Thursday, April 3, 2025
4/3/2025
Rooted in Healthy Traditions After School Program for Zuni Youth - PURPOSE: Zuni Youth Enrichment Project (ZYEP) will develop and implement Rooted in Healthy Traditions, an After School program designed to engage Zuni youth over five years in traditional physical activity, art, nutrition/farming, and Zuni language. Zuni youth will work with Youth and Elder Mentors as they engage in multigenerational activities that promote holistic wellness through cultural and social connectedness, physical activity, and healthy consumption of traditional Zuni fruits and vegetables. COMMUNITY SERVED: After school programming will be offered four days weekly over four 8-week sessions provided yearly. Two Year 1 sessions will each serve 60 students in grades 3-5 at Shiwi Ts’ana Elementary School, and two Year 1 sessions will each serve 40 students in grades 6-8 at Zuni Middle Schools. Both schools are located in Zuni Pueblo in western New Mexico. There will be a total of 200 Year 1 participant slots, with at least 150 unique students participating. In Years 2-5, sessions will grow to engage 100 elementary students x two sessions, and 60 middle school students x two sessions, providing a total of 320 slots annually to serve 240 unique students. Over five years, a total of 1,480 slots will be offered serving 1,110 unique students. STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES: Students will engage in four stations during each 8-week session: Zuni Art with Meaning, Knowledge Sharing; Movement, and Food Sovereignty, aligned with the following strategies and activities: *Strategy 4: Intergenerational learning opportunities that support wellness and resilience. *Activity 4.1: Establish and strengthen opportunities to encourage two way sharing and connect youth, adults, and elders to share knowledge about food, language, ceremonies, stories, places, technology, crafts and play. Through Knowledge Sharing, Zuni youth will work with Youth and Elder Mentors to engage in Zuni Language and values, study groups for academic tutoring in a cultural context, and education-based games. *Activity 4.2: Establish and strengthen opportunities for adults and elders to pass on Tribal, cultural, and other knowledge to children and young people, and to other adults and elders. Through Art with Meaning, Zuni youth will work with Mentors and artisans to learn about Zuni art forms including drawing and painting traditional designs, Pueblo Pottery, and Pueblo Textiles focused on beginning sash belt weaving. *Strategy 5: Cultural teachings and practices about traditional healthy foods to promote health, sustenance, and sustainability. Activity 5.1: Establish or strengthen sustainable programs to gather, raise, harvest, produce or preserve traditional healthy foods, and provide those foods and beverages to individuals, families, schools, institutions, and others as they learn about Food Sovereignty. Working with mentors, Zuni youth will engage in preparing and consuming plant-based snacks, garden-based nutrition lessons, and food sovereignty lessons. OUTCOMES: Short-term, an increased number of people will participate in opportunities for cultural teachings and practices that promote health and wellness; ZYEP will engage at least 1,110 students over 5 years based on program attendance records. Intermediate Outcomes will include an increased sense of cultural connectedness, increased sense of social connectedness (all strategies), increased consumption of healthy traditional foods (Strategy 5), and increased physical activity (Strategy 6). Intermediate outcomes will be measured through the administration of pre- and post-participation surveys for each 8-week session. ZYEP will work with an external evaluator to create five questions per strategy, scored on a 5-point Likert scale, to measure program effectiveness in reaching intermediate outcomes. Overall, there will be a statistically significant increase (p-value .05 or lower) over baseline in the mean score for at least 3 of the 5 variables measured. REQUEST: $150,000 annually, $750,000 over 5 years
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