Nonprofit Spotlight: Health Action League
Carita’s core mission is to connect like-minded singles over causes they care about while exposing them to and allowing them to fundraise for nonprofits that support those causes. Part and parcel of this mission is bringing smaller nonprofits to the fore — the ones you may not hear about on social media who are nonetheless doing amazing work, often on a hyper-local scale.
One such nonprofit that Carita’s proud to be partnered with is Health Action League — a New York City-based organization that empowers underserved NYC youth to live healthier lives. They achieve this by providing health and wellness classes at schools as well as youth programs, including yoga, Zumba, boxing, boot camp, and healthy cooking classes, in low-income areas of the city.
Improving The Health Of New York City Youth
Daniel Calder, Founder and Executive Director of Health Action League, was teaching health and wellness classes to young students in Harlem as part of his Masters in Public Health. He realized that many of these students had little to no exposure to healthy eating and exercise. “My ‘aha’ moment came when I was volunteering at several homeless shelters throughout New York City. I was implementing fitness and nutrition programs for the residents and realized that they really did enjoy the classes. The directors at the shelters loved the programs as well, but really didn’t have the time and resources to provide fitness and nutrition programs.”
Daniel knew what he had to do. There was no organization out there that was implementing these types of programs where they were needed most. Daniel had a vision to create a nonprofit that could visit shelters, community centers and other youth programs to provide fun and unique classes that promote self-esteem, fitness and healthy eating. “Once I got home, I ordered a couple of books on how to create a nonprofit, and the rest was history!”
At first, Daniel was teaching the classes on his own. After all, he doesn’t just have an MPH — he’s also a certified personal trainer and black belt in Taekwondo. As the organization grew, however, he started working with professional instructors to provide multiple classes at the same time across the city. Today, Health Action League provides wellness classes at six schools in East Harlem for over 200 students, and they’re already changing lives. 70% of his students have reported that Health Action League classes inspire them to eat healthier and be more physically active, and 73% have said that they feel more confident.
Striving For Growth
But Daniel’s nowhere close to being done. “Health Action League has mainly focused on improving the health of youth in underserved areas of NYC through fitness and nutrition. However, our next phase of growth is to engage their families and the larger communities we work in. We are in the process of developing nutrition workshops for the parents, guardians, and family members of the students we work with.” The idea is that healthy living shouldn’t start and stop at school — it has to extend to the home to have a truly lasting impact. “The workshops will educate participants on how to provide proper nutrition for their children, how to prepare easy and healthy snacks/meals for their children and how they can get their children excited about eating healthy.”
To help him in his mission, Daniel and Health Action League have partnered with Healthy Kids first, a nonprofit that address food insecurity in East Harlem. “We launched a pilot last Spring where we provided a boxed meal for students every Friday afternoon so that their families would have food to enjoy during the weekend. We are in the process of setting up a fundraising event in the spring to specifically support this program. We hope to secure enough funding where we can expand to other schools in East Harlem,” Daniel told us.
Carita is excited to be a part of this journey and help Daniel and Health Action League achieve their goals. Our revolutionary nonprofit fundraising and dating app allows users to meet like-minded people while raising funds and awareness for wonderful organizations like Health Action League. With Carita you can meet NYC singles who put the causes they care about front and center. And don’t worry, we’ll be expanding beyond NYC soon. We want everyone to swipe for what’s right!
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