Partnership for a Healthier NYC - Neighborhood Grants

Partnership for a Healthier NYC - Neighborhood Grants

 

NOVEMBER 26, 2012. The Fund for Public Health in NYC on behalf of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH) and the Partnership for Healthier New York City released a Request For Proposals to support local neighborhoods in the development and implementation of community-wide environmental strategies that address issues of:

Healthy Eating:
In collaboration with the Borough Lead Organization for the Neighborhood Contractor applicant’s borough, work to develop and implement evidence-based/evidence-informed, environmentally impactful and scalable projects that will result in the availability of healthier food options and reductions in unhealthy foods/beverages and/or portion sizes to a significant portion of the neighborhood’s residents.

Alcohol:
In collaboration with the Borough Lead Organization for the Neighborhood Contractor applicant’s borough, engage at least 10 community stakeholders (schools, youth groups, faith-based institutions, etc.) to facilitate learning and discussion about alcohol and its impact on their communities.

Tobacco:
In collaboration with the Borough Lead Organization for the Neighborhood Contractor applicant’s borough and the NYC Coalition for a Smoke Free City, work with property managers, tenants, and others on adoption of voluntary smoke-free policies by housing entities reaching one (1) to two (2) multi-unit buildings (containing a minimum of 30 units total).

Active Living:
In collaboration with the Borough Lead Organization for the Neighborhood Contractor applicant’s borough, actively support at least one built environment project to improve active recreation opportunities, active transportation and/or stair use/active movement through buildings.

 

Amount: $300,000 to no more than 30 organizations ($10,000 each) to fund activities within each domain area.

Deadline: December 17th at 3:00pm

 

DOWNLOAD RFP HERE

 

Timeline:

 

EVENT	DATE
Release of Request for Proposals	November 19, 2012
Inquiry Period	November 19-November 27, 2012
Questions Due to lnguyen@fphny.org (questions received after this date will not be answered)	November 27, 2012 at 10:00 am
Pre-proposal Meeting Partnership for a Healthier New York City 40 Worth Street, 5th Floor New York, NY 10013 Conference Room 5.2 and 5.3 Advance registration is required. Register by contacting Lnguyen@fphny.org by Tuesday, November 27th. For those that cannot join in person, a conference call option will be made available. Call-in number: 866-213-1863 Access code: 6381139	November 30, 2012 at 10 am
Answers posted at http://fphny.org/whatsnew/rfps	December 7, 2012
Deadline for receipt of proposals (late proposals will not be accepted)	December 17, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Notice of Award	January 22, 2013
Anticipated Contract Start Date	February 18, 2013
Non-awarded applicants are notified	March 4, 2013
Due date for last activity/deliverable of contract	September 15, 2013
Contract End Date	September 29, 2013

 

Creating Your Coalition Identity (VIDEO)

A major step for all community partnerships to achieve is the creation of a solid brand identity.  Developing a recognizable brand allows groups to connect to their audience and promote their values and message to the masses.  

The Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America put together a fantastic 1 hour program to help neighborhoods learn about creating their own unique identity....check it out!

Creating Your Coalition Identity....VIEW HERE

Love Your Block RFA - Due November 30th

Here is a great funding opportunity for local neighborhoods..... 

 

Love Your Block (LYB) is a special partnership between NYC Service and Citizens Committee for New York City that provides a unique opportunity for city residents to transform and beautify their neighborhoods and leverage City services. Resident-led volunteer groups (grantees) receive a grant of $1,000 to transform a city block.  LYB grantees also receive project-planning and community-building assistance, as well as assistance with local media coverage for the project.

 

_________________________________________

The deadline for this year’s Love Your Block grants is Friday, November 30^th.

NYC Service and Citizens Committee for New York City’s Love Your Block grant program is inviting volunteer-led neighborhood groups from across the city to run projects in the Spring that will transform their blocks and help beautify New York City.

If you intend to apply for a grant, please make sure all of your materials are in by this date (please click here for application materials).

If you have any questions about the application process, please do not hesitate to contact Ayodele Oti via email at aoti@cityhall.nyc.gov, or via telephone at 212-442-7652.

Also, NYC Service and Citizens Committee for New York City are hosting a Grant Application Information Session tomorrow (November 27^th) from 6pm to 8pm. To RSVP, please contact Wilfredo Florentino at wflorentino@citizensnyc.org

Location: NYC Service
253 Broadway, 8^th Fl
New York, NY 10007

Note: Please arrive a few minutes early to allow time to get through security.

