Communities on the Move!

Let’s Move Faith and Communities supports local efforts and highlights accomplishments in communities across the country. We want to work with community leaders like you, hear what you’re doing to build healthier neighborhoods and share best practices so we can learn from each other through this effort. Check out the Let's Move! blog to learn about the great work faith- and community-based organizations are doing to make their communities healthier.

Click here to sign up and join our community of supporters! We invite you to share your success stories, event announcements and news, as well as the innovative ways that your community is participating in this nationwide initiative. Thanks and Let’s Move!

• The Congregational Health Index created by the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon and Oregon’s Public Health Institute, offers a check-list for assessing how well your community is doing to promote a healthier environment.
  
• To learn from congregations who have established community health policies, see United Church of Christ’s Faithfully HEALing, Girl Scouts’ Healthy Living Programming, National Baptist Convention’s H.O.P.E. Initiative and Adventists’ InStep for Life.
  
• Do you have designated health and wellness leadership?  Visit Adventist HealthCare’s Faith Community Nursing Basic Prep Program  and Developing the Church as a Place of Healing and Wellness Program.
  
• For informational resources to fill out your weekly newsletters or bulletins check out CDC Vital signs, RWJF, Nutrition.gov and CHOICES for Kids.
  
• For youth and family gatherings and after-school curricula with a nutritional and physical activity focus, we highly recommend considering National Health Institute’s We Can! Curricula that includes free curriculum like Media- Smart Youth and Energize our Families.
  
• Review the National Prevention Strategy on improving health and wellness in the US as well as the HHS Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.
  
• Understand the Healthy Food Financing Initiative enacted by the Obama Administration and the goals and resources it will provide to bring healthy food sellers to “food deserts” across America.
  
• Learn more about the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Summer Food Service Program, which helps feed children when school is out for the summer.
  
• The World Harvest Ministries in Kansas City runs a faith-based grocery store out of their congregation’s renovated garage, with produce fresh off the farmers’ trucks, to address their community’s need for access to affordable, healthy foods.
  
• Help enroll low-income families or individuals in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
  
• Visit LocalHarvest.org  if your community is interested in being a fresh food drop site!
  
• The County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program takes in the wide range of data that affects health (education, income, access to health insurance and quality care, environmental and social dynamics) and provides a Roadmap to Action Center to help get your community started on a path of collective action.
  
• Create opportunity in your community and support healthy eating through micro-enterprise! Check out this Creating Opportunity through Micro-Enterprise: Faith Kitchens as Micro-Business Incubators.
  
• See the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Community Health Assessment and Group Evaluation (CHANGE) for easily accessible Excel-based data-collection and planning resource tools.
  
• The Community Tool Box is an on-line tool for assessment and community collective action that offers more than 7,000 pages of practical information to support community health and development work.
  
• Read about how Philadelphia’s The Food Trust gathered community leaders and businesses to establish grocery stores in areas where access to fresh food was limited.
  
• Check out the Healthy Food Financing Initiative to learn how it supports projects that increase access to healthy, affordable food in communities that currently lack these options.
  
• Visit the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s What Shapes Health, a series of webinars and resources that explores why, despite an abundance of information about healthy lifestyles and the most advanced medical care in the world, millions of Americans experience needlessly poor health and don’t practice healthy behaviors.
  
• The Jewish Community Centers Association introduces the Discover CATCH: Early Childhood initiative to teach healthy nutrition and activity habits to preschoolers!
  
• By planting USDA People’s Gardens, the Jewish Community Centers Association is making fresh, nutritious, affordable produce accessible to those in need. If your garden is benefiting your community, incorporating sustainable practices and a collaborative effort, register here to join the movement and be recognized as a People's Garden!
  
• First Lady Michelle Obama gardens with Girl Scouts!
  
• In Church Health Reader, Rev. Dr. Deborah Patterson suggests ways to improve health – including children’s health – in a congregation with limited resources. Also check out how to foster healthy eating through cooking classes, recipe ideas in newsletters, and more!
  
• The National Baptist Convention, USA takes up the First Lady’s challenge to equip 10,000 health ambassadors in its congregations across the country by September 2012. Check out their Challenge of 10,000 campaign.
  
• The National Baptist Convention, USA research project highlights the important role faith-based organizations play in reducing childhood obesity.
  
• Come to the Table, based in North Carolina, brings a faith-based perspective to food justice. Check out their fact sheets on Community Garden Resources and Community-Supported Agriculture Projects (CSAs) for models on how to promote community development, access to quality affordable foods and healthy choices.
  
• Watch how Beyond the Ball, a Chicago-based youth sports organization, extends their reach, involving families and communities through the Project Play initiative.
  
• The YMCA and JCC of Greater Toledo foster community partnerships to prioritize children’s health, physical activity and nutrition in child care facilities!
  
