Vehicles drove by and honked. One individual danced within the yard. Others dropped balloons and playing cards. Sandi Kendrick’s son was video calling the parade of vehicles passing his mom’s home and crying. Kendrick too.
When folks handed her dwelling in east Vancouver in early January, Kendrick, 65, acknowledged every of the previous college students.
“I knew instantly who they have been. It seems like we left one another yesterday, ”Kendrick mentioned weeks later in a cellphone interview.
When Sandi Kendrick retired from Clark County’s public well being service on New Yr’s Eve, most of Clark County had no clue. She is one among many individuals who made their profession out of creating the county higher in principally nameless methods.
“She’s behind the scenes,” mentioned Gretchen Hoyt, one among Kendrick’s former college students. “Individuals in all probability do not know that their lives have been affected by her.”
Whereas Kendrick’s retirement was not broadly identified, it was an necessary second for the a whole lot of colleagues and youngsters she has labored with as a well being educator over the previous 40 years.
Kendrick’s 4 a long time of labor have targeted on completely different topics, but it surely was the kids she labored with – now adults – who influenced and moved her essentially the most.
Kendrick helped get it began and ran Public Well being’s Reaching, Studying and Educating program, which ran for a few decade within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s. She labored with college students who made up this group who have been often known as REAL kids.
REAL placed on stage performances to show college students about sexually transmitted ailments, contraception, condom use, sexuality, sexual consent, and extra.
The skits have been straight about intercourse in ways in which faculties do not speak about a lot anymore, former REAL children mentioned, however that is why the performances caught on. They have been actual and written in a means that youngsters might determine with.
The theatrical side of REAL was one issue that attracted Gretchen Hoyt, then a Fort Vancouver Excessive Faculty pupil, to this system. Hoyt additionally liked the civic side of REAL Youngsters, which broke up within the early 2000s as a result of cash cuts.
Hoyt was inspired to grow to be a REAL little one in 1997 as a result of she knew somebody who died of HIV / AIDS.
“I’ve to do theater and I’ve to do protected intercourse,” mentioned Hoyt. “It was cool to really feel such as you had a task locally, that you simply had a task in serving to folks.”
Hoyt mentioned REAL kids additionally served as a protected and wholesome surroundings for queer kids and college students who lacked protected areas.
“She was like a second mom to everybody,” Hoyt mentioned of Kendrick.
A careless 14-year-old black lady on the Vancouver Faculty of Arts and Lecturers, Dolly England was one of many youngsters who discovered nice consolation at REAL.
England was persistent in its mission to grow to be a REAL child and joined the group a bit of youthful than many of the college students.
As a pupil at VSAA, England noticed a REAL kids’s efficiency that included a presentation by an area man with HIV. England knew the person via neighborhood theater however did not know he was HIV optimistic till he appeared. After this presentation, she needed to be a REAL child.
England rapidly realized how the physique works and the way sexually transmitted ailments are unfold. She was fascinated with reproductive well being.
“These have been the issues I would not essentially have come throughout as a child via my common curriculum,” mentioned England, 38.
England’s time with REAL kids drove her to a profession in public well being. Kendrick helped England discover school scholarships and alternatives to afford research overseas whereas in school. England even labored with Clark County Public Well being in 2007 and 2008. Kendrick was her first cabin mate.
England now works because the Neighborhood Engagement Program Supervisor for the Oregon Well being Authority.
“I can straight relate the work I did as a youngster to the work I do now,” mentioned England.
George Pobi, a REAL volunteer from 1992 to 2002, took the kids on outside retreats. College students sketched their sketches for performances throughout the retreats.
Pobi mentioned the children referred to as Kendrick “Momma Sandia”. She managed to succeed in college students as a result of she was “approachable, kind-hearted, and straightforward to talk,” mentioned Pobi.
Kendrick mentioned she took care of each pupil.
“I used to be a proud father or mother to every one among them,” mentioned Kendrick.
REAL was a chance for teenagers to get solutions about sexual well being from their friends, however much more so, Kendrick believes it actually modified pupil lives.
“There have been children who actually discovered themselves within the group,” mentioned Kendrick. “They may see their future as a optimistic one as a result of they have been within the group.”
Kendrick mentioned the children had modified their lives too. She realized what college students wanted to learn about sexual well being, however Kendrick usually realized by no means to underestimate youth.
“Your views are a lot broader than we give them credit score for,” she mentioned.
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