- Author: Ricardo Vela
Both women face many cultural and economic challenges to achieve their missions, and thanks to their tenacity, dedication and hard work, they have turned their goals into a reality.
Claudia P. Diaz Carrasco, a native of Atizapán de Zaragoza, State of México, has been part of UC ANR since 2015 as Youth Development advisor focusing on Latino and/or low‐income youth and families.
“When I joined ANR, there were really few people in the state and around the country doing work intentionally with Latino youth development and 4-H,” said Diaz-Carrasco.
Since joining 4-H, Diaz-Carrasco has been instrumental to increasing Latino participation in 4-H programs. She works in the Inland Empire, which includes Riverside and San Bernardino counties — two of the largest counties in California, with almost 5 million residents; 65% are Latino.[i]
“About 60% of school-aged youth in Riverside and San Bernardino are Hispanic/Latino,” said Diaz-Carrasco. “Since the beginning, the primary focus of my position has been to develop, implement, evaluate, strengthen and expand local 4-H programming to serve the current under-represented population better."
In an environment that is generally not friendly to changes and challenges, Diaz-Carrasco faces a daily array of obstacles to achieve her goal. Among them are high levels of poverty among the families she serves, high crime rates in some communities, and a lack of interest from the parents, who in most cases work two or three jobs to make ends meet.
“The success of my work as the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) advisor relies on how effective my extension team and I can be in sharing knowledge gained through research, education and program evaluation, and transferring it to the communities we serve in ways that are relevant for their day to day lives while embracing their cultural context,” said Diaz-Carrasco.
The knowledge that Diaz-Carrasco and her team bring directly to the youth, their families and communities in the Inland Empire creates positive changes and healthier lives.
“The way we educate the public matters, who are our educators matters. Science and culture are at the core of every program we have implemented since I started,” Diaz-Carrasco said.
Diaz-Carrasco gives three reasons why her work is penetrating the thick layers of the communities she serves. The first one is that she is an immigrant, like many of the families she works with day in and day out. “I approach my work, knowing that a lot of people are going or have gone through the same process I went through in 2014.”
She also cites thinking out of the box as another reason for her success. “I believe creativity and flexibility are at the core of any programs I develop.”
To exemplify this statement, Diaz-Carrasco and her team partnered with the Mexican Consulate in San Bernardino, where they held a successful summer camp and strengthened the partnership with the Consulate. Youth were able to participate in this unique program that aims to help them embrace their Mexican identity, even when in some cases they or their parents cannot travel outside the US.
The summer camp program was designed to increase positive ethnic identity, and to provide youth development reflecting the Latino and immigrant experience and the physiological and social effects of discrimination. The program also responded to economic poverty by assisting families with transportation, providing snacks and in some cases other items such as toothbrushes, water bottles or connecting families to health and food agencies. “Above all, we held the camp in a place that the families were already familiar with and felt safe, the consulate!” said Diaz-Carrasco. “We turned their art gallery, where official agreements are signed, into a playground. That's what I mean by out of the box.”
The interest in the program was visible from day one. In a matter of hours, 100% of the participants were reached. In the end, the parents expressed their gratitude for offering the programs in an accessible way.
Thinking out of the box has also allowed Diaz-Carrasco to partner with major companies in Southern California for the benefit of the youth.
In five years, Diaz-Carrasco has been able to increase 4-H membership in her area from 667 to 6,021. The overall percentage of Latino youth in 4-H went from 28% to 85%, and the number of volunteers grew from 175 to 354.
In the words of Sofia, a Moreno Valley student and one of the participants in the 4-H Juntos conference, “Juntos 4-H provides a home and a place where you can safely feel like it is your community. I hope expanding the program gives more students an identity as to what the community is like and that there are people who care for them and have someone to relate to and trust.”
In the heart of California's Central Valley, far from the busy streets of the Inland Empire, almost 100,000 ethnic Hmong call communities like Merced and Fresno home. This community has grown from 1,800 in April of 1982 to nearly 95,000 in 2019.[ii]
UC ANR has supported the Hmong communities in diverse areas, from farming to nutrition. For the past 34 years, Sua Vang, Community Health Education Specialist with the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), has been educating these communities on the value of healthy eating.
