An event this week featured presentations from a couple of people from Salina who are on the forefront of wellness advocacy.
According to Live Well Saline County, Michelle Coats, Mobility Manager for North Central Kansas and Daniel Craig, Cancer Outreach Coordinator at Tammy Walker Cancer Center, presented at the Kansas Local Food Summit in Wichita on August 28th. They highlighted efforts in Saline County to leverage funding to address food bank access and safety at the Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank. Their presentation touched on grant funded initiatives that expanded the community garden, funded site plan development, solar lighting, car and bike parking improvements, and sidewalks connecting to the local business corridor and public transportation.
K-State Research and Extension with support from many state agencies including the Kansas Health Foundation, From The Land of Kansas, North Central SARE, and Wichita State University Environmental Finance Center put on the Kansas Local Food Summit. It was attended by local producers, public health professionals, city/county staff members, university staff members, and farmer’s market vendors from the across the state of Kansas.
The Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank community garden was revitalized through a project that began in 2017. Dane G. Hansen Foundation and the Greater Salina Community Foundation held a series of “Strategic Doing” meetings that guided Saline County residents through a quick and sophisticated process of prioritizing, planning and implementing (or “doing”) community improvement projects. Local foods was one of the top priorities identified and revitalization of the Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank community garden was the project selected. A Local Foods planning committee worked with the Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank to draw up plans for the revitalized community garden and through a series of grants and sponsorships from over 20 agencies. The project was completed in 2021 and additional enhancements to the garden continue to be made. The Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank currently has five handicapped accessible garden beds, 27-community garden raised beds, a children’s garden for neighborhood kids, and a Master Gardener’s section raising produce for the Food Bank & running vegetable trails for K-State Extension.
Following the completion of the community garden revitalization program Live Well Saline County, a local health and wellness coalition, received a four-year $500,000 Pathways to a Healthy Kansas grant initiative from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas. Tammy Walker Cancer Center was the designated fiscal agent for the grant and Daniel Craig who was the lead grant writer was selected to be the project manager. Live Well Saline County worked with the Pathways to A Healthy Kansas technical assistance providers and through a series of community surveys identified enhancing safety and access at the Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank as the priority project for the grant. The Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank conducted interviews with clients and three projects emerged based on that feedback. The first was development of a site plan and addition of solar lighting that was supported through a $45,288 implementation grant. The second project was a sidewalk that connects the Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank to the Broadway business corridor including links to two City Go Bus stops that was supported through a $100,000 implementation grant and additional matching funding by the City of Salina. The third project which will be starting soon is the addition of 12 additional parking spaces and 6 bike racks which was supported by a $100,000 implementation grant and matching funding from several sponsors and donors. In total $245,288 of the Pathways funding was allocated to the Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank projects.
Live Well Saline County is planning a community celebration event to highlight the initiatives at the Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank. The event will be held this fall once the parking lot project at the Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank is complete and will serve as a celebration of the 15th anniversary of Live Well Saline County. Live Well Saline County is currently helping to support a $20,000 Chronic Disease Risk Reduction grant from the Kansas Department of Health & Environment that was received by the Tammy Walker Cancer Center. The coalition is also working through a strategic planning process and will be adding mental health and tobacco prevention/cessation as new focus areas. The coalition recently developed a new vision statement: Liveable Healthy Saline County and mission statement: Engaging community partners to cultivate a holistic approach to well-being in Saline County. To learn more about Live Well Saline County contact Daniel Craig at 785-452-4848.
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About Live Well Saline County
Live Well Saline County (LWSC), which began in 2009 as the Nutrition & Physical Activity Coalition of Salina, strives to engage community partners to cultivate a holistic approach to well-being in Saline County. Since its inception LWSC has supported the implementation of the CDC Community Health Assessment CHANGE Tool for Saline County, brought Work Well Kansas to Saline County, helped support a local food systems assessment, hosted four statewide trainings, and managed several community health promotion grants.
