HomeTown Partnership has committed to seven focus areas of a Healthy Community. This concept brings together qualitative and quantitative information on the well-being of the county, as well as the experience of the Partner organizations and its local volunteers. The result is this informational series that will be published in seven installments over the next year. It lays out a strategy for long-term improvement in the community and provides a guide for working towards it through philanthropic investment.
Central to the Healthy Community concept is the recognition that the challenges facing the community often touch on more than one area.
Donors’ giving strategies can do the same. A strategic gift can speed multiple improvements with one innovative approach – expanding job prospects by funding education, reducing discrimination by funding the arts or improving health by funding neighborhood projects. The strategies listed in this series aren’t definitive. They are simply opportunities you may use to explore how your investment of your time, talent and treasures can build a better community.
A Healthy Community
• Provides broad access to arts and culture
A healthy community encourages a wide variety of recreational, historical, and cultural opportunities.
• Meets the basic needs of residents
A healthy community creates a compassionate social, economic, and political environment where people have full opportunities to meet basic needs for themselves and their families, to build assets, and to advance themselves.
• Ensures a vibrant and diversified economy
A healthy community fosters an economy that is diverse, vital and innovative, that grows strong businesses and business districts, and creates adequate jobs and income for residents.
• Creates quality education and learning opportunities for all ages
A healthy community opens themselves to new ideas and provides high quality education and life-long learning for all members of the community.
• Protects and stewards the natural environment
A healthy community helps preserve and sustain the environment.
• Fosters strong and connected neighborhoods and communities
A healthy community assures equal opportunities to participate in decision making and enhance diversity, promoting a sense of pride and shared purpose.
• Promotes health and wellness
A healthy community assures access to high quality health services on a personal, community and systems level and promotes a healthy lifestyle.