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Updated as of Sept. 6, 2024.

Healthy Communities Initiative

The Healthy Communities Initiative is part of the Boston Children’s Metro South West Community Health Initiative. This Initiative aims to advance child health through place-based collective impact approaches within the Metro South and Metro West areas. The selected projects will establish and nurture systems that promote policy, systems, and environmental changes. This initiative has two phases: a one-year planning period and a four-year implementation period. Three collaborative groups were awarded funding.

Brockton’s Promise Alliance for Youth will foster inter-agency collaboration to strengthen community policies, systems, and networks of support for youth. The collaborative will provide Brockton leaders, residents, parents, caregivers, and youth with civic engagement and leadership opportunities across five pillars of work: Safe Spaces, Caring Adults, Effective Education, Opportunities to Serve, and A Healthy Start.

Healthy Randolph Collaborative will improve the well-being of children, youth, and families facing significant health inequities by enhancing local school and public health partnerships to advance the priorities set forth in the Randolph Community Wellness Plan. The collaborative will provide leadership opportunities for youth through an advisory council and develop community initiatives that provide students, families, and community residents with safe, enriching, accessible, and affordable health promoting opportunities and spaces.

 

Waltham Community Response Collaborative (WCRC) will increase the well-being of low-income and immigrant families and youth in Waltham by collaboratively addressing the needs for safe and secure housing, childcare and children and youth programs, community immigration support, job opportunities and financial stability, and proficiency in English. The collaborative will streamline supportive service referral processes across agency partners in Waltham.

Mental Health and Well-being

Funding in this area supports organizations to improve the mental and behavioral health of children, youth, and families by:

  1. Increasing access to culturally and linguistically appropriate counseling and support, and/or;
  2. Increasing social cohesion in communities.

Africano Waltham: Building Resilience: Normalizing and Providing Mental Health Services and Youth Enrichment in Waltham’s African Immigrant Community will continue and expand the work of African Cultural Services Inc./Africano Waltham, a community center for African immigrants serving the Waltham area, to address rising mental health issues in the community and provide enrichment activities and academic support to build the self-esteem of its youth.

Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center: Mental Health First Aid Trainers Network for Chinese Speakers aims to enhance the impact of the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) course through the development of an MHFA trainers network for Chinese speakers, piloting instruction of the Chinese curriculum, provision of case management and mental health counseling services, and an evaluation on participant responses and perceived effectiveness of the curriculum.

Brockton Neighborhood Health Center: The Coalition for the Mental Health and Well-being of Brockton High School Students and Families will engage partners from across sectors in designing behavioral health supports, programs, and services that meet the needs of Brockton BIPOC. It seeks to develop a cross-sector collaboration to address the mental health and well-being of youth and their caregivers living in Brockton.

Cape Verdean Women United's Community Resilience Project seeks to strengthen its educational programs on violence prevention and mental health education, expanding community impact and reach through strategic partnerships with new and established community partners, and fostering a more informed and resilient community.

Codman Square Health Center: Behavioral Health at Randolph School-Based Health Center will strengthen behavioral health services in Randolph schools by bringing on more on-site staff and establishing partnerships with area agencies.

Crossroads for Kids (dba Crossroads): C5 Leaders Program, which focuses on social-emotional learning, mental and physical wellness, and mapping the pathway to postsecondary success, seeks to expand access for teens from Brockton to the program.

Funding will help support Doc Wayne Youth Services Inc.’s direct clinical work with youth at McDevitt Middle School and MacArthur Elementary School in Waltham. Funding will support the salary of a clinician at each of these schools.

Friends and Mentors Inc.: The Wellness, Education, and Empowerment Collaborative (WEE) will unite diverse grassroots community organizations to address health disparities and promote equitable health outcomes in Brockton by leveraging data-driven insights and deep community engagement. Through culturally tailored programs and support services, WEE aims to foster a healthier, more resilient community for marginalized youth and families in Brockton.

Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children: Children’s Mental Health Campaign will ensure comprehensive school-based behavioral health is implemented equitably across Massachusetts by advocating for funding for Technical Assistance Centers, prioritizing under-resourced schools, and ensuring that the equity-focused components of recent behavioral health policy and practice initiatives and reforms are well implemented.

  • Location: Brockton, Framingham, Needham, Quincy, Randolph, Waltham, Weymouth
  • Website: MSPCC

Metro South/West Workforce Board: Teen Mental Health Connect is seeking to expand existing programs by incorporating teen Mental Health First Aid training and developing a behavioral health employment pipeline for underrepresented youth participating in YouthWorks, a well-established youth employment program that helps teens and young adults develop skills and experience needed to find and keep jobs.

The NAN Project: Saving Lives, One Story at a Time incorporates suicide prevention and mental health education for students using a high impact peer-to-peer model that reaches students of diverse races, ethnicities, languages, genders, and sexual identities.

The Rose Conservatory project will provide essential Creative Youth Development in Brockton to youth aged 5 to 18 using the models of safety, well-being, and healing through the transformative power of music.

Voices of the Community: Moms Group is a mental health group at ATAC and at the Arlington St. Park. Funds will support a new team member to increase access to healthy childhood development resources/connection, activities, and opportunities, and provide access to food, engagement, and enrichment activities.

Walker Inc.: Quincy Initiative for Mental Health (QIMH) is a collaboration between Walker Inc., Quincy Asian Resources Inc., and Quincy Public Schools to partner with children, youth, and families in Quincy to increase access to culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health services, as well as support and expand psychoeducation and advocacy efforts to de-stigmatize mental healthcare.

Waltham Partnership for Youth Inc.: Wraparound Waltham Expansion aims to sustain and expand its multi-agency wraparound collaborative — the objective of which is to increase school and community belonging, emotional safety, and well-being among newly arrived, Spanish-speaking Latinx immigrant students by coordinating with partners to facilitate access to culturally and linguistically appropriate school and community resources.

Wayside Youth & Family Support Network: Empowering Caregivers for Generational Change will provide short-term parent and caregiver skill-building consultations and community programming in Waltham and Needham to:

  1. Increase caregivers’ awareness of children’s mental and behavioral health development (both strengths and needs)
  2. Support caregivers’ ability to respond to behavioral and mental health needs of youth.

Flourishing Families

Funding in this area supports organizations to strengthen the capabilities and assets of parents and caregivers to provide a strong future for their children by:

  1. Promoting healthy early childhood development
  2. Supporting access to affordable family housing and transit
  3. Increasing access to culturally and linguistically appropriate healthy living resources and opportunities

Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro South: The Food Justice Urban Farming & Mobile Market initiative will provide historically marginalized populations who are experiencing food insecurity with reliable access to free, healthy food by increasing our organizational capacity to grow and distribute fresh produce to populations in need within Brockton and Taunton.

Brockton Interfaith Community: The Youth SOL is the youth and youth ally organizing branch of BIC and is organizing toward food justice within the Brockton Public Schools and the Brockton community.

Immigrant Family Services Institute: The Haitian Family Inclusion Initiative incorporates out-of-school programs for children beginning at age 4, while serving as a “one-stop shop” for families by providing educational resources, including ESL, workforce development, parenting classes, and other supports, that foster community and self-sufficiency.

Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance: Saving Toward Affordable Sustainable Homeownership (STASH) is a first-in-the-nation matched savings program for first-generation, first-time homebuyers in Massachusetts that pairs education and matching grants for down payment assistance to equip homebuyers with the tools they need to achieve affordable and sustainable homeownership.

Raising A Reader Massachusetts: Expanding Family Literacy Access in Brockton Preschools: Pending Commonwealth Preschool Partnerships Initiative will partner with Brockton Public Schools (BPS) to expand its dual intervention family literacy model to new BPS preschool classrooms.

Urban Revival Inc. dba City Life/Vida Urbana: Brockton Housing Rights and Justice Hub combines engaging, informative, housing rights group meetings with legal advocacy and community organizing so that community members can defend themselves and one another from housing displacement and become leaders in a community- and statewide fight for rent control.