EJSI Summer Institute Culminating Projects and Presentation

On Wednesday July 23 the Environmental Justice Summer Institute drew to a close. The hard work of the student and intern participants was showcased through a presentation at Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas' 2nd District main office during the Environmental Committee meeting of the Empowerment Congress.

The youth gave a presentation (below) and showcased the videos that they made (below) that summarized their EJSI experiences. Committee members listened intently and engaged in a question/answer session with the youth participants, giving them a chance to speak about what they learned and how they think they might utilize the knowledge and experiences gained during the program.  The youth were challenged to articulate not only what they learned, but the lessons they intend on taking away and applying to their lives in the near future.

Some of the lessons learned were:

• With knowledge they have a chance to make a difference. 
• The communities that they live in have higher than average levels of air and noise pollution.
• All it takes is the effort of one person to make a difference to the environment such as walking to the store instead of having one's parents drive them down the street. 
• Some who were already interested in environmental justice felt more equipped with knowledge and confidence to take leadership roles among their peers. One participant intends to start an Environmental Justice club at her school.

Prior to the last day of the program, the participants were visited by Dr. Joseph Lyou, President and CEO of the Coalition for Clean Air and board member of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.  Dr. Lyou spoke about the role of community organizations and future opportunities for the students.









The Environmental Justice Summer Institute program is a partnership of USC Environmental Health,
Asian and Pacific Islander Obesity Prevention Alliance (APIOPA), From Lot to Spot (FLTS), and Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI). Learn more about the institute in these blog posts and Resource Page:
Environmental Justice Summer Institute: Youth Workshops
Youth Pollution Monitoring Activities across the Southland
Teaching Environmental Justice through Building Model Cities

USC Environmental Health gratefully thanks the NIEHS, U.S. EPA, The Kresge Foundation and The
California Wellness Foundation for their combined support which has allowed the Centers’ participation in these efforts to educate youth about air pollution.

by Wendy Gutschow

Youth Pollution Monitoring Activities across the Southland

In communities around the Southland this summer and past spring, students have been learning about air pollution and doing their own hands-on monitoring. These areas included Alhambra, Hacienda Heights, Boyle Heights, Lennox, Inglewood, and more. Outreach Program coordinator Carla Truax visited several high schools and community organizations to give a presentation on “Air Pollution 101,” USC’s latest scientific research findings, and demonstrate air monitoring equipment for the students. The students then came up with creative monitoring projects of their own.

At Mark Keppel High School in Alhambra, the students were part of a youth team from a group called Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ). After monitoring around their school, which is located adjacent to the I-10 Freeway, the students then presented their research at a “Family Empowerment Festival” organized by AAAJ at Cal State Los Angeles in May.

Air pollution is measured on a overpass of the 10 freeway near Mark Keppel High School.

Last year, another group of students from Mark Keppel High School did a monitoring project with
USC, interviewed experts, and created this video:

At Glen A. Wilson High School in Hacienda Heights, students in the Advanced Environmental Studies class learned about the health risks of exposure to air pollution, and how to assess the numbers of ultrafine particles near their school using monitoring devices.  They also learned about the studies conducted by the environmental health sciences centers based at USC about the health effects of living or going to school near a busy freeway. Wilson High is located just a few feet from the 60 Freeway. These high school visits were organized by partner organization Asian and Pacific Islander Obesity Prevention Alliance.

Legacy L.A. is a non-profit organization focused on youth and leadership development which offers academic support to students in Boyle Heights (on the East side of LA), in particular to students who live at Ramona Gardens. After a training session by USC on the health effects of air pollution, the youth talked about some critical issues they are working on: access to healthy food, environmental justice, and safe walkable streets in their community. The group also had questions about creating a buffer zone to help mitigate the effects of traffic emissions from the freeway that borders their housing development and a newly constructed playground. Using what they had learned, the youth developed an action plan for addressing the pollution issues in their community and presented it at a town hall meeting for key policy and decision makers in June. The meeting was covered by Boyle Heights Beat.

