Our Initiative
Our Communities for All Ages Team:
- Las Palmas Elementary
- Chicanos Pueden and La Esperanza
- Las Palmas Resident Leadership Group
- San Clemente Presbyterian Church
- San Clemente Boys and Girls Club
- San Clemente Collaborative
- Age Well Senior Services
- Mary Erickson Community Housing
- City of San Clemente Parks and Recreation and Community Development
- San Clemente Police Department
- Young Life
- Interfaith Interim Housing and Ageless Art
Funders:
- Orange County Community Foundation
- Archstone Foundation
- Communities For All Ages
Phase of Development: Implementation
Starting Date: January 2010
Our Initiave:
Our assessment process included one-on-one discussions as well as focus groups with residents of all ages. In addition, we held brainstorming sessions with the members of our CFAA team to discuss key community assets, challenges and opportunities to build on. Through this process residents reached consensus on their top priorities, all of which focused on the need to support and strengthen families. Older adults expressed a desire to improve the conditions in which their grandchildren are growing up, especially the safety of Max Berg Park, the local park that all students must traverse to get to school. Residents of all ages agreed that often youth and parents are not communicating well and may have conflict as a result.
In order to address these concerns the CFAA Team created the Las Palmas Resident Leadership Group that meets once a week to receive leadership training, dialogue and strategize. Though the leadership group successfully advocated for $750,000 in funding for safe routes to school, the project has continued to face and overcome obstacles. Since the original city council vote in the summer of 2010 the project has been opposed and sent up for vote four more times. Each time residents have come out in numbers to ask for support for a safer neighborhood. We are happy to report that on October 6, 2011 the final City Council vote came out in favor of the plan. Residents report that city workers have already been seen in the park taking measurement and beginning to put the plan into action! Residents will continue to monitor the progress of the safe routes to school plan as well as promised sidewal improvements in the area.
The residents have been meeting now for three years and during summer 2011 they began to branch out and integrate into some of the existing organizations in the city. The San Clemente Collaborative, whose mission is to empower all community members to assume collective responsibility in building a safe and healthy community, has a Neighborhood Outreach Committee and members of all ages of the resident leadership group are now part of the committee. Together they will work on supporting youth and neighborhood initiatives. Meeting are held monthly on the second Tuesday of the month.
The La Esperanza youth group has now been meeting for over 2 years. WHen they group began the youth laughed at their advisor when she suggested that they set a goal of playing on the high school football team. In their young lives they had not seen many or any Latinos on the football team and were cleary intimidated at the idea of trying out and failing.
At that time many of them were in the 7th grade. Over the last two years they attended all ages leadership trianings, completed the Teen Project class on self-esteem and even helped to plan a youth conference. On the athletic side, they joined a touch football league where they had small group coaching sessions and they are now learning
mixed martial arts at a local non-profit that offers martial arts and tutoring. As a result, this fall 5 of the La Esperanza youth made the freshman
football team. At the first game of the season an entire section of families from Las Palmas came out to support the players!
