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Photo by Jan Sonnenmair A partnership grant will help UCLA residents of DeNeve Plaza increase services to children living in Ujima Village, a public housing site.

winners of community partnership grants

Teaming up to serve L.A.

BY CYNTHIA LEE
UCLA Today Staff

Today, more than 49 million people in the United States are disabled, but their portrayal on television and in movies has made them the most marginalized and invisible people in society.

In reality, said Olivia Raynor, people with disabilities are like people without disabilities — among them, visual artists, professors, entrepreneurs, researchers who are leading fulfilling, active, vibrant lives. This is the reality show that Raynor is committed to bringing to the screen.

“We want to educate the entertainment industry about individuals with disabilities,” said Raynor, co-director of the Tarjan Center for Developmental Disabilities at UCLA. “We want them to know what their daily lives are like, about the details of their employment, their friendships, their romances. And we want to bring the media makers — directors, writers, producers —face to face with them.”

Working with the Frank D. Lanterman Regional Center, a private, nonprofit agency that serves individuals with developmental disabilities and their families, Raynor now has that chance. They will invite the creators of TV shows and movies to three workshops to talk about issues and meet people with a variety of disabilities. She will also publish an online directory of experts on disabilities who will be available to consult with writers and filmmakers.

Raynor is one of 14 recipients of the 2004-05 Community Partnership Campus Grants, being awarded to faculty, staff and graduate students who have teamed up with nonprofit community partners on projects that strengthen children, youth and families; foster economic development; and promote arts and culture. The projects that were granted awards, ranging from $3,156 to $42,050, were selected from 65 proposals submitted. This is the second year the UCLA Center for Community Partnerships has offered these grants to foster campus-community collaborations. Another set of grants will soon be awarded to nonprofit community organizations working with a campus partner.

“Each of these projects embodies a commitment by this institution to enhance the quality of life in Los Angeles, and to forward our scholarship through unique engagements,” said Franklin D. Gilliam Jr., associate vice chancellor for community partnerships.

The wide range of proposals submitted and selected, including one to support UCLA students who are mentoring youths at a public housing site, demonstrates the campus’ impact in transforming lives in Los Angeles. Through the work of these partnerships and their focus on creative, collaborative engagement, communities are enriched, Gilliam said.

Ronni Sanlo’s project with ONE Institute and Archives in Los Angeles will uncover the little-known history of the struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in Los Angeles. Gay college students will document a history of the movement and create a traveling exhibit and Web site that will show that Los Angeles “holds an unsung place in this ongoing civil rights struggle,” said Sanlo, director of the LGBT Resource Office at UCLA.

Education and communication are also the goals of physician Michael Rodriguez, an associate professor in family medicine. Partnering with WISE Senior Services in Santa Monica, he will bring together social-service and health-care providers to mend the “safety net” through which many elderly Latinos are falling. “While it’s clear that Latino elders benefit from both systems, we’re finding that social service and health-care providers don’t talk to each other,” he said.

Shaped by imagination, collaboration and individual commitment, the projects touch many facets of community life.

Listed here are the 14 proposals that have been selected to receive the 2004-05 Community Partnership Campus Grants from the UCLA Center for Community Partnerships:

Project: Team Up! UCLA & Ujima Village: U2 Can Make a Difference. A partnership between UCLA Office of Residential Life and the Residents' Council of Ujima Village
Recipient: Ms. Dayna Baker
Amount: $3,156
Partner: Michael Jones, Community Development Commission, County of Los Angeles
Description: The Team Up partnership between Residential Life and Ujima Village began in the fall of 2003. Since that time the partnership has developed into a number of learning opportunities. While still in the process of developing the work, we are excited about what we have accomplished and we recognize that discontinuing the work at the end of this year would be unfortunate for the UCLA students, the Ujima community and the UCLA community. We have found ways to support some aspects of the work but are requesting support for transportation.
We propose to continue our work by focusing on Saturday programs and homework help. We would like to investigate working on a community based technology program. While our primary focus in 2003-2004 was with the elementary school children, in the upcoming year, we plan to expand our program to systematically include both the high school population and the parents. Our goals remain that students will develop a deeper understanding of their community and privilege. This partnership will grow the whole student: a civic minded and aware student who provides service that leads to individual and community sustainability while maintaining a UCLA connection with the South Los Angeles community of Ujima.

Project: The Mind Works
Recipient: Adrian Casillas
Amount: $42,050
Partner: Mara Simmons, Animo Leadership Charter High School
Description: Drug abuse is a serious problem confronting the underprivileged, minority youth in the community of Lennox. It especially threatens the successful advancement of its high school students. The Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA along with the Lennox School District s and Green Dot Public School s Animo Leadership Charter High School propose to establish a community partnership called The Mind Works that responds to the urgent need by these students for relevant, science-based education to improve their understanding of drugs and enhance their decision-making skills about drug use. UCLA researchers will collaborate with Animo s science teachers to develop an innovative Web-based drug education problem set called Morpheus. This project will integrate the concepts of human brain function presented in the existing Animo science curriculum with expert content from UCLA neuroscience drug researchers into 15 computerized drug abuse exercises that include the analysis of students problem solving performances. These challenging problems will assess students critical thinking skills, identify areas of strength and weakness in applying knowledge about drugs, and enable teachers to provide more effective, individualized drug abuse education. Through this partnership, a sustainable drug abuse education tool will be developed that can be widely implemented and reach up to 20,000 at-risk students.

Project: Research Experience for Gang Impacted Youth
Recipient: Jack Katz
Amount: $35,311
Partner: The Rev. Gregory Boyle, Homeboy Industries
Description: In conjunction with Father Greg Boyle’s Jobs For a Future program, we propose to continue building and developing our program of educational and mentoring intervention with gang impacted youth from East Los Angeles. Father Boyle is a highly respected local figure in gang intervention work and his program continues to be ideal community partner for bringing UCLA-based teaching and research activities to the community. As a component of Father Boyle s program, we have worked to adapt UCLA-developed and based ethnographic training methods, which are routinely used for undergraduate and graduate training in sociology, as well as our NSF funded research experience for undergraduates to a group of young people in East Los Angeles who would otherwise not have the opportunity to engage in university-level research. This past year has allowed us to learn much about what is involved in adapting this program to the gang-intervention setting and we are encouraged by the participation of both trainees and staff. Another year of support will allow us to develop this experiment into a sustainable element of Jobs For a Future’s training program. This year we propose to continue holding writing workshops at Homeboy and to train Homeboy s staff and volunteers to participate in and lead these workshops.

Project: Caring for Foster Children: Training and Resources for Parents and Professionals
Recipient: Rekha Krishnankutty
Amount: $12,000
Partner: Barbara Facher, The Alliance for Children's Rights
Description: As societal problems such as poverty, homelessness, violence and substance abuse persist, so does child maltreatment; thus, large numbers of children continue to enter foster care. Health care for this vulnerable population is complex, due to the high prevalence of acute and chronic medical problems, developmental delay and other mental health disturbances. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Child Welfare League of America put forth health care standards for foster children over a decade ago, yet these standards are still not being met. Therefore, it is critical to increase attention to the unique multidisciplinary health needs of foster children among service providers and parents, who may then take the appropriate steps to meet their needs.
This project, in collaboration with the Alliance for Children s Rights, will create a series of training modules and a resource guide designed for the caregivers and many professionals who serve foster children, including pediatricians, social workers, school officials and attorneys. The trainings aim to improve knowledge regarding the complex health issues of foster children and to increase service coordination among providers. The pocket resource guide will contain key points of information and a referral list of specific agencies and providers who serve this population.

