The REACH (Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health) grant team has been working with residents in its target communities to create a mini-grant program to help shared use policy holders more fully utilize their shared use policy, support leaders of chronic disease self-management workshops, and support other community health-related activities. The funds for the mini-grants were originally earmarked for community organizations throughout the seven REACH neighborhoods. Creating Greater Destinies (CGD), the group formed by PRCHN-trained resident ambassadors, decided collectively to pool those monies to have a bigger, deeper impact within their communities. The funds were transferred to a large community organization with the intention of using the money within the seven REACH neighborhoods to continue work started by the REACH effort after the grant sunsets in September 2018.
Creating Greater Destinies has decided to allocate the funds in three ways:
1) Provide stipends to trained Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP) lay leaders to lead workshops in their neighborhoods. With the logistical support of the licensing agency (Fairhill Partners), these lay leaders will receive the stipend at the completion of a six-week workshop.
CGD and REACH hit a milestone in July when they awarded the first stipend to Christine Lattimore, who organized a community chronic disease self-management workshop at the Hitchcock Center for Women in the Glenville neighborhood. This was the first CDSMP workshop organized on behalf of the Creating Greater Destinies network. NOCA member Stephanie Fallcreek and Fairhill Partners were instrumental in reaching this milestone.
(2) Provide stipends for physical activity programming at shared use sites. Shared use policy-holding entities that have identified funds as a barrier to hosting programming will be able to pay program instructors using these funds. Instructors, ideally, will be from the neighborhood.
(3) Borrowing an idea from Neighborhood Progress, residents of the seven REACH neighborhoods will be able to submit proposals for projects within their neighborhoods. These proposals will be reviewed by a CGD sub-committee, which will then determine which projects receive the small dollar grants. CGD will be responsible for administrating and evaluating success. Ten Applicants have been accepted to receive a mini grant of $500. These grantees will be implementing a variety of activities from teaching skills for extreme couponing and financial literacy to outdoor yoga classes.