Environmental Justice Summer Institute (EJSI) is a program focused on educating, engaging, and empowering youth to be environmental health leaders in their neighborhoods of Inglewood, Hawthorne, and Lennox. The youth developed hands-on experience with two days of ultrafine particle pollution and noise monitoring at 14 locations around their neighborhoods. The students chose locations for monitoring and mapped them before setting out for their field work. The selected locations included places they live, learn, and hang out, such as parks, schools, and homes.  These areas are in the flyover path for jets landing at LAX airport.

Students participating in the EJSI wrote about their monitoring experiences:

“As we spent two sessions going around our community measuring pollution, the thought that kept
stirring in my mind was that there is not much being done to keep our homes safe. I only wonder how
our community will be if we do not take action, so I think people should be more aware of the dangers around them.” –Vanessa Sanchez

Prior to measuring pollution, students mapped healthy and unhealthy spaces in their communities to identify where they wanted to take pollution measurements.

“While doing the air and noise pollution, I was surprised a few times by the measurement and the
locations. I never thought our communities were that polluted by these moving engines. What surprised me more was the bus pollution measurement was quite low. But some locations were heavily polluted and can have a negative effect on people’s health.” –Khanh Nguyen

A sound level meter is used to measure the number of decibels from the airplane.

“My emotion about knowing the air pollution was “surprise!” because I didn’t know that our air was
not as clean as it should be. For example the beach has 4,000 pt/cc [number of particles per cubic centimeter] of ultrafine particles on average. I asked myself why doesn't the city enjoy that kind of healthy air? All the data gathered concerned me about the environment and it made me see that we have a problem.” –Abigail Diaz
[Note: the average levels of ultrafine particles in Lennox and Inglewood was 45,000 pt/cc.]

A P-Trak monitor is used to measure the ultrafine particles.

“My thoughts and emotions weren’t thrilled because I was expecting to get the result that we got
because I know the community. The only one I was surprised was at the beach because it was really low. It was 2,000-6,000 (pt/cc).” –Eder Juarez

The Environmental Justice Summer Institute program is a partnership of USC Environmental Health,
Asian and Pacific Islander Obesity Prevention Alliance (APIOPA), From Lot to Spot (FLTS), and Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI). Learn more about the institute in this post.

The EJSI's next project is creating a student-produced video, so stay tuned!

USC Environmental Health gratefully thanks the NIEHS, U.S. EPA, The Kresge Foundation and The
California Wellness Foundation for their combined support which has allowed the Centers’ participation in these efforts to educate youth about air pollution.

Teaching Environmental Justice through Building Model Cities

On the first day of the Environmental Justice Summer Institute, high school students from Lennox, Hawthorne and Inglewood gathered in a room at the Lennox Library.  As a partnership program between non-profit groups and USC, each student had to apply for this opportunity – and give up three days a week for 5 weeks of their summer vacation to participate.

Pictured here, James Rojas (front row, 2nd from left) with EJSI students and staff.

While the students would be learning the more technical side to environmental health and justice in the following weeks, on day one they took a deep dive into their memory, to understand their experiences, values, and intuitive sense of the environment.  James Rojas was the leader who guided the students through several learning experiences using "PLACE IT!," a design-based urban planning initiative. For the initial team building activity, students were asked to build their favorite childhood memory. He noted that this was an “urban planning exercise,” even though they did not realize how they could envision at this point what their environment might look like, instead of what it DID look like.  This exercise revealed the students’ history of who they are, where they come from, and what they value.

Click here to read more about EJSI from a previous blog post.

“We are going to look at the places where you live – but through a unique perspective,” Rojas said. “Let’s start with all of you creating a memory. What was the most fun activity you remember doing as a child?”

Using construction paper as a base and choosing from hundreds of small items with which to build, the participants were given fifteen minutes for their creations. This short period of time allowed them to think on their feet to build the physical and social details that created their memories. As participants finished building the representations of their childhood days, they began to talk, look around at the other dioramas created by their colleagues and pull out their cell phones to take pictures of their models.