“In 1986, I first moved in from San Diego, and I was looking for a job. My husband happened to be a community aid specialist for low family aid,“ said Vang. “So the EFNEP program asked to have two nutrition educators for this position, he happened to be there, I happened to be looking for a job, and I got hired.”
Tens of thousands of Fresno County families have benefited from her nutrition lessons during three decades of bringing healthy habits to Hmong families. Vang has faced a lot of cultural problems while doing it.
“When we go to recruit for our nutrition program, the husband has to approve it and sometimes the husband does not give his support,” said Vang. “It doesn't matter if the wife would like to take the class.”
Cultural eating habits are also a big challenge, obstacles she has overcome with patience, tenacity and creative thinking. “People from Southeast Asia don't eat or drink milk a lot,” she said. “I introduce the almond milk and rice milk so that even if they have lactose intolerance, they can still have milk and calcium in their diet.”
Vang speaks four languages: Hmong, Lao, Thai and English. She has used different platforms to bring the nutrition programs to the Hmong communities, from churches to private homes to classrooms to airwaves. Vang stresses how challenging recruiting new participants to the nutrition classes has become through the years. The older generation of Hmong don't want to go out of their homes and the new generation, said Vang, are more interested in making money than living a healthy life. But she has a pitch for them. “I say to them, if you have a lot of money and your health is not doing well, you have diabetes, and you are dying out, who is going to spend that money?”
Considering that participants in Vang's nutrition classes are immigrants from countries where food safety and nutrition are not part of their daily eating habits, the impact of her classes within the Hmong community is impressive. 73% of participants have improved in one or more food safety practices. Eighty-nine percent have improved in other areas, like reading nutrition labels and ensuring children eat a healthy breakfast.
“Thanks to this career, I would say that I have helped a lot of people, and I am glad. I know my family, my children are doing good, they eat healthily and they are doing good," Vang said. “I make a lot of new friends. I am delighted knowing that I help them.”
- Author: Glenda Humiston
UC ANR and the entire UC community are dedicated to helping create the open and equitable society to which we are all entitled. As we stand with the global outcry against the senseless, tragic murders of Black Americans, we are exploring new paths we can take to support our communities during this time and into the future.
To help us discover those new paths, resources have been created and compiled by colleagues throughout UC to promote dialogue, understanding, connection and healing. You can find UC ANR resources on our Diversity • Equity • Inclusion webpage. There, you can also find resources for confronting gender and sexuality bias, and we are working to add resources that address the breadth of diversity, equity and inclusion challenges in our organization. We welcome suggestions for additional resources to include. Please email suggestions to DEI@ucanr.edu.
Today is Juneteenth, widely celebrated in African American communities as “Freedom Day” or “Emancipation Day,” to mark the date of June 19, 1865, when the federal orders were read by Union Colonel Gordon Granger in Galveston, Texas, informing more than 250,000 still-enslaved Blacks that they had their freedom. The notice came to slaves in the state of Texas more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which became official on Jan. 1, 1863.
On this important day, we are reflecting on our country, its treatment of Black, brown and Native American peoples, and how UC values can help guide us into the future. We must continue to reflect on how our institutions and our culture treat people of color as well as religious minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and all those who don't fit into dominant cultural norms. Our mission can never fully come to fruition if historically victimized groups continue to suffer hatred and bias. All of us at UC ANR are deeply committed to our mission and will work to build a healthy, peaceful and prosperous California for all.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Field trips are out, but the learning continues at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center. Students who are involved with UC Cooperative Extension's 4-H Youth Development program will compete virtually in a unique pumpkin-growing contest centered at the 330-acre research station in Parlier.
The program replaces traditional in-person educational events offered to schools, which were suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Instead, teams will be organized and assigned to small plots of pumpkins. The remote teams will act as farm managers and use an imaginary budget to decide on the use of micronutrients, fertilizers, pollinators, pest control, fungicides and irrigation practices. All the farming will be conducted by Kearney staff and progress shared frequently via the pumpkin project's Instagram account, @UCCE_KARE_pumpkins.
As part of the project,
- Prizes will be offered for the teams with the highest yield and quality of pumpkins.
- Students interested in engineering will compete with homemade catapults in a “pumpkin chunkin'” contest
- 4-H members who love cooking and baking may enter items in a cooking and baking with pumpkin contest.
- Artistic participants can submit entries for pumpkin carving and decorating contests.
