Featured Community Archive

Imagine you are on your lunch break on a Friday afternoon. You approach a crosswalk and passing before you is a caravan of 25 bikers pulling trailers full of books, files, and papers behind them. A boombox is blaring music, and drivers and pedestrians honk and wave as the group rides by. The eccentric caravan is led by the mayor and a man in a gorilla suit riding together on a tandem bike.

Sometimes the best ideas start as a sparkle in someone's eye. "Could an empty billboard somehow help get our residents more active?," Angie Cullen asked herself. Cullen is the project director for the Fit Together community partnership in Stokes County, North Carolina, and she makes it her daily work to find ways to help people be more active.

Collaboration is the key to sustainable and successful bike giveaways for Get Active Orlando. The Active Living Orlando community partnership formed a network of dedicated partners, including the Orlando Health Department, Florida Freewheelers Association, Orlando Police Department, and Metroplan Orlando. This "total partnership collaboration", as described by project officer Leah Nash, has built the foundation for three successful bike giveaway events.

On a sunny weekend in late September, the St. Peter Claver Community Garden in Louisville, Kentucky, got a special visitor. Alice Waters, renowned chef and founder of the Edible Schoolyard and school garden movement in California, was in town for a healthy food and local farms conference, a recording for National Public Radio (NPR), and the dedication of an educational pavilion in a successful community garden fashioned after her own work. The St.

On the unfinished side of a major highway from Sioux City, Iowa to Lincoln, Nebraska, a young boy walks inches from high-speed tractor trailer trucks. The boy, like many other residents of Winnebago, Nebraska, must cross U.S. 77 as part of his daily commute by foot, bike, or car. In response, the Winnebago Active Living by Design partnership has created a new trail, which offers a safe, healthier commuting alternative for townspeople and tribe members.

The Winnebago Active Living by Design partnership is called Wasik Wago, which means active or peppy people in the HoChunk tribal language.

Summertime in East Buffalo means getting dirty and getting healthy. Growing Green, a summer garden program of the Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP), promotes healthy eating and gives neighborhood kids a fun, educational summer pastime. Though the Growing Green summer program has been successful for many years, a recent community needs assessment found that more programs were needed to keep children engaged during the school year as well.

Terry Preston's role as a complete streets advocate began long ago as a parent volunteer at his child's school. It was at this school that Terry set up a series of weekly walking Wednesdays, which laid the foundation for his current role as Complete Streets Coalition Coordinator for the Walk Sacramento community partnership.

Lowcountry Connections is the best. That's not just local opinion, but the designation of a national association of planning organizations. The Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO) named Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments (BCD COG) the most outstanding metropolitan planning organization (MPO) from an area with more than 200,000 people.

When parents in their school districts were having a hard time remembering the once-weekly walking school bus, Jackson, Michigan community partnership came up with a good solution: a walking school bus every day of the week. By recruiting new volunteers and making Safe Routes to School a daily occurrence, the partnership has seen an increase in walking to school, and community members are taking note of their success.

Kristin Hendricks, former Executive Director of the Fitness Council of Jackson, was the driver of this successful effort.

Philips Elementary school switched the timing of students' daily recess period, allowing activity before lunch. This change has allowed students to go out to play. When they return, it's time to eat. The result of this change has been higher test scores overall for the students, and fewer behavioral problems.