Empowering Youth and Creating Healthy Environments in Northern Manhattan: WE ACT's Youth Programs

Julie Sze
University of California, Davis

Swati Prakash
Alice McIntosh
West Harlem Environmental Action

Citation: Sze, Julie, Swati Prakash and Alice McIntosh (2005). "Empowering Youth and Creating Healthy Environments in Northern Manhattan: WE ACT's Youth Programs." Children, Youth and Environments 15 (1): 265-277. Retrieved [date] from http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/

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Abstract

Racial minority children, youth and families in the United States suffer disproportionately from urban environmental health problems. This field report focuses on how one community-based environmental justice organization in New York City, West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT), has focused on youth organizing around environmental health issues to improve the lives of the individual participants in their youth programs, while supporting larger organizational and community goals for an improved urban environment. WE ACT's youth programs have come in two forms: the Earth Crew Youth Leadership Program and DIFFERENTT (Diverse Individuals Fighting for Environmental and Reproductive Rights Now 'Til Tomorrow) which focuses on relationships between reproductive, environmental, and community health. This report outlines the social, political, and geographic contexts for WE ACT’s youth programs. It also highlights their underlying experiential learning philosophy, as well as their connections to WE ACT’s community-based environmental health research and political agenda for improving the environment in Northern Manhattan.

Keywords: urban environmental health, community activism, the environmental justice movement, New York City, West Harlem, asthma, community-based research