- Animal enthusiasts will feed pumpkins to elephants at the Chaffee Zoo.
“They will be doing all things pumpkin,” said Ryan Puckett, Kearney outreach coordinator, who is working closely with outreach mentor, Julie Pedraza, a staff research associate at the center.
The Kearney event will give the 4-H members activities in a time when 4-H program opportunities have diminished due to various restrictions and closures.
“COVID hit really hard,” said Predaza, who has served as a judge and consultant for traditional 4-H competitions in sewing, baking, community service and public speaking. “The Fresno Fair might be cancelled. Projects are on hold. 4-H members are waiting to see if they will be able to do regular competitions. We decided to launch our first virtual program.”
The first Zoom contestant meeting will be the first week of August.
- Author: Katie (Cathryn) R Johnson
The 2020-2015 Dietary Guidelines will include something new. “For the first time ever, the committee considered the science to inform dietary guidelines for pregnant and lactating women and for infants and toddlers from birth to age 2,” said Christina Hecht, senior policy advisor for the UC Nutrition Policy Institute.
So, what else does the 2020 Scientific Report have to say? The full report is now publicly available to read online, and some of the highlights include:- The Committee recommends limiting added sugars to 6% or less of our daily calories, rather than 10%or less as is currently recommended.
- While this advisory committee was tasked with developing guidelines for pregnant and breastfeeding women for the first time, it found limited research on which to make specific recommendations. For pregnant women, the committee found, "Evidence suggests that consuming foods within healthy dietary patterns before and/or during pregnancy may modestly reduce the risk of gestational diabetes, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and preterm birth." More research in the area of diet and lactation/breastfeeding is needed.
- This advisory committee was also tasked with developing recommendations for infants and young children ages 0 to 24 months, and found some evidence that children who had ever been breastfed had lower rates of type 1 diabetes and asthma. The report highlighted the importance of feeding young children nutrient-dense foods in addition to breastmilk or infant formula. It further advises that children younger than 2 years old should not be given any sugar-sweetened beverages to drink and, in fact, should consume no added sugars.
- The committee found the longstanding advice that healthy diets "include higher intake of vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, low- or nonfat dairy, lean meat and poultry, seafood, nuts, and unsaturated vegetable oils" is still supported by the evidence.
- The committee found the advice to replace saturated fats with unsaturated fats (but not necessarily with carbohydrates) is still supported by the evidence.
The National Drinking Water Alliance (coordinated at NPI) also has a website urging the addition of clear and actionable advice on drinking water to the Dietary Guidelines at https://www.drinkingwateralliance.org/submit-a-comment. The webpage includes tips on how to write an effective comment and the link to the comment submission page. Comments are due by Aug. 13.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
This is the third story in our #NationalWellnessMonth series. See the second story, UCCE promotes nature as a way to improve wellness.
Youth up to 17 years of age who have been arrested or adjudicated for breaking the law are housed at juvenile detention facilities. In Sonora, while the young people are being detained, the staff at Mother Lode Regional Juvenile Detention Facility strive to create a safe environment for the residents to make positive changes in their lives.
To teach the youths about the food system, JoLynn Miller, UC Cooperative Extension's 4-H youth development advisor for Tuolumne County, and volunteers began visiting weekly in 2016 to help the residents develop a garden at the detention facility. With grants from a local community group, the youths have learned how to grow their own vegetables and prepare them to eat.
“The youth enjoy the educational aspect of the 4-H program and are excited whenever we harvest a new vegetable,” Edgar Ortega, juvenile corrections officer, wrote in a letter. “When the vegetables are ready, some of the youth along with the help and supervision of the staff make a new culinary experience for their peers.”
Bonnie Plants donated tomato, garlic, fava bean, onion and basil seedlings. Miller trained volunteers who work with youth at the facility in the same positive youth-development concepts that 4-H volunteers use in 4-H club activities.
“The youth planned and built the raised beds using power drills,” Miller said, acknowledging that it is rare for power tools to be allowed for use by residents in a detention facility. “They worked with the correctional officers to install drip irrigation in the garden.”
At the end of last season, Miller gave the residents a cooking lesson using green tomatoes and basil from the garden. “We made fried green tomatoes and pesto,” she said.