Rojas asked each participant to share his/her memory with the group. Builders spoke with conviction as they told compelling, entertaining stories illustrated through the objects, colors, textures, and layouts of their models. Everyone listened with enthusiasm to these visceral details that engaged the group visually and orally. The group members began to learn about each other by sharing these stories and bonded through common themes.  They commented:

“My childhood memory was when I would go to a park with my dad and my brother. I learned that being a child and being outside is a lot better than how kids my age [today] are always inside and on their phones/laptops. I used a lot of grassy material to represent the trees, flowers, and a blue toy to represent a pool.” -Vanessa Sanchez

“My memory was building cars with my dad, going to the zoo, playing with dogs and going to the beach. I learned that every kid played with friends and didn’t worry about [pollution from] planes or factories. We used toys. I used little wood cars to represent me and my dad. I used animals to represent the zoo, and snakes for my memory of Santa Monica. I used a spring because I used to go on trampolines and jump off.” –Eder Juarez

“My experience of building a favorite childhood memory was fabulous. I built my favorite zoo location. Thanks to the activity, I was able to remember all the sweet memories that I have with my parents. I never thought I would ever think about those memories, due to the fact that life is too busy for anyone to sit down and think about the past. I’m very appreciative of this activity.” – Khan Nguyen

Participants discovered that as children they had very similar experiences created by interactions with people, and the built and natural environments. They realized they had a deep relationship with nature around them. As children many of the participants sought fun, intimacy, shelter, and challenges in the environment.

 “I learned from my experience that little by little without us noticing, beautiful places are not part of our surroundings anymore. I like the park with flowers I constructed, but there are no such beautiful parks that are accessible after I get out of school just to release some stress. I learned from my experience that many people don’t have the opportunity to relax in a good place like a park, and therefore have a stressful routine of going to work and then going home every day.” -Abigail Diaz

Through this activity participants were able to personalize the urban planning process based on their experiences and imagination. This approach gave everyone access to the exercise and validated their knowledge of the built environment. This acknowledgement supported their contribution to the planning process: everyone had something to share and contribute.

“The memory I built was the moment when I first cooked a special meal for my grandmother. What I learned from this experience was that that was the first time I created something for someone else. I feel that cooking for oneself is boring but to cook for someone else is fun and it makes it special.” –Eduardo Vazquez

Through the activity, participants were able to see the greater potential within themselves and their colleagues with which to draw upon in the coming weeks of the Institute. The workshops provided a foundation that the content of the institute will further build upon in order to educate and empower the students to seek paths toward environmental justice in their respective communities.

Students were then placed into two teams and asked to work together to create their “ideal city.”  Each team had time to reflect, examine, and build a city that was designed to promote environmental health and justice. To achieve this they again used construction paper and hundreds of pieces of toys/building blocks provided by James Rojas to build their solution.  The teams were given no constraints or rules.

Team One built a city centered around “activities.” From basketball courts to roller coasters as one time member said “We never get bored.”

Team Two built a city based on “experiences.” It was clean and green, full of flowers, plants, and gardens. They build a beautiful mono-rail system with other urban design enhancements.

Once all the teams presented their projects, Rojas synthesized the findings and asked the participants what they learned about themselves, each other, and the built environment. By building together, students identified many opportunities and challenges in the built environment. The workshop brought out the students’ intuitive sense of the built environment.

For participants, these exercises turned the city into a blank canvas, letting students build their own images of healthy spaces.

The hundreds of small colorful, vibrant, tactile, objects triggered the participant’s emotional connections to the built environment. Participants connected and synthesized how they experience urban space by seeking and touching these objects. They created small vignettes of urban life. The high school participants gained satisfaction from this process because they were able to translate memories, visions, and ideas into a physical form. As soon as students realized this connection, they realized they could actually transform their environment.  One participant asked,

“Why isn’t the city I live in like the city I want to live in?”

Stay tuned for future blog posts documenting the students’ activities over the course of the summer.

by James Rojas and Wendy Gutschow