Jennifer Jean Louis

For this assignment, I tagged along with my mother to a community event that she usually attends on Wednesdays and at the end, I was lucky to speak to the trainer who trained the class. The trainer (Deborah) I spoke to was a retired strong and beautiful looking lady almost 60 years of age who used to work in a federal well paid field. She allowed me to audio tape her as I asked her various questions to get more information about the program. She became included in this program because she wanted something to do; being retired, she had a lot of time on her hand, so she took training to be a trainer/teacher in the program. She said to be one of the teachers that teach at the various classes in the program the requirements are “certifications” for whatever course that the person is interested in teaching. The course she chose to learn was training to become a fitness instructor, and after she got the certification for that, she got her position.  Healthy start Brooklyn is the name of the organization and it was founded in 2003 through Doula services which helped over 2000 families. The program focuses on mostly women who lives in very under-served community neighborhoods but it’s for parents in general men included. The trainer (Deborah) is directed to train at the places such as Fulton, East New York, Brownsville but the program goes even bigger than just those places it’s for Brooklyn. When this program was put in place it was purely to benefit those people that has no aids in learning how to treat their bodies, how to take care of their kids and just how to live a healthy, safe and informed life. The program is free so once you go on their website (https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/neighborhood-health/healthy-start-brooklyn.page), a person can see the different classes that they have and look at the times and dates and just attend whichever they want or need information on. For whatever class that is chosen only one class per week will occur; for example, the classes the lady mentioned are Dancing through pregnancy, Snap back women, Daddy iron chef, Pregnancy, CPR, Car seat, Yoga/Gym and these classes only happen one day in the week for 8 weeks. Upon attending a person will be required to sign in on a sheet and will receive a MetroCard with two fares when leaving. When people attend the teachers or trainers get paid by the amount of people that attends. Something she (Deborah) mentioned can be better in the program is she would like the classes to happen at least 3 times a week because she sees how much the people enjoy themselves talking to other mothers and building friendships etc… I noticed that not a lot of people attend the classes only around 10 and if more people took the classes serious it would probably have a bigger and better impact on the community.