Every Tuesday night for eight weeks last spring, a group of 17 women met at George Washington High School at 193rd street and Audubon in Washington Heights to learn about diet and exercise. At 5:30 p.m., the hour in which most women in this mostly Dominican neighborhood are home preparing dinner for their families, they begin a two-hour class that teaches them how to live healthier by making informed choices. The class called Healthy Choices is a collaboration between George Washington High School, Generations+/ Northern Manhattan Health Network, the Cornell University Cooperative Extension in New York City and the Northern Manhattan Community Voices Collaborative, a program of the Center for Community Health Partnerships at Columbia University Medical Center.
The class is composed of mothers, aunts, and grandmothers of students attending George Washington High School and four George Washington High School parent coordinators. The majority of them are from the Dominican Republic and for many their primary motivation is to help their families become healthier.
“I want to learn to eat healthier, this way I can teach my children how to eat healthy, said Marianita Loja, a 41-year old mother. Jeanette Garcia, 15, who is attending the class with her mother, explained “I decided to take these classes because of all the health issues in my family and to find ways to become healthier.”
For Nelia Polanco, a parent coordinator, her interest in the class is to help the students at George Washington High School, “This class is very important and interesting for me. It is important for the children. If you have children who have good nutrition, they live better. I see children who eat poorly and they lack energy. I am worried about these situations. I want to motivate their parents to learn how important it is to have children who eat right.”
At the George Washington High School, there is neither a state-of-the-art gym filled with treadmills and elliptical machines, or a fancy kitchen available for their classes. For cooking lessons, they bring in an electric burner that plugs into the classroom’s only electrical outlet. All the teaching, cooking, and exercising are done in the same classroom. Gloria Moral, a community educator for the Cornell Cooperative Extension, leads the nutrition and cooking classes and various guest instructors lead the exercise and specialty workshops.
“I know they like the class because they keep coming back every week,” said Gloria. “No body is making them come, they want to learn new healthy habits. There is a real difference between this class and other classes I teach, all the women in this class have a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and their commitment is unwavering, it comes from wanting to be here, not because they have to.”
Classes, which are conducted in Spanish, start with an hour lesson on nutrition, move into a half-hour hands-on cooking demonstration, and end with 30-minutes of exercise. In the nutrition classes, the women learn about the importance of including fresh fruits and vegetables into their diet. Specifically, they learn about eating non-starchy vegetables, such as broccoli and spinach, two non-typical vegetables for residents of the Dominican Republic.
“It is more than about healthy eating, it’s about changing their lifestyles,” said Yisel Alonzo, program coordinator for the Northern Manhattan Community Voices Collaborative. “Most of the women immigrated from agricultural countries. The foods they had access to were organic, straight from the farm. They also had more physical labor which kept them active, and of course, a less stressful environment. It was simply a different lifestyle. In America, they are exposed to fast and processed foods, less physical activity, and more stress. Learning to eat right is filled with a lot of questions about what to keep from their old culture and what aspects of the American culture they should incorporate. It’s a tough job.”
“To learn and apply is hard,” said Dersa Gonzales, a parent coordinator. “I need to learn to be more disciplined. It’s something that takes time. I am trying to eat more vegetables and fruit.”
By learning nutrition basics, the women now have a clearer sense of how to make healthier choices. Martha Zaldivar, a mother of a 12 and 15 year-old, learned the value of properly measuring food and reducing the amount of oil she uses when cooking. “My family doesn’t really notice when I use less oil but I have noticed they have more energy,” she said. “They have noticed I’ve lost weight.”
Maria Hidalgo, a 45-year-old mother explained, “There were many important things I never could understand, how to read the nutrition labels, the different food groups- the food pyramid, about carbohydrates, fibers, and minerals found in foods. Now I feel confident in what I have learned.”
Teaching balance is an important part of the class and by engaging in 30-minutes of exercise, the participants learn that nutrition and exercise work together to build a healthy body.
During the eight-weeks, they plugged in a portable radio and learned the art of salsa dancing as they moved their upper and lower bodies from side to side, turned, and kept up with the clave beat of the salsa music. Almyra Ayos, their instructor, felt that teaching salsa was the perfect way of integrating flexibility and strength training into a culturally familiar activity.
“I would like to think that by offering a dance class in salsa, the women not only learn the basic steps and rules, but can have fun. They also learn to make the connection between nutritional health and exercise, and motivate themselves – using music they enjoy – to move their bodies and to stay physically and mentally fit,” stated Almyra. “Dance works wonders, not just for what it does for the body, but what is does for the heart and mind.”
Miguelina Garicia, whose daughter attends George Washington High School exclaimed, “the Salsa class is fun and interesting for me. As soon as I began to dance, I forgot about my stresses and go home energetic and tense-free.”
Since its inception in 2003 over 50 women have participated in the class and 40 received certificates of achievement from the Cornell University Extension Service. Last Tuesday, 17 more women completed the class and received their certificate of achievement. New classes will begin in the fall of 2005. To register for the class or for more information, contact Yisel Alonzo at (212) 304-7030.
One participant said, “You can’t even imagine how much these classes have had an effect on my daily life. For example, before the course, and I’m embarrassed to share, I used to consume the same amount of calories you’re supposed to eat in three days in one day. Now, I no longer eat that way, I eat healthier and not as much.”