Kylie Repasy
Hometown: Hardyston, New Jersey
Educational background: Cornell University Class of 2012; Biology and Society/Health and Nutrition
Host Site: Duval County YMCA
What is your title and role at your host site? I’ll be serving as the Physical Activity Educator with the YMCA. In this position I’ll be responsible for creating lesson plans on physical fitness and healthy behaviors that will be distributed and implemented at all of the YMCA’s after-school programs in Nassau, Duval, and St. Johns County. I will also be teaching classes on nutrition to all of the students at Tiger Academy Charter School on a weekly basis. Through these and other community outreach efforts I will hopefully be helping to reduce the rates of childhood obesity in Jacksonville.
Why did you join AmeriCorps/National Health Corps? I fell in love with Jacksonville after teaching in a Jacksonville high school for two years through Teach for America. Not only Jacksonville, but I fell in love with teaching and really started to connect the power of education to true and meaningful preventive healthcare. I joined the National Health Corps so that I could stay in Jacksonville and use my skills as a teacher to address the health problems I’ve witnessed in and beyond my classroom. I studied health disparities and nutrition in college and I think I was craving the opportunity to return to that academic passion having developed a more mature perception of what health disparity looks like. I’m excited to be able to connect my academic and career passions as a health educator, all the while learning how to do so successfully.
What are you hoping to gain from your year of service? I’m hoping to interact with Jacksonville in a more nuanced way such that what I’m doing in the community has the potential to enact long-term change vested in a more healthy and aware population. Most importantly, I’m hoping to LEARN how to do this. What I learned as a teacher is that I am still very much a student who’s inspired by people and what they know and do. I’m really excited to become a part of a network of community activists who can teach me how to become a more effective community leader. I’m hoping to grow off the collective passion, knowledge, and experience of this group of corps members.
What are your plans after AmeriCorps service? My plans are to either attend graduate school or a fellowship program with a focus on nutritional epidemiology and obesity research. I hope to be able to connect research and epidemiological experience to community-based education efforts that are exciting and far-reaching.
Where do you envision yourself in 5 years? This is a tough one! But I’m hoping to have graduated from an advanced degree program with a job that allows me to continue to learn while providing me with the opportunity to disseminate that knowledge for the greater good. Mostly, though, I envision myself happy and fulfilled and I’m excited to see how this prediction ultimately fills out, or completely changes, over the course of five years.