“We sincerely appreciate the efforts 4-H volunteers provide to enrich the lives of all youth in our community,” said Dan Hawks, chief probation officer in Sonora. “Not only do these projects provide real-world, hands-on instruction and skills to incarcerated youth, but it also provides them with an opportunity to reap the rewards of their own efforts. There is no lesson that can match the sense of accomplishment youth realize when they are able to harvest and consume crops they planted and tended themselves.”
In addition to teaching the residents gardening and cooking, Miller provided their teacher and staff with other 4-H curriculum, including mindfulness.
“The mindfulness program helps the youth develop coping skills and become more cognitively aware of themselves and their surroundings,” Ortega said in his letter. “The youth are open-minded about the different techniques and lessons of the program and, at times, I catch them practicing the different mindfulness technique on their own. I know the mindfulness program is great for our youth because in their own home environments they don't always have a role model to teach them proper coping skills.”
The garden wasn't an instant success. Using seeds Miller found in the UC Cooperative Extension office, their first lesson was persistence despite delayed satisfaction. “We tried for two summers to grow in the garden beds and not even zucchini would grow. The placement was bad,” she said. The plants needed more sun.
The 4-H advisor and the youths began seeking funding to buy supplies for the project. With some coaching from Miller, the youths applied for a grant from Farms of Tuolumne County, which advertised a total of $1,500 to be split between awardees.
“The youth came up with a budget to build the beds of their dreams, but it was $2,200,” Miller said. “They asked for it anyway, knowing they may only get enough money to build one bed.” Because residents are not allowed to leave the juvenile correctional facility, the Farms of Tuolumne County Board of Directors visited the facility to hear the teenagers present their vision for the garden project. Impressed, the board gave them the full $2,200 requested.
“The Farms of Tuolumne County Board of Directors admires the enthusiasm of the young people who are part of this garden project, the dedication of the staff, and the hard work and commitment of JoLynn Miller,” said Marian Zimmerly, FOTC chief financial officer. “The board believes this project can be a positive influence on the young people who find themselves in the facility. FOTC is honored to lend its support.”
Like many community groups, Farms of Tuolumne County is suffering financially during the coronavirus pandemic, yet approved another $750 for the garden and other 4-H agriculture projects at Mother Lode Regional Juvenile Detention Facility, saying, “The FOTC Board of Directors continues to view the garden project at the Juvenile Detention Center as very worthy of support.”
The residents have expressed their appreciation to the 4-H program. “Thx for everything you showed us,” one resident wrote to Miller and her 4-H volunteers. “I've learned a lot since I first got here. I learned how to farm, make compose [sic] and a whole other bunch of stuff. I was never really interested in gardening until I came here. I really wanna learn more about gardening.”
Despite the constraints caused by the pandemic, Miller plans to continue the 4-H partnership with Mother Lode Regional Juvenile Correctional Facility on the garden project and other agricultural educational activities.
As the pandemic began, Miller was given permission to use Zoom to deliver embryology lessons and science experiments using eggs. She is projected onto a big screen in a meeting room while the officer on duty walks around the room with an iPad, using its camera and microphone to connect her with the students at different tables doing experiments such as egg dissection and testing egg strength.
She was allowed to bring five-week-old chicks into the facility to let the youth see, touch and hold them as a capstone to the project. Miller plans to continue meeting with the youths via Zoom to discuss projects and drop off approved project supply kits for them to use.
“We'd like to finalize a project we started last fall where we brought in baby goats,” Miller said. “They've since been harvested, and we want to have our UC Cooperative Extension nutrition, family, consumer sciences advisor Katie Johnson provide a nutrition lesson with the residents making goat tacos.”
As time permits, officers take the youths outside to water plants and harvest crops in the garden.
“I feel the programs and workshops provided by 4-H services are a priceless resource to the youth of our facility,” wrote William Neilsen, senior juvenile corrections officer. “It allows us to diversify programming and provide hands-on and -off educational opportunities within our facility that teach the youth about agricultural resources otherwise unavailable to the youth here. These programs inherently teach the youth responsibility and life skills and the youth gain a wealth of knowledge from these services.
“Additionally, I strongly believe there is a therapeutic resource provided to staff and youth alike. As we progress forward, I am happy and excited in the continued partnership we have with the UCCE 4-H program of Tuolumne County.”
Ortega added, “4-H provides the youth an opportunity to develop life skills that will transition to their own home environments.”