Five young people trained as health ambassadors by the Dream Resource Center, a project of the UCLA Labor Center, will be kicking off a statewide wellness tour focused on immigrant health beginning Saturday, March 25, and continuing through May. The group, made up of students from CSU Los Angeles, UCLA, UC Berkeley and Bakersfield College, will be coordinating community health-related events in Sacramento, Bakersfield, San Bernardino and Long Beach. Community members will be offered free services, including health screenings, health care enrollment services, and workshops on immigrant rights and educational advocacy.
Our Voice, Our Health: Immigrant Wellness Tour is a statewide initiative of the Dream Resource Center aimed at uplifting immigrant communities and providing opportunities and resources to regions with limited or scarce access to health resources and programs.
The college students are on eight-month-long Health Ambassador Fellowships that provide them with leadership training.
“I feel very committed to the success of our Health Ambassador Program because I know that our communities face many health challenges,” said Marianna Garcia, a project coordinator at the UCLA Labor Center. “But I also realize we have a lot of local assets and power, so by placing fellows in their own communities, these health interventions will be more successful.”
The tour is co-sponsored by Asian Americans Advancing Justice-LA, Clinica Monseñor Romero, United Farm Workers Foundation, Brown Issues, and the Inland Empire, Immigrant Coalition for Immigrant Justice.