Children orgs team up for first time
The Community Health Involvement Project joined the Asian American Tutorial Project for the first time Saturday to teach elementary school students about health issues in addition to offering academic assistance.
Teaching moments · About 200 USC students visit Chinatown every Saturday to tutor elementary school students in English and math. - Photo courtesy of USC Asian American Tutorial Project
About 200 AATP members tutor students at Castelar Elementary School in math and English one-on-one every Saturday. CHIP runs children’s health sites to educate a wide range of students about health topics such as nutrition, exercise and the body.
Jean Doh, the co-coordinator of one of CHIP’s health sites, said the collaboration started because some students are members of both organizations.
“AATP and CHIP are very similar organizations and many students from each organization already knew each other,” Doh said.
After the morning lessons with the AATP members, 12 students from CHIP tutored the kids on a variety of health issues, such as good eating habits and the importance of vitamins.
“We tried to make it a more fun type of learning through a variety of games and drawing exercises,” Doh said. “The main point we tried to communicate to the kids was the importance of a well-balanced diet, which includes a variety of different foods like meat, dairy products, vegetables and fruits.”
Doh said she was surprised at the scale of the event organized by AATP and at the diversity of the AATP’s team, which included students from USC, UCLA and Occidental College.
“It was a fun experience,” Doh said. “I had no idea that AATP had so many members, but it’s awesome to see volunteers from so many different schools working towards a single goal.”
AATP Administrative Director Peony Khoo said AATP would definitely like to have CHIP come back to coordinate with them each semester or each year.
“The event went really well and the kids learned a lot from the CHIP team,” Khoo said. “It’s important for them to learn about health and good nutrition because these are not things that they learn in school.”
AATP has been traveling to Chinatown to tutoring children from Castelar for about 41 years.