Project: Integrating Technology and Garden Based Nutrition Education in Schools-A UCLA Outreach
Recipient: Robert Krochmal
Amount: $31,000
Partner: Douglas Sutter, Proyecto Jardin/Central City Action Committee
Description: The UCLA Center for Human Nutrition (CHN) and community partner
Proyecto Jardín (a neighborhood based garden) propose to develop and
implement an innovative model for nutrition education. By integrating technology and garden based learning, students at Bridge Street Elementary School will learn about nutrition and health, ethnobotany, ecosystems, and sustainable agriculture. Research will address the association between food security status and health disparities such as obesity among low income, predominately Latino youth. A DVD will be produced and video clips will be utilized in an English and Spanish website for the project. The website will be linked to an online curriculum applicable to the district at large. UCLA medical students will be offered an elective in Complementary and Alternative Medicine focusing on the healing properties of plants as food and medicine. Their final project will involve health workshops with the elementary school students. Plants grown in the garden will
be analyzed at the CHN s phytonutrient laboratory for nutrient and medicinal content. Pre- and post- intervention surveys will determine the impact of this project by evaluating students nutritional habits, acquisition of academic knowledge, and attitudes toward school, environment, and community. Future projects may include broad
based community food assessments and interventions.

Project: Helping Latino Families Care for Relatives with Serious Mental Illness
Recipient: Steven Lopez
Amount: $33,365
Partner: Ambrose Rodriguez, Latino Behavioral Health Institute
Description: Our long term goal is to establish a partnership with Latino Behavioral Health Institute to carry out training and research that will lead to establishing self-sustaining, family-focused interventions for Latinos with serious mental illness. Our first aim is to assess the available mental health services (broadly defined) within a high density Latino community within the city of San Fernando. The second aim is to conduct a wide-spread educational campaign about serious mental illness and treatment. In particular, we will conduct presentations in Spanish and English to persons outside the mental health system who are likely to have contact with persons with serious mental illness, including health agencies, social service agencies, churches, as well as groups of residents. Our third aim is to identify all persons and their families within this community who have serious mental illness. Fourth, we will assess the level of mental health care these individuals received during the last year by professionals, nonprofessionals, and their families. These baseline data will identify the specific gaps in available mental health care and the burden to families. Such data will then be used to obtain funds to develop innovative family-focused services for Latinos with serious
mental illness.

Project: Fighting Potential Resistance: A community approach toward decreasing inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions in Latino Children.
Recipient: Roberto Montenegro
Amount: $12,000
Partner: Christine Gonzalez, California Latino Medical Association
Description: Latino children are inappropriately prescribed antibiotics at a higher
rates than both Black and White children. The inappropriate use of
antibiotics increases resistant bacteria both in the individual and community
level. This, in turn, can lead to greater morbidity, mortality, and health-care
costs for Latinos in the U.S. Current research has begun to identify doctor-parent communication practices as key determinants for inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions in English-speaking medical visits. None of these studies, however, have examined the communication practices involved in Spanish-speaking doctor-parent interactions. Likewise, no study has examined the degree to which the children of monolingual Spanish-speaking parents experience inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions. Focusing
on language concordance, ethnicity, culture, and doctor-parent communication, this study will examine monolingual Spanish-speaking pediatric visits. Conversation analysis, surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups, will be used to measure the degree of inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions and explain why and how this disparity occurs in monolingual Spanish-speaking visits. Together with the California Latino Medical
Association and an East Los Angeles theater group, Casa 0101, the findings
will be used to create educational materials that aim to decrease inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions: an antibiotics resistance education video for Spanish-speaking parents and Continuing Medical Education courses for physicians.

