University of California San Diego student Arianna Chávez has spent the past two years connecting San Diego residents with information about COVID-19 housing, food and health resources through eye-catching videos and photos on Instagram.
Chávez created the Instagram account San Diego Free Resources or @bastaladisparidad, to share information about resources provided by non-profit groups, schools, and local governments.
He hopes to address what he saw as a disconnect between available resources and people’s knowledge or access to them.
“I never would have imagined there were so many resources in San Diego County,” said Chávez. “I think some people don’t know, that’s why my page is so important.”
The account’s followers have grown from a few hundred when she started it in 2019 to nearly 7,000 in recent months. The Instagram page had 25,000 page views in May, he said.
She attributes the growth to residents who share her posts with their followers. Chávez plans to continue expanding on other social media platforms, to target young adults, because there are not enough organizations reaching out to them to provide them with services, he said.
Some of their posts raise awareness of “menstrual poverty,” referring to the inability to access menstrual products, while others list food distribution locations and scholarship programs for high school and college students.
Food and housing are problems for many students.
Surveys at four-year community colleges and universities across the country have found that at least 45 percent of students experience limited or uncertain access to food. And a 2019 survey by the nonprofit Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice found that 56 percent of college students are homeless.
About 10 percent of San Diego’s homeless population – or 223 people – are youth under the age of 24, according to the 2020 annual count from the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless.
Chávez grew up in Douth Bay and was touched by the stories of people who needed help, she said.
The 22-year-old, a biology senior at the University of California, San Diego, spends about 20 hours a week gathering resources and designing posts for her Instagram page. Posts range from color text images with a sentence or two about a free program or service, to videos explaining how residents can get free admission to museums, ride public transportation for free, and get vaccinated.
Chávez focuses on resources that could benefit communities of color in the South Bay and some North County cities with large Latino populations.
“The most important thing is to minimize health disparities,” said Chávez. “Everything I publish in some way is linked to health.”
Arianna Chavez, 22, sitting in her garden at her home in Bonita. Chávez created an Instagram page during the pandemic that promotes free resources for underserved communities in San Diego County.
(Kristian Carreon/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Last year Chávez launched an unpaid internship program for high school and college students who want to contribute to the page. Each fellow focuses on a health topic and does research on the free resources available.
Scholar Halelujah Temesgen, who studies global health at UCSD, recently highlighted information from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and disproved the false claims about Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.
Intern Sofía Arrizón, a UC Riverside neuroscience student who grew up in Chula Vista, said the page will continue to grow, and she hopes others will be inspired to start something similar in their counties.
“Enough Disparity is an asset to our community,” he said.
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