Young people from South Kern have been contributing to the "Building Healthy Communities" Planning Process, an initiative of The California Endowment, through a Video Voice Mapping Project. These youth have been videotaping themselves in places throughout their community, discussing the strengths of those places or how they feel such places need to be changed. They answer questions similar to Photo Voice about where the place is, what is really going on there, how it affects them and what they can do about it. The videos will be uploaded onto a Healthy Cities Map in English and in Spanish to help residents, policy makers and others gain a clearer insight into the community of South Kern and how youth want to contribute to making healthier policy and environmental changes in their community. Often a youth's point of view will provide a unique perspective on a place. For example, some youth chose to take video of open space below a long row of power lines. This location had suffered from a lot of illegal dumping but the local youth saw it as the perfect place for a long stretch of soccer fields. They wanted a place to play soccer when the school across the street was locked in the evening and on weekends, so they cleaned up the area on their own and even used discarded grocery carts as soccer goals. This hidden jewel revealed through local youth knowledge powerfully demonstrated their desire for a place where they could be physically active and drove them to make their own positive community change. For more information on the Video Voice Mapping Project contact Jennifer Lopez at 661-205-3743.
