Our Programs

What are those services you provide specifically for youth

Community Chest Inc. empowers youth, utilizing the components of the Health Triangle physical, mental & emotional, and social health, spreading awareness, prevention, and promotion with the intent to reach health, and educational equality for Black and Brown Youth, and low income communities in Multnomah County.
We do so by offering Physical, Mental & Emotional, and Social Health Services in the form of organized comprehensive physical activity in athletics, sports, and fitness coupled with a holistic lifestyle curriculum in health and wellness. As a result of the services performed Community Chest’s empowered youth will be transformed into future healers directed with awareness, prevention, and promotion acumen aims to set off the African American adults in their families, and communities provoking lifestyle changes that prevent chronic diseases.

Our youth discover that each component of the Health Triangle isn’t exclusive of one another.
On the contrary they are linked with the action of one affecting the others.

Community Chest Inc. Lifestyle Health and Wellness Curriculum follows Oregon Department of Educations’ (ODE) Health Education Standards and Performance Indicators (K-12). Health Education Standards help define the knowledge and skills our Black and Brown Youth, and low income youth of Community Chest will need throughout their K-12 experience. Standards also provide consistency in what is taught to students across the state to ensure equity in education. It should be noted, these standards are a structure for the Community Chest Curriculum, and the content is customized for the Black and Brown Youth, and low income youth of Community Chest.

Please Note:
These Standards are a structure for the Community Chest Inc. Curriculum, our content is customized for our Black and Brown Youth, and low income youth of Community Chest. Each Standard is supported by multiple Performance Indicators. Our goal is to increase every student’s knowledge and comprehension about Awareness, Prevention, and Promotion using the components of the Health Triangle, Physical, Mental & Emotional, and Social Health. Specific indicators have been identified that are personalized to the needs and wants of our Black and Brown Youth, and Low Income Youth. Each chosen indicator is placed/planted/situated with a component of the health triangle (See below).

**These performance indicators are the basis, content, and transferrable skills our Black and Brown Youth, and Low Income Youth will learn and be equipped to educate the adults in their family, community, and neighborhood in our effort for health and educational equity and reducing the rate of chronic diseases**

• Facilitating training’s, focus on sports/athletic programs
• Working with club sports (mostly volleyball, hoping to expand)
• We’ve done basketball, baseball, and football and want to expand into more team sports in the realm of lacrosse, rugby, something that you don’t normally find African American youth participating in.
  • Right now our programs are primarily run out of De La Salle North Catholic High School.
  • Right now we are individuals volunteering for the good of the community.
  • We have our own Northeast Portland (NEP) Athletic Sports Organization focused on volleyball, most of our girls are students from Portland Public Schools (PPS) with with expected expansion to other schools in the Portland area.  
• Recruit from school sports programs and get them active and engaged. When they are engaged in sports it decreases risky social determinant behaviors that lead to health disparities.

• Community conversations & safe space
• One-on-one mentoring
• Potential down the road for affinity groups to serve more specific identity groups (LGBTQ youth of color, Latinx youth, etc.)
• Talking with our youth about health equity in our community and how they can make an impact in their families and their communities
• Talking with our athletes about how to advocate for racial justice in their schools and communities
• Providing community support while youth are experiencing grief, and loss, and major changes, from the pandemic
• Host conversations about how to deal with situations that will arise so long as we live in a society where systemic racism and institutional racism will be trying to keep youth down, and how to build up and strengthen their self-worth to deflect and move forward from those experiences without damaging their self-image

• Leadership Training – cohort program centered on the youth building and putting on a Youth Health Fair after a six-month program with educational sessions and planning sessions and outreach
  • The Youth Fair (TriHealth Leadership Academy and Fair) will be designed by the youth, they get to decide what aspects of health and wellness they want to highlight, bring in the right vendors and presenters, and produce the event themselves
• They would also be part of building a business plan for the fair
• The youth must be involved from the beginning in the conception of the idea – most of the time they are meeting is to build this fair, the rest is for trainings
• Meeting at least two hours every other Saturday
• The leadership cohort will have educational lessons from health care professionals from lots of different backgrounds to provide the youth with lots of information.
  • We already have curriculum developed, lesson plans to fill this part in – we have teaching experience specifically on health and wellness which will help here
  • We hope to have student nurses come in as volunteers to teach around sex ed, nutrition, strength training/physical fitness, emotional wellbeing, and more
  • The goal of all trainings is to teach the youth how to take their health into their own hands
• All of our programs aim to touch on all three aspects of the health triangle, and we make sure that through our sports trainings, leadership trainings, and community conversations/mentoring we are providing the youth with access to physical, mental/emotional, and social health tools and resources to better advocate for improving their own health and the health of their families and communities.
• What Community Chest is doing right now is a lot, but it’s not enough. There are so many more kids that we want to reach. We’re building relationships and building trust – those are intangible things we are doing. We also need to build the capacity to do more (time and resources).