• With strong community partnerships, one teacher in the Bronx, New York facilitates a youth program that runs laps around childhood obesity! (See Shawanda Weems discuss the program and her work at 1:25 in the video.)
  
• In Cuba, New Mexico, Step into Cuba has established a coalition of community partners and volunteers who work together to build safe walking trails and facilitate social walking groups to promote physical activity and wellness!
  
• LAX4LIFE, a four-day overnight camp for Native American youth, utilizes partnerships with local government agencies and corporate sponsors to encourage physical activity!
  
• Walk or Pedal? Nashville-based NashVitality works with partner organizations to facilitate healthier, greener and safer transportation alternatives by building sidewalks and fostering access to bicycles for local youth!
  
• Thinking Yoga? Hindu America Seva Charities offers a yoga primer for anyone seeking to learn more about this practice honing mind, body and spirit!
  
• Garden on the Go, sponsored by Indiana University Health, celebrates its 10,000^th transaction, demonstrating its success in bringing fresh, local produce to communities in need! Tour the Garden on the Go truck to learn more.
  
• The Health for Humanity Yogathon brought together more than 13,000 participants from 39 states, who collectively performed over one million repetitions of the Sun Salutations Yoga sequence. Learn their moves!
  
• The Dinner Garden works to end hunger nationwide by offering support to home and community gardeners.
  
• Wholesome Wave makes locally-grown produce more accessible to underserved communities.
  
• Revolution Foods provides fresh, healthy meals and snacks to students in Bay Area schools.
  
• Playworks supports education and encourages safe and fun physical activity for children in school.
  
• Raising Up Healthy Women & Girls, a wellness initiative led by women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, focuses on “being physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy.”
  
• Girls Inc. strives to increase opportunities to make sports participation an important part of girls’ lives.
  
• Behind the Scenes with Jump with Jill: how one Illinois School District is embracing the HealthierUS School Challenge!
  
• Just Eating? Practicing Our Faith at the Table is a seven-session curriculum for Christian congregations that explores the relationship between the way we eat and the way we live. Send us your community’s teachings on healthy eating!
  
• Indiana’s solution to food deserts? Garden on the Go – a new program that brings fresh, affordable produce directly to neighborhoods in need!
  
• Catholic Charities West Virginia's WellnessWorks program promotes healthy living and wellness goals at food pantry sites.
  
• Nashville’s Community Food Advocates’ volunteers, of all generations, celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a King Day of Action at their local and community gardens.
  
• Faith in Place readies its winter farmers markets for the approaching cold months, growing nutritious food and increasing access to produce across the Chicago-land area.
  
• Jumping for Fun and Fitness: the Boys & Girls Clubs of America breaks the Guinness World Record for
  Jumping Jacks!
  
• The Christian World Service's support of a community garden created a blooming crop of fresh vegetables and vibrant community in a neighborhood whose residents include refugees from Nepal.
  
• GoodGreens.org gathers Mid-West organizations and individuals to affect positive change in the way food is grown, harvested, distributed and consumed.
  
• Michigan’s Department of Transportation works with community partners to create Safe Routes to School!
  
• The National Council of La Raza guides Latino families toward healthful living with its multimedia education series Comer Bien.
  
• Michigan's Coordinated Access to Food for the Elderly (MiCAFE) assists older adults (60 and older) to make ends meet.
  
• The Lionman Foundation of Los Angeles announces the launch of The Legend Of LIONMAN Presidential One Million Kick Challenge aimed at organizing over a million participants to engage in martial arts physical activities while simultaneously jumpstarting healthier lifestyles and contributing to the effort to end childhood obesity.
  
• Community Relief Foundation starts 7 new summer food service sites!
  
• Members of Plymouth United Church in Spring, Texas play musical chairs as an Instant Recess 10- minute break to get people up and moving!
  
• AmpleHarvest.org partners with Let's Move and starts a virtual food drive to get produce to food pantries!
  
• Chicago IMAN’s Muslim Run? Campaign for Health, Wellness and Healing aims to help solve the crisis of food deserts by encouraging local store operators to provide healthy food options.
  
• Kaiser Permanente’s Everybody Walk program and website offer success stories, ideas, healthful resources and inspiring models for walking in community!
  
• Hindu American Seva Charities launches the Yoga PALA Challenge 2011 to further encourage yoga practitioners across the country to improve their health and overall well-being!
  
• Viva Streets Denver organizes city-wide ciclovia (bike parkway!) to strengthen Colorado’s healthy,
  active culture!
  
• Faith community nurse teams up with St. John Providence Health System to inspire her community to Walk to Jerusalem and increase their physical, spiritual and emotional health along the way!
  
• Let's Move with Angelina Ballerina gets kids between the ages of 4 and 7 moving with the Wilson Kids Movers program!
  
• The Vive tu Vida (Live your Life) campaign in New York City helps Latino community members live healthy and joyful lives through salsa and yoga classes, volunteer work, and health education projects.