Project: "At the End of the West": Jews in the Cultural Mosaic of Los Angeles
Recipient: David Myers
Amount: $19,290
Partner: Stephen Aron, Institute for the Study of the American West
Description: UCLA and the Autry National Center have joined as partners on a long-term research and exhibition development project with the working title At the End of the West: Jews in the Cultural Mosaic of Los Angeles. This project pursues two related questions. First, how were the expectations and experiences of Jews in Los Angeles similar to and different from that of their co-religionists in other American places? Second, how did these expectations and experiences compare with those of diverse newcomers to Los Angeles in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? In the first phase of this project (during the 2004-05 academic year), the UCLA-Autry Partnership aims to accomplish the following goals: 1) complete research in local archives, museums, and private collections for material relating to the Jewish experience in Los Angeles; 2) hold a conference at the Autry National Center that presents fresh perspectives on the Jewish experience in Los Angeles and explores fruitful comparative dimensions of that experience; 3) use the research and conference to construct a new narrative of the Jewish experience in Los Angeles that is more mindful of ethnic diversity within the Jewish community and more attuned to the interaction of Jews and other Angelenos than previous accounts; 4) draw on that narrative to produce K-12 curricular materials that utilize the Jewish experience as an important case study in the history of Los Angeles; 5) digitize source material for display on the Autry s website and for use in virtual gallery explorations by students around Los Angeles and beyond; and 6) lay the foundation for future work, leading to a major museum exhibition at the Autry National Center. In both the short term (goals 1-5) and the longer term (the mounting of the exhibition), our intention is to challenge established notions of Jewish life in Los Angeles and stimulate broader public debates about the ethnic and cultural fabric of Los Angeles.

Project: Pilgrimage of Tolerance: An Educational Odyssey From December 7, 1941 to September 11, 2001
Recipient: Robert Nakamura
Amount: $36,500
Partner: Tadashi Nakamura, Downtown Media Center
Description: Pilgrimage of Tolerance is a multi-faceted educational project utilizing digital video technology, printed text, and community programming to link the politics of prejudice that
occurred after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to similar acts of intolerance and discrimination that are taking place after the bombing of the World Trade Center.
Since 9/11/01, injustice and violence against Middle Eastern, South Asian, Arab, as well as refugee and immigrant communities throughout the United States have drawn historical parallels with the way 120,000 Japanese Americans were targeted and imprisoned without trial during World War II.
It will bring together community and university-based groups in Los Angeles - the Manzanar 9/11 Committee, the LA Downtown Media Center and UCLA Center for
EthnoCommunications - to sponsor and document a statewide Pilgrimage of Tolerance on September 11, 2004 at Manzanar, which was the first of ten concentration campus established by the government to incarcerate Japanese Americans during WWII.
The project will also result in an educational DVD with accompanying 200-page resource guide for classroom and community workshops. Combining new technology with text, students, teachers and community organizers can interactively select and access a short historical video, additional video documentation, archival materials, as well as life history interviews for a rich, multi-level approach that combines the best
practices of both the academy and the community.

Project: Changing Perceptions and the Media
Recipient: Olivia Raynor
Amount: $25,677
Partner: Diane Anand, Lanterman Regional Center
Description: The National Arts and Disability Center at UCLA and its community partner, the Lanterman Regional Center, share a commitment to enable children and adults with disabilities to live full, productive and satisfying lives as active members of their communities. The promise of engaging people with disabilities in all aspects of public life is challenged by negative attitudes and stereotypes portrayed in film and television. This project offers the opportunity to change the perceptions of media makers about the lives of people with disabilities and to increase the likelihood that relevant issues will be addressed sensitively and accurately in the media.
Three workshops will be held for television and film writers, producers and directors. The workshops will include presentations by disability experts who will address topics and themes such as school, work, play, family, romance and sexuality. In addition, film makers whose work exemplify artistic quality, cultural diversity and relevance to the lives of people with disabilities will discuss their films. This will be followed by informal face- to-face discussions with people with disabilities. We will also create and publish an online Los Angeles Disability Resource Directory of experts who can provide consultation regarding story content.

