Community Action at New Roads is more than just words. In the Workshop for Social, Economic and Ecological Action students study, in depth, the pressing issues and challenges facing our communities and our planet. They then are expected to put their knowledge to work through active engagement in the cause, or causes, of their choice.

“HIV AIDS Turns Twenty Eight”

This Workshop, led by teacher Mario Johonson, is a peer education program designed to teach students to take responsibility for their sexual health and then to teach others to do the same.  First, students participate in an intensive, all-day training at Common Ground, the largest HIV AIDS action community action center on the Westside of Los Angeles, learning about sexual health, the role of drugs and alcohol in sexual health, sexually-transmitted diseases, and disease prevention through lectures, role-playing games, question and answer sessions, and testing.  Once they successfully complete the training, they become certified peer counselors.  To date, students In Mario’s Workshop have counseled students at New Roads, at Santa Monica High School, and at Animo Charter High School in Inglewood.

Human Rights Watch

Students in this Workshop have formed a New Roads Student Task Force under the umbrella of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights.  Co-taught by teacher Jueun Hong and alumni-parent Tricia Flumenbaum, this year’s Workshop began the year with a focus on International Human Rights issues, especially Darfur and the use of child soldiers.  By working as a cohesive group to effect change, students have organized a school-wide Human Rights fundraiser called "Penny Wars.” Each student has a specific and important role within the group, through which they are developing themselves as passionate, responsible, and accountable members of the global community. The first semester will culminate with a student-organized "Human Rights Workshop Day” to raise school-wide awareness regarding the use of child soldiers.

New Roads Mentor Program

Academic Counselor, Allyson Daniels, was inspired to create her Mentor Program after acting as a Big Sister for over a decade.  High School students in Allyson’s Workshop mentor students at the Elementary School campus, working with them on a weekly basis.  Currently, a group of mentors is working with elementary students to create a collection of handmade butterflies to send to the Houston Holocaust Museum as part of the Museum’s Butterfly Project, an exhibit scheduled to open in early 2013,  of 1.5 million butterflies representing the 1.5 million children lost in the Holocaust.  The Butterfly Project was inspired by the book I Never Saw Another Butterfly, an anthology of poems and illustrations by children from the Terezin concentration camp in the former Czechoslovakia.