A Process for Valuing the Work in the Backyard Initiative

By Janice Barbee, Cultural Wellness Center

When the Backyard Initiative began three years ago, residents of the neighborhoods of Central, Corcoran, East Phillips, Midtown Phillips, Phillips West, Powderhorn Park, and Ventura Village were invited to a meeting to look at Allina”'s plans for improving the health of the residents. One of the central messages of that meeting was that community residents need to be active participants in that planning and in the implementing of any health-improvement projects. People are tired of programs that are done for them, or to them, or on their behalf. People want to present their own ideas based on their own experiences. People want to participate in projects that involve and impact what they care most about, what they most value. And the evaluation process for reflecting on the learning and identifying and assessing the accomplishments must be owned and implemented primarily by the participants themselves. Only then can the process support improvement of the projects and help others in the community to learn how not to repeat the same mistakes and to build upon what residents have developed.

Citizen Health Action Teams (CHATs) have been implemented in the Backyard area over the past year, and CHAT members are now going through a reflection process to harvest what they have learned, what they have achieved, and what they will do differently going forward to most effectively improve the health of the community.… Read the rest “A Process for Valuing the Work in the Backyard Initiative”