RANGELEY – An environmental summer camp and fitness program will be able to expand its program after receiving a big boost in funding from the Maine Health Access Foundation.
Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust was awarded $49,473 for its EcoVenture Partnership to Address Childhood Obesity grant proposal. EcoVenture, a summer camp for youths with an environmental focus, will partner with Rangeley Region Health and Wellness Partnership to implement an expanded
version of the 11-year-old camp’s program.
EcoVenture, founded by the Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust, is open to local and visiting children entering grades 1 through 9. The program is expanding to not only to increase the physical activity and provide nutritional education but to improve childhood health.
“RLHT and its partners are pleased and excited to provide an expanded version of the EcoVenture program to the children of Rangeley and will be providing more information about this wonderful program in the next few weeks and months,” said Rebecca Kurtz, director of the program.
The Maine Health Access Foundation, Maine’s largest health funder, recently announced $149,473 in new grant funding to three community-based programs that focus on improving health in ways that reach beyond seeing the doctor. Research has demonstrated that as little as 10 percent of an individual’s health is influenced by direct health care delivery, while up to 70 percent is influenced by
factors found in the environmental, social, and economic conditions of a community.
MeHAF’s pilot program, Fund for the Future, attempts to tap local expertise for solutions that can improve health across a geographic region. MeHAF used social networking tools to recruit a broader pool of potential applicants, solicit input within the community and help applicants refine their proposals based on Facebook comments and questions.
“MeHAF found it was much more efficient to use new tools such as Facebook to ‘talk’ directly with people to determine how relevant and important a particular program might be to a community. We generated great online discussion on how communities wanted to address issues that affect health
such as poverty, physical activity and nutrition” said Dr. Wendy J. Wolf, MeHAF president and CEO.
MeHAF will continue the pilot program in 2010 with a new RFP to be released in the spring.
The two other grant recipients are: Child & Families Opportunities/Healthy Peninsula – Good Food:
Sedgwick: With a $50,000 grant, community-based Support for Healthy Eating will combine education, economic, social, and environmental supports to help make healthy eating easier, fun, and socially normative and Alternative Organizational Structure #93/Focus on Agriculture in
Rural Maine Schools (FARMS) -Damariscotta School System: FARMS Equals Healthy Kids was awarded $50,000 to establish “food learning centers,” within the classroom and school cafeterias, and seeks to change student food choices through educating AOS #93’s 1625 students about healthy choices.
