Initiative working to create a healthier community

 
By Stuart Hedstrom
Staff Writer

DOVER-FOXCROFT — With access to nutritious food having been identified as a major health-related concern by residents of the region, the Piscataquis Regional YMCA Healthy Community Project is working to remedy the situation by learning more and finding ways to increase the availability of healthy items.

A group of stakeholders representing different facets of the community has been meeting monthly, on the third Wednesday, to plan ways to address the related issues, which are not the complete solution to improving the health of the region but a part of it.

The stakeholders group gathered on Aug. 19 at the PRYMCA, about three months into the 18-month process.

“In this planning phase we are charged with coming up with possible ideas we can implement beginning in early 2017,” said PRYMCA Healthy Community Project Coordinator Erin Callaway. “At the end of this 18 months our goal is to have this proposal in hand. We have X number of projects we are implementing.”

“I think we have done quite a bit in laying this foundation and there’s clearly more work to do,” Callaway said. “We are doing well with this three months in, people who study groups like this say we are really moving along well.”

Callaway provided the dozen attendees with a list of assets in the community, such as various organizations and agencies that may be able to assist the initiative directly or indirectly, and possible actions. The over dozen actions — defined as a specific goal or agenda that requires active planning and participation — listed educational series at farmers’ markets, a 30-day whole foods challenge, school gardens, children’s educational programs, free fruit for kids at grocery stores, cooking classes, food waste and recovery programs and more.

“It’s starting to come together, all ideas are welcome at all times,” Callaway said. She said the list of actions was a mere starting point, and asked the stakeholders to think of other possibilities and who else may be able to get involved in increasing access to healthy foods.

While the group is thinking long-term, Callaway said small projects for the present are also to be considered. “I really want to honor the fact we can do things now,” she said.

One recently started program provided children in the Derby section of Milo with a nutritious breakfast during summer vacation. “It gets breakfast food to these kids who are too far off the tracks logistically to get here to the summer meal program,” Callaway said.

Callaway said the breakfast program began with a parent seeing a need in her neighborhood, grew from there and could progress further into a block association. “She knew what she wanted, she knew what the problem was,” Callaway said.

The breakfast program may expand with the help of other organizations. “It just happened because of the connections we have started to make here,” Callaway said.