Colorful paper decorations adorn the walls of the Richman Community Center and as conversation slowly fills the room, children file in and tutoring begins.
Located on Elm Avenue and adjacent to Richman Park, the Cal State Fullerton Center for Healthy Neighborhoods offers a variety of services for the local community.
CSUF established the Center for Healthy Neighborhoods in 2016, and over the last decade, the community center has continued supporting the residents of Fullerton through free and accessible programs.
For families, the CHN regularly provides case management, counseling and foster care support services.
They also offer parenting workshops, such as Baby Development classes, which are offered in partnership with the CSUF Department of Kinesiology. At these classes, parents learn about nutrition, activity advice and overall development in babies 0-24 months old.
The CHN also offers a number of educational programs, including tutoring for K-12 students, which partners with student interns and paid specialists to offer after-school help across multiple subjects.
The center is an auxiliary service that is part of the College of Health and Human Development, but operates off-campus, so the CHN can work directly with community members.
“We don’t even have an office on campus. So we are at a park on a daily basis,” said CHN Executive Director Iris Aguilar.
According to Egleth Padilla Nuncci, senior outreach program director and community liaison at the CHN, the center was developed out of a desire to increase university presence in community work.
“Sometimes when you just focus on the academic part, you forget what is the human piece,” Nuncci said. “The social impact that you make when you volunteer, when you do an internship, when you interact with families, when you hear their needs, their concerns, when you have that relationship as a mentor, with our little ones, with our students. That can change lives.”
In 2025, the CHN reported that 36 interns provided 2,192 hours of tutoring for 184 K-12 participants.
Students across disciplines and majors can find unpaid internship opportunities with the CHN, as they employ interns to help run tutoring programs, as well as case management interns, human services assistants, health education instructors, computer training and early childhood education interns.
“I didn’t really think I wanted to be a teacher before interning here, but I think it’s not completely out of the loop now,” said Monique Alvarez, third-year child and adolescent studies major, who is interning at CHN to fulfill her CSUF internship graduation requirement.
The CSUF School of Nursing has partnered with the CHN to form “Cafecito with Nurses,” a program that allows residents with health questions to participate in workshops with nursing students.
CSUF Department of Literacy provided a summer reading camp and the Department of Public Health has also partnered with CHN to provide a summer camp and a “Move, Nourish and Thrive” activity that spotlights healthy eating and exercise habits for children.
Located next to the community center is a building owned by Providence-St. Jude.
Aside from its internship opportunities, the CHN’s Resident Leaders Program allows participating community members to assist in the center’s programs, as well as fulfill community needs, strive to offer solutions and create neighborhood projects with striving leadership.
“We are seeing community members, whether they’re adults, kids, older adults, and really, our goal is to improve the community,” Aguilar said.
The CHN hosts monthly community meetings every second Monday beginning at 10 a.m. to prompt communication between residents and local leaders.
During these meetings, the center shares program updates with attendees of the meeting and local speakers will come to share available resources or city updates.