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Community Stories

Let's Talk about Protection

The National Network of Health Mediators (NNHM) of Bulgaria worked with Roma parents in a segregated neighborhood to address the problem with unvaccinated children. The NNHM goal was to take the children to the general practitioners who administer the vaccinations but also to convince the parents that the vaccine-preventable diseases are dangerous; to give them “easy to swallow” information on the vaccines and to answer their fears concerning vaccination.

The Banyan Tree Grows

Through the development of a comprehensive youth education model, OCAPICA works to improve the health of Pacific Islander communities in Orange County, California. Data shows that Pacific Islanders have high rates of obesity, alcohol and drug use, as well significant levels of poverty and low rates of education attainment. In partnership with Anaheim Union High School District, OCAPICA developed a pipeline program providing in-school and after-school activities to support the development of students and families.

Newton Bike Master Plan

When the Healthy Harvey Coalition (HHC) received a Healthy Communities Initiative (HCI) Grant from the Kansas Health Foundation, the coalition prioritized active transportation as our goal. We partnered with the City of Newton, Kansas (population 19,117), Harvey County, USD 373, and the ReNewton Bicycle Initiative (RBI) to complete a Bike Master Plan (BMP) for the city.

Our Selves, Our Daughters

Our Selves Our Daughters (Our Daughters for short) is a community-initiated project that uses a dialogue-based model to address Female Genital Cutting (FGC) by exploring the many factors that support or detract from carrying out the procedure, addressing health impacts, and supporting informed decision-making that can lead to prevention.  Our Daughters engages with immigrant and refugee women, men and youth from FGC-affected communities living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. We utilize an iterative process that involves community-based research and education.

Soups and Sweets Culinary Training Program

Jewish Family & Children's Service designed the "Soups and Sweets" culinary training program to provide young adults with special needs an opportunity to gain marketable, transferable food service skills. The goal of the program is to increase paid employment opportunities for individuals with developmental disabilities. Limited training opportunities exist for employment in the food services field. Soups and Sweets addressed this deficiency by establishing a training and internship program.

Insurgency against Food Insecurity

Our group (McMinn Living Well), the Athens-McMinn Family YMCA with various departments of the Cities of Athens, Englewood, and Etowah; and with Starr Regional Medical Center, McMinn County Dept. of Health, and Cherokee Health Systems has constructed 7 community gardens throughout the county, 1 community orchard to drastically decrease the number of food deserts found in our communities that lie near low income housing. These gardens have various methods to reach the same goal of eradicating food deserts. Some of the gardens are pantry gardens that provide fresh veggies to food pantries.

Stand and Serve

Stand & Serve works with schools, families, and the community of Maricopa County, Arizona, to cultivate safety, equality and respect as norms for all.  Their goal is to prevent homelessness, child abuse, violence, substance use, oppression, depression, suicide, and more - BEFORE they begin.

Charter Tool Box

The Charter for Compassion seeks to make compassionate action “go viral” in the hearts and minds of communities globally by working with them to address their most pressing needs. We view compassion as a verb, moving beyond empathy to identify problems and act on solutions. November 2014, we launched the Charter Tool Box after a 9‐month process engaging 150 of our grass roots community organizers to learn what they needed in order to create viable action plans that would bring about pronounced change in their locales.

Grandmothers Growing Mushrooms for Income and Nutrition – Uganda, Africa

St. Francis Health Care Services, located in Njeru Town Council near the Source of the Nile in Uganda, is an HIV/AIDS non-government organization established in 1998. St. Francis Health Care Services recognized that many HIV positive children in the Buikwe District of Kampala were suffering from nutrition-related illnesses. So, they set out to establish a child rehabilitation centre for extremely ill children with HIV. Following the treatment and nutritional support, many of them were able to recover in a month or two, but still faced the challenge of proper feeding back home.

Downtown Dollars

The Downtown Dollars program was created to support "buying local” in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.  The program provided Downtown Dollars at a discount of 50% of their face value to shoppers in the Ardmore community, and the Downtown Dollars could be spent at local Ardmore businesses.  $15,000 Downtown Dollars were released in the community in May 2010, generating, in five months, total sales of $19,000+ at 47 local businesses.

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