We look forward to reading your application!

Best,

NYC Service

Transformation (The Floyd Taylor Story) - Part 2

 

 

This is a 3 part series detailing the story of Floyd Taylor, a youth member of the
Forward South Bronx Coalition. 

 

by Cedric McClester 

There’s a saying that is apropos right here.  “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”  Eventually, Floyd was introduced to the then executive director of SFI, Mr. Jose Ferrer who took Floyd under his wing and introduced him to what he called “mirror therapy”.  Mirror therapy calls for an individual to do some serious introspection, as if looking in a mirror.  It also requires the individual to ask themselves questions, like where am I now, and where would I like to be, and what do I have to do to get there?  Floyd is a testament to the effectiveness of mirror therapy.  Since undergoing Mr. Ferrer’s mirror therapy, Floyd has grown leaps and bounds. He is highly regarded at SFI, where he is now employed as a summer youth worker and serves as an inspiration to other potential winners.

 

Thanks to the largesse of the Prevention Resource Center (PRC), Floyd was recently offered a unique opportunity.  He was given a scholarship to the recently concluded CADCA (Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America) 2012, 11^th Annual Mid-Year Training Institute, held in Nashville, Tennessee.  This year’s theme was, “Ticket To Community Change”  As originally scheduled, Floyd was to be accompanied by Cedric McClester, the SFI staffer that serves in the capacity as Convener/ Chairperson of the Forward South Bronx Coalition.  Due to his mother’s emergency surgery, which put her in the intensive care unit of the hospital, McClester had to cancel his travel plans.  This presented both the Forward South Bronx Coalition and the PRC with an interesting dilemma.  The question was, should Floyd attend the CADCA training institute unaccompanied, knowing he had never been to an event of that nature before, in addition to never having flown?   Where one might have expected Floyd to be crestfallen at the news that Mr. McClester would be unable to attend, Floyd remained upbeat about the prospect of still going.

Clearly, the mirror therapy worked.  Both Mr. Ferrer and Mr. McClester coached Floyd on travel arrangements and what to expect when he got there.  He was instructed that if he ran into any difficulty to contact either, day or night.  Floyd called when he was boarding the airplane and also upon his arrival.

That was the last either of them heard from Floyd until his return.

 

End of Part Two

About the Contributing Blogger

Cedric McClester is the Director of Community Relations for SFI (formerly Sports Foundation, Inc.). Sports Foundation Inc. is a social service organization that provides free counseling, sports, health and education programs and activities for today's youth. He is also the coordinator of the Forward South Bronx Coalition. The vision of the Forward South Bronx Coalition (FSBC) is to create a culture within the South Bronx that promotes healthy living, hopefulness, and connectedness within the community to instill a sense of present and future possibilities.

TRANSFORMATION
(The Floyd Taylor Story)

 

This is a 3 part series detailing the story of Floyd Taylor a youth member of the
Forward South Bronx Coalition.  

 

by Cedric McClester

Sometimes coming together can be transformative.  Such was the case for 20 year old Floyd Taylor, a Sports Foundation (SFI) alumnae and youth member of the Forward South Bronx Coalition (FSBC).  FSBC is a newly formed coalition of interested community parties, representing various segments of the South Bronx community, that have joined together, in order  to have a positive impact on youth surrounding the issues of alcohol tobacco and other drugs.  Alcohol tobacco and other drugs have negatively impacted Bronx youth in general and the Longwood section of the Bronx in particular.  Floyd was recently given an opportunity of a lifetime, when he was asked to represent the Forward South Bronx Coalition at the CADCA Mid-Year Conference, in Tennessee this past July.

Since being exposed to the SFI, Taylor has grown tremendously as an individual.  He’s gone from a somewhat shy youth, into the articulate outgoing person he is today.  Like many New York youngsters, he has had little exposure outside of the Bronx.  His world primarily consisted of his neighborhood.  By his own admission, he used to be influenced by the crowd with which he associated.  It was through hanging out with the wrong kinds of individuals, that resulted in the court referral that brought him to SFI in the first place.  When this observer met him, he was conflicted.  He knew he needed to make a change but found it hard to disassociate from the people places and things  to which he was accustomed. 

