Community Building: Healthy Leadership Camps with Pine Ridge Native American Youth

background: Community led projects are complex and multifaceted.  It is imperative to understand community leadership structures, community-based politics, as well as other key networks. When relationships are properly established communities can be empowered. For example, adolescents in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation seek opportunities for leadership related to life skills and health status to improve overall quality of life.  Youth in Pine Ridge reservation experience higher rates of poverty, depression, diabetes, and mental health disparities. This presentation discusses the nature of creating sustainable partnerships, culturally competent interventions, and involving youth from one community to implement camps for peers in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

theoretical basis: Pine Ridge elders and youth described a sense of powerlessness or not having control of their destiny. Thus, Capacity Asset Building and the Community Empowerment Model drove this partnership as these models are a means to sustain their own interventions.    

intervention:  Various La Crosse partners with youth and Elders of Pine Ridge developed and implemented leadership training camps. The camps provide hands on experiential learning for students. Youth learned how to conduct needs assessments, identify priority areas, establish plans to address issues and present to the Elders.

implications for practice: By working with a community instead of for a community through the use of community empowerment models effective and sustainable partnerships can be developed. This intervention has further developed into sustainable programming that better assess and measure long-term health disparities as well as improved health outcomes using indigenous resources and collaborations.