Project: Healthy Abuelos
Recipient: Michael Rodriguez
Amount: $30,186
Partner: Nancy Hayes, WISE Senior Services
Description: Healthy Abuelos (Grandparents) is a project created to address the fragmentation of services for the elderly, which poses major barriers to health care, particularly for Latino elders. WISE Senior Services and Rodríguez are collaborating in a project that will link Latino elders with organizations that serve them. Facilitated focus groups involving Latino elders, health and social service providers will help highlight, prioritize, and communicate elders health needs directly to these organizations. These focus groups will begin a coalition composed of the Latino elderly, health and social service organizations where they can work together in creating an agenda that will focus on the needs of this community in order to create initiatives that will promote, manage and prevent chronic conditions, and address behavioral risk factors. Healthy Abuelos is a participatory research project that involves a systematic collection of information from elders and organizations alike. The project will involve graduate students, academic professionals and community based organizations. Data collected in this project will contribute to future research that is needed to improve health services for vulnerable populations living within multicultural communities. Research findings will be disseminated through published articles and reports, and made available on-line through WISE Senior Services Web site.

Project: Unearthing Self Esteem: Gay Los Angeles Documented
Recipient: Ronni Sanlo
Amount: $34,720
Partner: Stuart Timmons, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives
Description: In 1967, CBS News called the average American reaction to homosexuality disgust and fear. In 37 years, these attitudes have largely reversed. Unearthing Self Esteem will document this social revolution. The project will utilize gay youth to process unique records and artifacts tracing the struggle of lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual (LGBT) people for use in an exhibition. The breakthrough Mattachine Society in 1951, the first National Lesbian Conference held at UCLA in 1973 and other events will show Los Angeles holds an unsung place in this ongoing civil rights struggle.
This collaboration between the UCLA Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Resource Center and ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives in Central Los Angeles will have a broad impact. The exhibition will travel to other local and national venues, with a commemorative booklet and associated programming. A virtual version of the exhibit will be posted on the web, providing long-term sustainability for this project. To fully research this exhibition, a diverse array of student researchers from UCLA and local community colleges will be hired to process materials that have been donated to ONE, the nation s largest collection of LGBT research materials and cultural records.

Project: Corpus
Recipient: Andrew Spieldenner
Amount: $12,000
Partner: George Ayala, AIDS Project LA
Description: Corpus is a collaboration between AIDS Project LA and Andrew Spieldenner of the UCLA Theater Department to develop materials for two publications focused on reducing isolation and promoting cultural production for gay, bisexual and transgendered men of LA County. One publication will be aimed at HIV+ Latinos in the Valley, the other will target gay, bisexual and transgendered youth. Corpus will involve multiple focus groups, writing workshops and story circles with HIV+ gay men and youth to produce materials over the 2004-2005 year.

Project: Expanding the Civic Participation Capacity of Oaxacan Hometown Associations
Recipient: Michael Stoll
Amount: $42,050
Partner: Eric Wat, Special Service for Groups
Description: The UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty (CSUP) and Special Services for Groups (SSG) will work with 20 Oaxacan community leaders to support the development of a new organization that promotes immigrant civic participation in Los Angeles. There are approximately 70,000 Oaxacans in Los Angeles, many of whom join Hometown Association (HTAs) that pool financial resources to bring electricity, and build municipal buildings, schools and churches in their hometowns in Mexico. Yet, Oaxacan immigrants have no similar influence in Los Angeles. An emerging group of leaders in their 20s and early 30s are looking to develop a organization that mobilizes civic participation locally. CSUP and SSG will support this process by providing a series of culturally appropriate capacity-building trainings that meet the Oaxacan communitys needs. A handbook documenting the project will be produced so that future work by community and civic leaders takes into account the unique qualities of Oaxacans in Los Angeles. A new study to be conducted by CSUP in July 2005 will incorporate lessons learned from this project to more adequately measure Latino immigrant civic participation in Los Angeles.