Ontario YCCA

Vital Stats

Arthur L

Ontario, CA

people helped200
People Doing It 30

The Problem

The problem that the Ontario Youth Coalition for Community Action (Ontario YCCA) targets is environmental inequity in Ontario, California, specifically the long-term impact that toxic environments (i.e. liquor stores, compounded with disinvestment in positive businesses and community development and other noxious facilities) as well as lack of access to healthy, affordable food have on the educational performance of low-income youth of color. According to the American Lung Association’s seventh annual ‘State of the Air Report’, San Bernardino County has the most polluted air in the country and The Inland Empire has the highest concentration of warehouse space on the planet (366,000,000 sq/ft). Ontario was once a healthy, bustling town in the Inland Empire made of mostly white residents. Now with a population of 60% Latino residents it is a prime example of suburban blight. What we see when we look around our community is local the collapse of local businesses and unaffordable housing. We know that our city’s air pollution the fourth worst in the world, and that our unemployment rates are the second worst in the country. We know there more liquor stores than any other town in the Inland Empire and yet, local food access disgraceful. With all of these factors we see an increasingly negative impact on the ability for youth--especially low income youth of color to see themselves as agents for change in our community. Ontario is rampant with systemic road blocks to youth engagement. From research meetings with Mayor Protem Deborah Dorst Porada, council member Allan Wapner, and Ontario High School youth we discovered: in some schools, nearly all of the recreational programs have been cut, transportation is unaffordable, school lunch is inedible, police are often sighted harassing and racially profile young people on our streets, and as such, vast gaps exist between racial groups. Worst of all, nearly 70% of Latino students are not graduating high school, resulting in very few of these same students attempting to move on to college. All of these systemic factors are a hindrance to community development and thus, are barriers to opportunities and contribute to a general lack of youth engagement in the Ontario community. Ontario YCCA aims to address the desperate need for environmental justice. Through up-stream problem solving we have concluded that there are few meaningful avenues that can be utilized to grant access to, and prepare youth, for engaging in the civic sphere in order to create the solutions that are necessary to transform Ontario into a safe, democratic, environmentally-just community.

Plan of Action

My plan is to start a youth led farm and training center on seven acres of land alongside an abandoned school facility that was granted to Ontario YCCA by our partner organization, the locally renown, Fresh Start Ministries located in the heart of Ontario. This farm and blossoming community center will address the barriers of educational, economic, racial and environmental inequality that face Ontario youth with a four-pronged plan. Ontario YCCA four-pronged plan is as follows: 1) Compost and grow food in order to a) create meaningful jobs for low-income youth in the Ontario-area who otherwise would not be provided with employment opportunities; b) provide healthy food for Ontario families and schools. Our model is derived from the visionary model of Will Allen's Growing Power. Growing Power feeds 10,000 people in Milwaukee, WI off of three city blocks. c) build a healthy learning environment for Ontario youth that can act as a model for the rest of the Inland Empire (we call this section of our project: Food not lawns or warehouses); d) provide enough funding and resources to support educational programs and travel expenses for the Ontario youth in order to engage in networking with Our School at Blair Grocery and Growing Power to gain experience and knowledge of urban farming skill-sets (bee-keeping, micro-farming, aqua-culture) to bring back to their home communities. 2) Build, strengthen, and develop more youth and community leadership within the already existing mutually beneficial Pitzer in Ontario college-to-community program to a)grow a model for college supported community change initiatives b)build sustainable support from institutions for community initiatives 3) Transform the seven acres of rich farmland and abandoned school facility into an educational indoor and outdoor training center with the goal of a) growing an equitable and healthy food system and green job economy b) develop Ontario's employment opportunities centered around youth. c) hold workshops, classes, and trainings around farm jobs, environmental literacy, civic engagement and other curricular necessities that are not included nor funded in the Ontario Unified School system. The educational model utilized at the Ontario YCCA Center will be entirely peer-to-peer, youth led, and participatory. 4) Finally, in order to make the Ontario YCCA Center an effective training facility we intend on inviting and sub-granting youth groups from around the United States to learn from and engage in our model for community change and community-to-college partnerships will help us to build our power. By engaging in mutually beneficial partnerships with ground-breaking organizations and youth groups across the country we can accumulate the needed assets and resources to train leaders from across the country in order to replicate our model in their own communities and to address larger city redevelopment programs, ten to twenty years down the line.