After launching the South Los Angeles Building Healthy Communities campaign last month, a number of local organizations have teamed with the California Endowment on a 10-year strategic plan to address quality-of-life issues in the South Figueroa and Vermont-Manchester corridors.

“The endowment wants to be a partner with organizations on the ground in moving forward with the set of 10 broadly defined community health outcomes,” said Charles Fields, senior program officer of the California Endowment, a private health foundation that supplies grants to community-based organizations throughout the state.

The goals include “kids having health insurance, families being connected to primary care physicians, help promoting land use, which in a lot of community’s minds means homes being located next to schools, parks, [and] public transportation,” Fields said. “Less violence in homes and neighborhoods, increasing school attendance, options for young people to participate in [and] youth development activities.”

Organizers say the goal is to take a policy and systemic change approach to improving environmental and socioeconomic conditions that act as barriers to health in the community.

“For children to do well, their families have to do well and for families to do well, their communities have to do well,” Fields said. “It’s going to take a diversity of players to come together around the table to be able to improve the health of our communities. And when I say diversity, I mean a diversity of nonprofit organizations, faith-based communit[ies], government agencies [and] progressive businesses.”

Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) is one of more than 30 organizations that has participated in both phases of the initiative, developing grant proposals — and identifying potential strategies.

“Our focus … is on the emerging green economy, tax and fiscal reform, and other workforce development strategies that eliminate the structural barriers to economic and social opportunities for low income and communities of color like South Los Angeles,” said SCOPE Executive Director Marilyn Johnson. “We would also want to see an emphasis on eliminating poverty by connecting the health outcomes to the environment and to improving workforce development policies so that residents can access family supporting jobs as well as have access to adequate health care and a safer and cleaner environment.”

The Vermont-Slauson Economic Development Corporation simply wants “to be a part of the planning committee and a part of the effort toward building a healthy community,” said President Marva Battle-Bey. “What we are working toward is generating a plan that will lead to a healthier South Los Angeles through various policy initiatives, programs and education in our community.”

Pete White, of the L.A. Community Action Network, hopes to see previous unfulfilled promises met. “After 1992, the Vermont corridor was supposed to have world-class grocery stores by now, [retail] stores, jobs, and affordable housing,” he said. “But none of those things ever manifested. It became clear that those were unfulfilled promises.”

“Hopefully we’ll see a pushing of resources from the California Endowment into South Los Angeles and activate other resources and greater attention to the needs of South L.A.,” White added. “We’re hoping that processes such as these can leverage other interests and other dollars and if not leverage them on their own be used as a tool by which other organizations can say, ‘Well government, if the California Endowment can invest in this community you should definitely be at the table for the next 40 years.’”

Each of the 30 organizations will work until February to develop a community action plan. After gathering input from community residents and stakeholders — such as schools, local businesses and neighborhood councils — by way of kick-off events, monthly community meetings and door-to-door surveys, the planning committee will draft recommendations and ways in which they can be carried out based on community responses but still using the 10 outcomes given by the endowment as its base. They will then present them to the endowment for consideration. Once the endowment’s board has chosen which plans and organizations to fund, each will focus on a set of outcomes that are most important and manageable.

Currently an interim planning committee is in place, a fully seated one will be decided upon next month. It will be “a body that really represents the community,” said Sonya Vasquez, Community Health Councils’ program director. “We are collecting applications to make sure that this body represents the community in terms of geography and services that they have needs for. We want to have youth on it and seniors.”

First steps have already been taken. On Aug. 15, a mix of about 175 residents and members of community organizations gathered at the Expo Center to discuss what it means to have a healthy community. They drew up a list of those things, and determined how they could be involved. Some likely to be addressed are affordable housing, better jobs, clean air, parks and playgrounds, walkable streets and healthier food options.

The South Figueroa Corridor and Vermont-Manchester project areas are just two of 14 communities that will be addressed by the endowment’s strategic vision plan.

“We will stay connected throughout the 10-year process, being able to provide support in all the ways they need, including financial resources, staff support, all the things we can do as an organization to make these communities successful,” said Fields. “And we know there will be bumps along the road. … If it was easy, it would have already been done. We are in it for the long run.”