The 24:1 community, a coalition of the 24 North County municipalities served by the Normandy school district convened by Beyond Housing, was honored this year with the Culture of Health prize from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It is one of 27 winning communities across the nation, which were each given $25,000 to work towards community health.
24:1 has been working together to combine services and improve community health since 2008. In the middle of the 2008 housing crisis, the leaders of the 24:1 municipalities agreed to come together. Along with the nonprofit Beyond Housing, they began to work on several initiatives to heal their communities, together.
Since then, the community has worked hard to improve health. They have established a community land trust, provided access to several early childhood health programs such as Nurses for Newborns, and worked with the Normandy Schools Collaborative to connect families with resources.
Other resources meant to improve health for residents of various ages have sprouted up across 24:1, including free fitness classes, a free summer youth softball league, and a planned expansion of the 7-mile St. Vincent’s Greenway walking and biking trail. Once completed, the trail will diagonally connect one corner of 24:1 to the other, from the City of Wellston to the Village of Bel-Ridge. A project to improve lighting on 24:1 area streets and fix potholes is also in progress.
“If one community fails, we all fail,” said James W. McGee, mayor of the City of Vinita Park on the western edge of the 24:1 footprint. “To start healing the community, you have to have everybody involved. If everybody takes ownership, then you’re going to have a healthier community.”
Stephanie Co manages public policy and special projects for Beyond Housing. The group’s work for early childhood health and kindergarten readiness over the past few years, she said, has involved “over 40 partners coming together, working with over 15 early-childhood centers in the community to make sure that they had access to screenings, to make sure that they had access to other technical assistance to provide higher-quality early-childhood education for the little ones between zero and five.”
That work – involving screenings, support for mothers, and collaboration with early childhood centers – has coincided with a dramatic drop in infant mortality rates, which have over the last few years in the two zip codes 24:1 covers.
“We know that we can’t take credit for that completely, but we know that around that time a lot of this work happened, bringing in a lot of partners and coordinating those partnerships within the community,” said Co.
The Normandy Schools Collaborative has also worked over the past several years to go beyond the classroom and make sure kids have what they need at home, too.
“We all understand that what goes on outside of the classroom greatly affects the inside of the classroom, so if there are external barriers to the students’ learning, it impounds what they’re doing once they come to school,” said Denitria Neil, coordinator of alternative learning (and former coordinator of family engagement) for the school district.
“If a student hasn’t had breakfast, or if they don’t have the proper clothing or the proper attire, or if something’s going on in the home, that’s going to greatly affect whether or not the student shows up to school prepared.”
She has worked to make sure that all students have the clothes, transportation and other basics they need to attend school, providing basic needs like backpacks, school supplies, shoes, undergarments, school uniforms, Neil said, as well as counseling.
24:1 will host a Beyond the Backpack event 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, August 5 at Normandy High School, 6701 St. Charles Rock Rd., providing free haircuts, school supplies, eye screenings and immunization for local kids.
“The most important thing is not only to get access to some of the resources and physical goods for the beginning of the school year,” Co said. “More than anything it’s about getting people motivated and excited for their first day of school.”
For more information on receiving services through 24:1, call 314-533-0600 or visit http://www.beyondhousing.org.
