Healthy Vessels is a program of Youth Empowered Solutions funded under the Faith-based Advocacy: Galvanizing Communities to End Childhood Obesity program by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The focus of this project utilizes youth empowerment and engagement as a method to pass local policies and create environmental changes. YES! is collaborating with faith-based organizations in five North Carolina counties (Anson, Robeson, Richmond, Montgomery, and Scotland) to provide training and support for existing faith-based youth groups to engage them in community change.
Healthy Vessels Objectives:
- Increase public awareness of healthy options for nutrition and fitness and the impact of those choices on the health of a community.
- Increase community opportunities for affordable nutrition and safe places for fitness.
- Evaluate the community’s progress in supporting these goals.
Within these objectives, the trained faith youth groups will choose from a number of specific policy/environmental changes, according to the needs of their community.
A faith-based youth group in each county will partner with YES! to receive training and technical assistance (TA) in order to become proficient at raising awareness of the fitness and nutrition issue in their county. The youth will be at the forefront of the movement, carrying out local advocacy work that furthers their policy goals, training other youth and adults in the community, and actively engaging their faith community and the larger county community to work on these goals.
For More Information on the Healthy Vessels Program, contact Katie Spears at (704) 927-3063.
