Faith-based community organizing: Fostering community ownership of health improvement strategies

To effectively address community health issues in the predominantly low-income, farmworker communities of California's Eastern Coachella Valley, organizing residents to advocate for themselves is essential. This region is heavily impacted by myriad factors that negatively affect health status and well-being. Chief among these are unsafe water and poor housing, environmental health factors related to land management and agricultural industry practices, harsh working conditions, limited civic infrastructure, and transportation barriers that limit the ability of people to travel the distances necessary for work and access to the necessities of daily life, such as food, recreation, schools, and health and human services. With significant numbers of migrant workers and immigrants comprising these communities, municipal and county structures enacting policies that affect health often do not actively engage or hear from community members about how the public sector and its policies affect them or can be improved for better health. In this session, attendees will hear how residents are organizing themselves in collaborative campaigns that are halting dirt-dumping on Native land, and promoting accessible, affordable, environmentally-conscious transportation options. Strategies such as community listening campaigns, special group trainings, research, and action planning will be shared. The model used by ICUC is that in all steps of the process, community members are in the lead – creating agendas, facilitating meetings, compiling research, asking questions, and in training others. When people are in charge of moving power to create public policies for their families, people will feel committed to implement the policies that improve their health.