Growing Up Healthy, a coalition of organizations and agencies seeking to increase the level of community connectedness experienced by marginalized families with young children in Rice County, is one of three finalists out of over 200 contenders for a $25,000 grant from the Bush Foundation—but they need your help to win it! The winner is selected through public online voting in the InCommons Collaboration Challenge, which ends on December 10. Vote online now to support one of Carleton’s key community partners: http://www.incommons.org/en-us/CollaborationChallenge/finalists
Over the past two years, over a dozen Carleton Academic Civic Engagement (ACE) courses, four Acting in the Community Together (ACT) service programs, and the Carleton football team have all engaged in community collaborations with GUH. For example, ACT volunteers worked with Growing Up Healthy this year to help winterize mobile homes at Viking Terrace and the ACE office partnered with them to set up the Camp Sol youth programs for Latino and Somali youth in Northfield and Faribault. In a Carleton immunology course last year, students prepared materials about mold and asthma—common problems in area mobile homes—and worked with GUH to translate this information and present it to parents and local leaders. This winter alone, five courses will be benefitting from the knowledge and connections of GUH. In addition to partnerships through ACE courses and ACT, Carleton students have done work-study and independent research projects with GUH. They were one of our two community partners for hosting an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in Public Health last year who served as a resource for Carleton students and connected the campus to the broader public health field.
GUH has offered Carleton a way to connect with the community, a partner with whom to develop projects, knowledge and connections for Carleton faculty, and relationships that have enabled students to volunteer their time and energy—from reroofing trailers damaged by a hail storm, to policy analysis of transit challenges for low income residents, to addressing community access to medical and social services. GUH continues to play an active role with students, faculty and staff at Carleton and partnering with them has enabled much of the success of Carleton’s civic engagement over the past few years.
If it wins this online vote, Growing Up Healthy will be able to use the $25,000 to expand its work in Rice County and strengthen its already extremely productive relationship with Carleton. Taking just a few minutes to vote could make a great impact on the well-being of area children and increase engagement opportunities for Carleton students at the same time. For more information about Growing Up Healthy, please watch this video, which features Project Coordinator Janet Muth as well as Adrienne Falcón (Director of Academic Civic Engagement at Carleton), or visit www.growinguphealthy.org.