Interestingly, Floyd was no stranger to change.  At one time in his life, in the not so distant past, Floyd who is approximately five feet, eleven inches hit the scale at a whopping 340 pounds.  He is now a svelte 198 pounds.  The kind of intestinal fortitude it took for him to lose 142 pounds was what it took to change the trajectory of his life. Enter Sports Foundation counselor Segundo Lopez who conveyed to Floyd his sincere concern with how his life was going.  At the time, because of his frequent marijuana use and his experimentation with other substances, in addition to the crowd he was hanging with, there was reason for concern.  Lopez  enlisted the aid of this observer in trying to convince Floyd to enroll in a residential substance abuse treatment program, where he could get his high school equivalency diploma and get away from the people, places and things that were contributing factors to his predicament.  Floyd wrestled with the decision he had to make, which for him was monumental.  In the end he opted to stay at home.  To his credit, he found a program that offered GED training and testing and became the first person in his family to graduate high school.

End of Part One

About the Contributing Blogger

Cedric McClester is the Director of Community Relations for SFI (formerly Sports Foundation, Inc.).  Sports Foundation Inc. is a social service organization that provides free counseling, sports, health and education programs and activities for today's youth.  He is also the coordinator of the Forward South Bronx Coalition.  The vision of the Forward South Bronx Coalition (FSBC) is to create a culture within the South Bronx that promotes healthy living, hopefulness, and connectedness within the community to instill a sense of present and future possibilities.

Giving Voice to Alcohol & Substance Abuse Through Pictures

Thanks to our friends at the Partnership for a Healthier NYC, I had the opportunity to view a fantastic tool to help  immunities illustrate the problem of alcohol and substance abuse to others...called PhotoVoice.  First Developed in 1995 as a means for women living in rural China to communicate important health messages to policy makers,  the process puts cameras into the hands of community members and uses pictures and captions to document the social, political, and economic realities of our  neighborhoods.  It is an often visually stunning way to capture a problem and it's consequences that simple data cannot give.

Currently, Photo Voice projects are used globally as an effective strategy to involve young people into the conversation about what they face daily when dealing with drugs, alcohol, and other public health and safety concerns.  It has served as a catalyst to inform the about issues and gather feedback on ways to address the problem.

Projects can be both short and long term and incorporate other  community engagement events and media campaigns.   PhotoVoice is definitely a useful tool that can have a major impact on your neighborhood.   The PRC will have more information on starting a PhotoVoice project in your community soon...stay tuned!

Until next time,

-Scott

P.S. - Never heard about the Partnership for a Healthier NYC?  Come to our Community Networking Seminar and learn more about their work.

Check out a few examples of PhotoVoice projects

Scanning for the Problem

Scanning for the Problem

How Environmental Scans Can Lead to Neighborhood Action

I attended a wonderful training this week on incorporating effective media strategies into community outreach efforts.  It was conducted by David Jernigan, Director of the Center for Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) & Michael Sparks, Alcohol Policy Specialist and CADCA trainer.  They provided very useful information on ways to engage coalitions to immediate action through the use of environmental scans.  Scans are short surveys that can provide information about a range of topics including: local attitudes towards drinking, determining the number of alcohol billboards and their effects on youth and adults, and finding out where kids are obtaining alcohol and the most common places they are drinking them.  Scans are easy ways to get others involved; are great tools for engaging youth in your efforts, and provide relevant data in a short period of time.  Once obtained, this data can be used to help decide on specific activities and strategies that your coalition would like to take. 

EXAMPLE: Your coalition organized a community scan to determine adult attitudes towards drinking at school and community sponsored events such as the prom, sporting events, or social functions. 

You enlisted the assistance of the PTA, local coaches, and area supermarkets to set-up polling sites at various dates and times over a three week period.  The goal is to gather feedback from adults and parents from the community during special events and frequented retailers.

Once completed, your scan indicated that adults don't think drinking is a problem but don't want kids binge drinking (consuming 3-5 more drinks at one time). 

As a result, your group may develop a presentation on "The Dangers of Binge Drinking & What Parents Need to Know" and conduct it at the local PTA meetings for middle and high schools; local libraries; and community health fairs.   As part of your strategy, groups should be sure to contact local officials about the presentation; local and city news outlets such as   Neighborhood papers and civic bulletins.

Remember--one strategy is not enough, groups should develop multiple approaches that increase community awareness and works towards greater enforcement of formal and informal protocols and policy changes that can offer systemic supports that help make a long term change.

Here are some links to a few samples

Access to Alcohol Messages in the Community (Credit - PIRE)

Community Scan - Looking at Retail Density (Credit - PIRE)

Until next time,

-Scott