By Jenny Griffin, Storyteller – America SCORES Bay Area
On May 17th and 18th, America SCORES Bay Area hosted their first ever wellness fairs, bringing together service providers and community organizations to provide health resources to their community of poet-athletes and their families. The wellness fairs were made possible with funds through the 2024 SDDT Healthy Communities Support Grants.
Floods of energized San Francisco kids, fresh off the soccer fields from a season-ending “Game Day”, streamed into the America SCORES health fair tents at the Crocker Amazon Soccer Fields and Civic Center Plaza on a bright windy May weekend in San Francisco. By the end of the events, SCORES had distributed nearly 2,000 lbs of fruits and vegetables, free water bottles, crates of healthy snacks, coloring books, and colored pencils. Kaiser Permanente staff encouraged healthy eating and engagement through fun physical activities; an on-site physician offered blood pressure and blood sugar checks; and the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank provided information about their services and CalFresh enrollment. Meanwhile, participants happily hula hooped, played soccer tennis and spike ball, competed in jumping jack competitions, and even did yoga. And soaring above it all was a giant inflatable “Canzilla” (which looked a whole lot like a Coke can), embellished with the word “Diabetes” in Coke’s familiar script, alerting attendees of both the hazards of too much sugar and the source of funding for the Wellness Fairs – the San Francisco Sugary Drinks Distributor Tax (SF Soda Tax).
America SCORES Bay Area is an out-of-school-time program that supports whole child development through the teamwork of soccer, the creativity of poetry, and the compassion of service-learning. SCORES serves students at 113 locations spread from San Rafael to Watsonville. In San Francisco, SCORES operates at 30 locations, primarily serving students at under resourced schools. Many SCORES’ participants, or poet-athletes, live in neighborhoods with limited access to healthy food and recreational spaces, including the Tenderloin, Visitacion Valley, and Bayview-Hunters Point in San Francisco.
SCORES operates year-round soccer teams, typically based at the students’ schools. Participation in these teams fosters a strong sense of belonging, providing ample time for physical activity and social engagement. Soccer practices are designed to be comprehensive experiences that integrate nutrition education, skill development drills, fair play principles, and teamwork exercises. Weekend “Game Days” allow the teams to come together for friendly competition. During the fall season, SCORES teams engage in writing workshops to foster creative self-expression and enhance literacy skills. SCORES poet-athletes develop their unique voices, share personal stories and experiences, create original poems, and gain confidence through the powerful medium of poetry. In the spring, they become agents of change in their communities, conducting research and identifying a challenge they address through team-based community service projects.
America SCORES organized the Health Eating Active Living (HEAL) Community Wellness Fairs to promote health and wellness among low-income youth and their families and to help reduce health disparities through access to services and education. Funds from the San Francisco Sugary Drinks Distributor Tax (SF Soda Tax), a 1-cent-per-ounce fee on the initial distribution of drinks with added sugar, enabled SCORES and multiple other organizations to host HEAL events.
Ida Kutechko, SCORES Director of Institutional Giving, says SCORES and HEAL made for a natural fit. “We have the experience providing healthy lifestyle programming through soccer and our weaving of nutrition into conversations about what it means to be healthy. This grant allowed us to expand on that and leverage our reach to provide additional resources to our community.
“We deliberately took a holistic approach in designing the event, including physical activities, healthy snacks, and health resources, and we’re emphasizing how incorporating multiple small changes can lead to better physical health. We’re connecting with other community organizations, like Kaiser and the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, to bring resources to our poet-athletes and their families. Parents and caregivers, siblings, extended family, and even the people you see daily are essential to maintaining the health and wellbeing of kids.”
Andres Marin, MD, a family medicine doctor, SCORES parent, and a SCORES board member helped out at the Civic Center and Crocker Amazon wellness fairs. “The event captured the essence of community engagement and the importance of promoting health and wellness,” he said, adding that the screenings prompted some serious conversations about health and lifestyle modifications among both SCORES kids and their families. “I’ve always felt it’s important for kids to see the adults in their lives think about and put energy into their own health and wellness and to model healthy habits.”
Neelesh Kenia, MD, Chief of Outpatient Pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco and a SCORES board member, joined Marin at the Crocker Amazon fair. “It was an amazing way to connect with the SCORES community,” he enthused. “I loved watching the kids talk with our clinical educators as they learned about healthy lifestyles in a fun, interactive way. They loved telling us about their favorite healthy foods but were shocked to learn how much sugar was in many of their favorite drinks,” he said.
“Beyond the screenings, just being at the event was really fun,” concluded Marin. “On both days my kid was off running around playing soccer, the atmosphere was fun and festive, and I got to connect with a lot of happy kids and families.”
Image Credit: America SCORES Bay Area. Poet-athletes visit the Kaiser Permanente health education tent at the wellness fair.
