Jimena Santos recalls hot summers in Roseland throughout her childhood. When she was young, outdoor play with her friends always involved water — running through sprinklers and tossing water balloons to bear the heat. Now, as a high school senior at Roseland University Prep, she mostly stays in her room or goes to the mall to escape the heat.
On Sunday, Oct. 19, she and seven other members of a new extreme heat youth advisory team met for a workshop to learn about urban environments in southwest Santa Rosa and gather data about heat variations in their neighborhood. Sunday’s event was the second in a series of nine monthly workshops for local Latino youths. The series was organized by the Greenbelt Alliance in partnership with Latino Service Providers.
The team is composed of 13 interns between the ages of 18 and 25, who come to the project through Latino Service Providers’ Youth Promotores program, which trains Latino youth to serve as community health workers. The interns are compensated for their time with a stipend funded through a grant from the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation…