effort, we’re always thinking what we can do next.”

It’s that drive and commitment from Taylor that has helped power WriteGirl’s success. Its first event in 2001 had a turnout of 30 teen girls and 30 professional women writers. Today, the organization serves more than 500 girls annually and maintains a 100 percent college acceptance rate for their graduating seniors. About 150 accomplished women journalists, screenwriters, novelists, poets, academics, songwriters and playwrights volunteer each year to mentor the teen girls throughout their journey in the program.

A poet and artist, Taylor started WriteGirl as a way to foster self-esteem among young women. I can attest to the power of the program, as WriteGirl helps young women feel that anything is possible. For me, that meant graduating with an A average and being the first in my family to pursue a college education.

It’s no surprise that the program has attracted significant media attention and some impressive accolades, including the National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Award from First Lady Michelle Obama in 2013. In 2014, Keren Taylor was named a CNN Hero.

WriteGirl became a part of Community Partners in 2002 and Taylor says she continues to appreciate the ability to stay focused on programming while having advisors guide her through the finer points of managing a growing organization. “Whether we need help with human resources, insurance or event planning, I think we must reach out to Community Partners staff on a daily basis for some kind of support. As a leader, being able to  tap their expertise over the years has been very helpful.”

Last year WriteGirl joined forces with Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network, a fellow project of Community Partners, to form the Bold Ink Writers Program for incarcerated teen boys and girls. They are also expanding to serve teen boys. Ultimately, Taylor aims to expand WriteGirl’s reach and develop a training program to bring their materials to other groups.

For me, I think every teen girl could benefit from what WriteGirl offers, and I could not be more grateful to the volunteers and staff who helped me find my voice and pursue my dreams. “Never underestimate the power of a girl and her pen,” is the organization’s motto. What you learn is to never ever underestimate yourself.

Elisa Perez is a program & communications assistant for Community Partners

Changing the Face of Nonprofit Boards

Virgil Roberts, the Los Angeles attorney and noted civic leader, was a frequent panelist and speaker for the California Legislative Black Caucus Foundation from 2008 to 2010. At the same time he found he was consistently being asked to serve on boards — so many that both he and then-president of the foundation, Yvette Chappell-Ingram, grew concerned: if there weren’t enough peers to be tapped for board service now, they reasoned, what would happen in the future?

‘‘We both realized our generation of boomers had done a poor job of preparing the next generation for board leadership positions,” Chappell-Ingram recalled. “It led to a lot of conversations, a lot of brainstorming about what we might do about the issue.”

A few years later, Roberts and Chappell-Ingram officially launched the African American Board Leadership Institute (AABLI). The mission of the project is straight-forward: develop a pipeline of qualified African American candidates to serve on governing boards — nonprofit, for-profit or public commissions.

“We think more diverse boards will speak to the needs of the community better,” says Roberts. “Our country is facing a profound demographic shift to a growing non-Anglo population…new perspectives are needed to solve our most difficult problems.”

They started out under fiscal sponsorship with Community Partners so they could more comfortably test out their concept. “That was a no-brainer,” says Chappell-Ingram. “It was the ideal way to operate while we were figuring this thing out…and it continues to be.”

Since 2012, a total of 367 people have gone through AABLI’s two-day board leadership training. About 86 participants have been placed on a wide range of nonprofit boards, including the Marlborough School, Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, and Southern California Public Radio. Many others go on to secure board seats on their own. Programs focused on leadership training and career development also are offered during the year.

“This is a much needed organization and I thoroughly enjoyed my experience,” said Bonnie Boswell, a producer for PBS who is a new member of the Community Partners Board of Directors. “AABLI gives African Americans a better understanding of work that’s done behind the scenes to support profit and non-profit ventures and is helping our community have a seat at the table where important decisions are made.”

AABLI, the only project of its kind in the country, was embraced almost immediately, says Chappell-Ingram. “I knew we had something good going right from the start,” she recalled, “when we helped our first group of participants secure 15 placements.” Organizations appreciate having a reliable source for good candidates and participants offer high marks for a curriculum that helps empower them as leaders and offers a new angle on career development.

“This is a much needed organization and I thoroughly enjoyed my experience,” said Bonnie Boswell, a producer for PBS who is a new member of the Community Partners Board of Directors. “AABLI gives African Americans a better understanding of work that’s done behind the scenes to support profit and non-profit ventures and is helping our community have a seat at the table where important decisions are made.”

Opening doors to public boards and commissions is the current focus for AABLI as they develop new curriculum and recruit new trainers. “We’re learning a lot about this arena,” says Chappell-Ingram. This is a way for people to really have impact on the welfare of our cities.”