Oakland Youth Movement: Changing neighborhoods through youth-led research and action

The City and County Neighborhood Initiative brought together several Oakland youth in 2007 to develop and conduct youth surveys in two neighborhoods. After a few months of working together, we named ourselves the Oakland Youth Movement because we wanted to “become a movement to fight for change in our communities.” Our purpose has been to get the opinions of Oakland youth on their community and get their input on what resources we most need. The survey explores what youth think about their neighborhoods, including: what they like, what they want to change, what kinds of resources they need, and how they feel about health and violence in their community. We are a group of youth trying to get our voice heard. We have worked with staff from Alameda County Public Health Department's Community Assessment, Planning and Education/Evaluation and we conducted 200 youth surveys, analyzed them and are developing youth-friendly data presentations to share our findings. Our poster session will share our survey questionnaire, the results and our data presentations. Our poster session will also share what we have learned, such as how we have been putting on events from a youth perspective and what actions we will take in Oakland based on the survey results.