Cada Paso: The Next Step
Cada Paso has been activating health in East Harlem for three years. This year we're enhancing food security and promoting leadership opportunities for our families.
Leader
Cappy Collins
Location
E 109th St & 3rd Avenue New York, NY 10029
About the project
THANK YOU FOR ALL THE SUPPORT!
OUR FAMILIES WILL HAVE GREATER FOOD AND FINANCIAL SECURITY THANKS TO YOU!
DONATIONS ABOVE OUR GOAL WILL SUPPORT US INTO 2018!
Cada Paso (cadapaso.us) is a family walking program in East Harlem. AND, it's a community platform for health and achievement.
In partnership with Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service (LSA), we're starting our 4th year of walks. Families choose the topic of each walk: we teach to the topic and walk to the neighborhood resources that address the topic at multiple levels. For example, our asthma walk includes health education on managing asthma, a visit to the Asthma Center of Excellence for coordinated services, and a stop at LSA's home visting program where families can get an environmental assessment for asthma triggers in the home.
Even further upstream, we try to eliminate root causes. The chronic stresses of financial, food and housing insecurity can make asthma worse, so we help families get bank accounts, we provide food resources and our families use their political voice to support fair and affordable housing practices in the neighborhood.
Along the walk, we eat fresh fruit, drink NYC's finest tap water, and compost our waste at one of East Harlem's many community gardens. Health in action!
Your tax-deductible donation are matched thanks to ioby and their partners!
The Steps
Food security: Inspired by the Dept. of Health's Health Bucks program, we piloted Cada Paso Bucks last year for families to spend at Greenmarkets. Our partners at La Marqueta Youth Market have been champions of this model.
Leadership: We will be working with LSA to provide stipends for adults and adolescents for taking on leadership roles in Cada Paso. This can include organizing walks, expanding outreach, coordinating communications, sustaining political action, planning citizen science projects, et al.
Spanning both goals, we'll also be working with local community gardens to grow food in the neighborhood, including building a greenhouse for an expanded growing season!
Why we‘re doing it
East Harlem confronts adverse conditions resulting in poor health outcomes compared to the rest of New York City. People in the neighboring Upper East Side live 9 years longer than East Harlem residents! (See Community Health Profiles). This is the culmination of higher rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, poverty, poor school performance and more. Disparities exist despite the wealth of resources available in East Harlem.
Planning for health means responding to our families' immediate needs and changing the environment. Cada Paso's mission is to activate the existing resources, and to improving the built environment, the food environment, the wealth environment. The net effect is promoting agency for our families. Self-determined action, at a community scale, eradicates injustice.