News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Friday March 14th 2025
“Bridging Minneapolis” Wins FEAST FUNDING
”˜Bridging Minneapolis,”' the community-arts”' project on both ends of the 24th Street Pedestrian Bridge [see March The Alley, Page 1] recently won the public vote at FEAST, a city-wide arts funding competition. The $1,000 proceeds are being used to move the project forward. Watch The Alley as it unfolds! (Contact Dallas Johnson for information and to share your ideas: dallicious@gmail.com).”
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Update on the Backyard Initiative: BYI Citizen Health Action Teams Update
By Janice Barbee, Cultural Wellness Center
Every month at the Cultural Wellness Center, members from the Backyard Initiative Citizen Health Action Teams, or CHATs, come together to update each other on their activities and talk about common principles and problems in their community building work. Last month, on February 17, CHAT members discussed what it takes to work together and accomplish what they set out to do.
The Backyard Initiative was started two years ago as a community partnership between Allina Hospitals and Clinics and the residents of Phillips, Powderhorn Park, Central, and Corcoran with the goal of improving the health of the community. Most of the work of the Backyard Initiative is carried out within Citizen Health Action Teams, where community members on each team have developed a strategy for improving health and are now in the process of implementing that strategy.
CHAT Leadership in the Community
Elder Atum Azzahir from the Cultural Wellness Center, the facilitator of the meeting, explained to the CHAT members that the Commission on Health, a body of primarily community members from each CHAT, will be looking at the work of each CHAT this year in terms of how the work contributes to the health of the whole community and involves people from the community.… Read the rest “Update on the Backyard Initiative: BYI Citizen Health Action Teams Update”
Youth Gather and Grow Solutions in Phillips
By Ruby Levine
In July 2010, the unemployment rate for people ages 16-24 reached 19.1% nationally – it”'s worse in low-income and minority communities. In response, young people here in the Twin Cities are working with the broader community to create solutions.
The Summer of Solutions (SoS) is a two-month summer program building capacity for projects that address social and environmental injustice in Phillips and the Twin Cities as a whole. Last summer, 25 full- and part-time SoS participants gathered in Phillips to work on energy efficiency, bike access, green manufacturing, and urban farming. The initial influx of capacity provided by SoS has led to sustained work throughout the year in the Phillips community and all around the Twin Cities and the program is gearing up for another jolt of energy this summer.
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