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Resident Leadership Academies
Resident Leadership Academies (RLAs) are multi-week training programs for San Diego County residents who want to learn how to improve their local communities. Training sessions focus on topics such as community leadership, crime prevention and safety, land use and active transportation, and healthy food systems.
Residents learn skills and best practices to address the issues that most affect their communities, and they work alongside their neighbors to help improve quality of life where they live. Upon graduation, attendees have new knowledge and access to a support network to help them lead community improvement projects.
RLA Updates and Opportunities
Many individuals and organizations are involved in Resident Leadership Academies across the County. The latest updates can be found on social media.
RLA Curriculum
Those who would like to facilitate an RLA can find the Facilitator/Train the Trainer and Participant materials below. The RLA Curriculum consists of a Participant Manual, modifiable PowerPoints, and various templates and handouts. The curriculum covers subjects such as Community Building Principles, Social Determinants of Health, Land Use and Community Planning, and more.
The County of San Diego currently has two approved RLA curriculums available. For groups funded for a particular RLA session or project, the version of the curriculum to be used will be determined by your funder (see links below). For all other groups, either version, or elements from both, may be used for the trainings.
- 1st Edition Curriculum
1st edition curriculum covers resident-driven community improvement efforts, including community building principles, neighborhood assessment activities and strategies for stakeholder engagement. - 2nd Edition Curriculum
2nd edition curriculum expands on the 1st edition to include embedded activities, reflection questions and content on smoke-free environments and climate change.
Additional RLA Curriculum
- Heat Risk Education Curriculum
The Heat Risk Education Curriculum is a set of PowerPoints and facilitator guides meant to support community leaders and residents involved in community engagement work. The curriculum covers strategies for communicating about global warming and heat risk to the community to motivate behavior change, and covers topics such as global warming, heat illnesses, at-risk groups, prevention, and taking action.
RLA Resources & Opportunities
View the Community Health Improvement Partner's Resident Leadership Academy page for the latest on meetings and trainings.
Bi-Monthly RLA Council Meetings
Meetings to provide additional training, discuss RLA updates, and to engage with other RLA practitioners. Anyone in the RLA network (graduates/residents, facilitators, CBOs and agencies supporting RLA) is welcome and encouraged to attend.
Technical Assistance (TA) for RLA Practitioners
TA is provided by the County to any RLA Practitioner involved with RLAs. TA may consist of assistance with planning of future RLAs, and development, refining, and implementation of Community Improvement Projects (CIPs), for example. For groups funded for a particular RLA session or project, the TA provider will be determined by your funder.
RLA Network Supplemental Training Workshops for Current RLA Practitioners
Supplemental trainings are available to anyone in the RLA network (graduates/residents, facilitators). These trainings focus on expanding leadership skills and offering opportunities for current RLA practitioners to engage with one another. The supplemental trainings may cover, but are not limited to, such topics as: Presentation Skills, Meeting Facilitation, and/or Applying for Resources.
New Facilitator Training/Train the Trainer Seminars
Seminar participants attend 3-4 full days of training, which consist of a detailed review of the curriculum, facilitation practice and tips for RLA planning and coordination. One or more new facilitator trainings per year will be offered through 2019.
Contact us for additional information on any of the resources listed above, or to learn about RLAs happening in your community.
RLA Success Stories
SAY San Diegos Family Cooking Club Brings a School Community Together Around Food
Shannon Stracener, Program Manager of SAY San Diego
On Friday afternoons, families excitedly gather all their fresh produce and ingredients for the week’s Family Cooking Club recipe; they circle around their computers together to learn, cook, and have fun!
Family Cooking Club began in 2019 at Field Elementary School in the San Diego Unified School District as an on-campus, six-week series funded by a mini-grant award to SAY San Diego for their Field Healthy Start program from Berry Good Food. Grant dollars helped purchase food and supplies, but the program thrived because of the partnership with Berry Good Food volunteers, who led the cooking classes, and parents, who helped prep, clean, and welcome families. Produce for the weekly recipes was picked directly from the school garden right outside the classroom where Family Cooking Club was being held.
SAY San Diego sought out funding to bring Family Cooking Club to Field Elementary School as a way to build upon the robust garden program there, by incorporating after-school family engagement into the amazing learning students were doing during the school day.
From the beginning, the mission of Family Cooking Club was to increase families’ intake of fruits and vegetables, and to educate them about the role fruits and vegetables play in healthy eating through weekly cooking classes. The vision of Family Cooking Club is healthy and thriving families and communities. And, that mission and vision remain today!
Fast forward to the 2021-2022 school year, Family Cooking Club is going strong, with a few minor changes. Rather than in-person classes, families join via Zoom, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since families are cooking from home, they pick up their household’s bag of ingredients before each meeting, along with a binder containing the day’s recipe and nutrition information for the produce of the week.
As the cooking club starts, the students eagerly unpack their bag of fragrant fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Then, together with the experts from Berry Good Food and Healthy Kids, Happy Planet, families start cooking, with SAY San Diego staff as their sous chef and facilitator!
Family Cooking Club creates meaningful and lasting impacts for families and the community. All of the youth participants shared that they liked eating vegetables after being a part of Family Cooking Club!
One family shared, “Our family’s favorite part about Family Cooking Club was watching my child’s confidence grow and my child eating new vegetables.”
A beautiful and unplanned outcome of Family Cooking Club was the creation of a Food Pantry by Field Elementary School parents for their community. They saw a need within their community and rallied together with the support of SAY San Diego, Berry Good Food, and Specialty Produce. In just a few months, 75 individuals were able to access fresh fruits, vegetables, and other food items because of this grassroots effort.
Now that SAY San Diego knows that Family Cooking Club is successful both virtually and in-person, they are looking for additional community partnerships to keep the momentum going by bringing more sessions to Field Elementary School and other schools.
To become involved or collaborate with Family Cooking Club, please contact Shannon Stracener, SAY San Diego Program Manager at sstracener@saysandiego.org.
Each year San Diego County Childhood Obesity Initiative (COI) releases a Request for Applications for mini-grants addressing policy, system, or environmental changes in support of healthy eating and active living. This year, COI had 17 applicants with a request for over $75,000. While funding typically covers 2-3 projects, the COI was able to fund 8 mini-grant projects this year thanks to a generous gift from the Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan.