Youth Service America and UnitedHealthcare Offer Grants for Service-Learning Projects to Address Childhood Obesity

Deadline: October 17, 2011

Youth Service America and UnitedHealthcare have announced the fourth year of the UnitedHealth HEROES program, a service-learning health- literacy program that awards grants to help youth between the ages of 5 and 25 create and implement local, hands-on programs to fight childhood obesity.

The program invites young people in the United States to become "Health Heroes" by learning about childhood obesity, designing programs to address it, and implementing the programs in their communities.

Grants of $500 to $1,000 will be awarded to programs that demonstrate a clear understanding of the health risks associated with childhood obesity; propose creative solutions to fighting obesity in their schools and communities; and can be easily implemented, scaled, and measured. In addition, each grant engages participating youth in service-learning, a teaching and learning strategy that supports student academic achievement and helps students develop their workplace readiness skills. The grants encourage semester-long projects that launch on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service (January 16, 2012) and culminate on Global Youth Service Day (April 20-22, 2012).

Schools, service-learning coordinators, nonprofits, and students in the health professions located in all fifty states and the District of Columbia are eligible to apply.

Visit the YSA Web site for complete program guidelines, an eligibility quiz, and the application as well as "First Responders: Youth Addressing Childhood Obesity Through Service-Leaning," a step-by-step manual that helps youth, parents, teachers, and other volunteers deploy YSA service-learning models to fight childhood obesity in their communities.

Contact:
Link to Complete RFP