Creating Healthier Communities through Grassroots Leadership

Genoveva Islas-Hooker, Regional Program Coordinator, Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program (CCROPP)

Two years ago, when the failure of two local water pumps left them without water for days, a group of residents from the small unincorporated town of Fairmead in the Central Valley started to mobilize to improve the health and safety of their community. Now, Fairmead Community & Friends has been instrumental in a number of local efforts, including establishing funding for transportation planning, and advocating for increasing opportunities for their children to be physically active. 

Photograph: Fairmead Community & Friends planning meeting.

Recently, the group was recognized by key leaders for organizing a flea market fundraising event to generate funds for Fairmead Elementary to replace playground equipment that was destroyed during an arson fire last summer. The playground is one of the only open spaces for youth to be active.

Fairmead Community & Friends is now collaborating with the Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program (CCROPP) to help build increasing momentum for the changes they would like to see in their food and physical activity environments. Through a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), CCROPP will be providing leadership development trainings to emerging grassroots leaders like Fairmead Community & Friends, to help sustain long-term efforts aimed at creating healthier communities.

This $400,000 leadership grant is part of RWJ's Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities initiative, a $44 million national program aimed at addressing childhood obesity through community-based solutions. CCROPP was one out of nine sites selected for this initiative in an effort to help mobilize communities and advance the successes that have occurred around creating healthier environments in the Central Valley.

Over the next four years, 100 community members throughout the Valley will participate in an array of small group experiential meetings with the goal of building their capacity to advocate for environmental and policy change.

The Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program is committed to obesity prevention through place-based policy change that supports healthy eating and active living throughout the San Joaquin Valley. For more information, please visit: www.ccropp.org.