*Registration Requirement: Must be registered to attend the conference to participate in this complimentary workshop.
*Please register for this workshop along with your main conference registration at
https://cdsociety.org/conferenceregistration/A cluster of communities in rural NY have benefitted from 11-year Neighborhood Health Status Improvement Grant, funded by the Greater Rochester Health Foundation. With that grant concluded, we reflect on effectiveness, process, and program sustainability. We reflect on how this work fits with Robert Bullard’s framework for environmental justice work and Heather McGhee’s “solidarity dividend”. A unique feature of this community is its boundary created by Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, which is an enormous natural resource that poses an array of logistical barriers to traditional community development methods. The asset based community development approach allowed the project to overcome some of these barriers. Residents appreciated shifting the focus from negative reactions, such as a victim identity in response to the loss of taxable land, to a positive emphasis on building wellbeing from the ground up, using their local “assets” (people, organizations, and institutions) to build on the reality they faced.
