Youth mobilize for walkability audit, make Eastern Coachella Valley communities more safe

Youth Leadership Institute is conducting a walkability audit in Coachella today with the help of local young people dedicated to making improvements throughout their communities. 

Check out our live interview moments after the audit:

Program manager at YLI, Paulina Rojas, said the audit is made possible through a grant from SCAG’s Go Human Mini-Grants Program, which provides funding to non-profits and community-based organizations to implement local traffic safety projects.

“We were awarded this money to do an infrastructure assessment in the Eastern Coachella Valley, including 6th Street in Coachella and unincorporated communities,” said Rojas.

A group of about ten young people are using part of their summer break to walk along a predetermined route and document any issues they may encounter. 

The goal is to identify, from a young person’s point of view, any failing or unfinished infrastructure that requires renovation. 

“The infrastructure is not working right now in a season that’s sort of low, imagine the stress that that puts on the infrastructure when kids are being dropped off or going to after school activities– the buses and everything,” said Rojas. 

The group will be keeping an eye out for specific deficiencies during their walk. 

“We’re going to do different ratings of things like visibility, accessibility, accessibility for folks with different abilities, for the elderly, and also do folks feel safe?,” said Rojas. 

Leslie Correa, who was raised in the Eastern Coachella Valley, currently attends UC Berkeley but decided to come home to participate in the walkability audit.

“I always thought it was normal because you go to North Shore and they don’t even have sidewalks, so it’s like I was lucky to have sidewalks in Mecca,” said Correa. 

She explained that going off to college in Berkeley was an eye-opening experience. 

“They have so much. Public transportation, like even just like sidewalks and things like that like they are so taken care of. It’s so accessible. It’s a walkable city, like I don’t have a car over there like I walk over there, but like over here I literally have to take the bus to school or else I cannot get to school because I cannot walk to school from my house,” said Correa. 

Leslie Correra is not alone in regards to her struggles having regular access to safe and efficient pedestrian-friendly transportation and public transportation in the Eastern Coachella Valley.

“A lot of them [youth] use the Bird scooters because sometimes the bus isn’t reliable, or they don’t have anyone that can give them a ride, or they just live too far away from the school to actually walk there," said Katy Torres, program coordinator at Youth Leadership Institute.

The data collected from the walkability audit could then be later used for further advocacy aimed at encouraging action from city leadership to address infrastructure problems identified by young community members. 

“It’s not only a way to create data in a community that lacks it, but also a way to empower youth in a way that is very accessible with just a notepad and walking,” said Rojas. 

“A lot of times when we’re doing advocacy electeds or other people will tell us ‘we don’t have data on this, we first need to do this study’ and then the resources will come and we’re like ‘hey, let’s just have the youth lead in creating this data and advocating for their communities because youth people are often left out of these crucial spaces,” Rojas added. 

She explained that Youth Leadership Institute will then let the youth decide how to move forward with the information they collect, whether it’s publishing it or organizing it into a report  that is then given to elected officials.   

Watch News Channel 3 at 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., and 6:30 p.m. to learn more on what the local youth find during their walkability audit.