United Way of Central Louisiana's Strong Neighborhood Project

Healthy communities are no accident. They require citizen participation and ownership at a very local level. We build them by recognizing and building upon the abundance of relationships and strengths already present among their residents. Yet most efforts to improve community health focus on a community’s deficits, ignoring the assets of the community itself. These efforts are generally well-meant, but this approach, though common in practice, reduces citizens and neighborhoods to mere consumers of services, dependent on outside experts for everything from their health to other aspects of their lives. The Strong Neighborhood Project provides programming in seven areas that comprise a healthy community: 

• the quality of care provided by a community’s members for each other 
• medical and mental health 
• child wellbeing 
• local economy 
• the availability of quality food
• environmental health
• public safety and security