One of our 2024 general operating grantees, Hispanic Family Center, has since rebranded. Their new name: Healthy Families and Communities (HFC). Last year, the organization received $27,500 that is being used to create a Mental Health Healing Garden in Camden.
Over the last 12 months, HFC used Impact100’s general operating grant to facilitate a series of community conversations intended to seek stakeholder and community input for the Mental Health Healing Garden design. They’ve convened more than 50 residents, partners, and other stakeholders in conversation to plan this new addition to the East Camden community.
HFC engaged the Community Design Collaborative, a local non-profit design firm, to guide their process. The Collaborative matches nonprofits with skilled volunteers such as architects, landscape architects, preservationists, interior designers, urban planners, engineers, cost estimators, and other experts to provide nonprofits with the design process and tools needed to engage their communities, put their visions down on paper, and advance to the next stage — gaining support, raising funds, and building projects. The partnership enabled HFC to host several workshops at the Mental Health Healing Garden location to survey that helped them ascertain the community’s wants, needs, and goals for the space. The Collaborative presented many options for design, materials, plants, murals, etc. These events were fun conversations that engaged the community in the planning processes to which they often do not have the opportunity to contribute.
To further expand the educational component of the Mental Health Healing Garden, HFC has developed a new partnership with the Rutgers-New Brunswick Department of Environmental Sciences and the Rutgers-Camden Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities, Voces de la Comunidad project, to further connect with and engage the community. The intent is to foster connections between community members, researchers, and organizations to tackle environmental challenges. Combining scientific research, the humanities, and community storytelling, VOCES focuses on climate justice and health equity, which creates a platform for collaboration, advocacy, and action, and amplifies voices of those who are most affected by these issues. To date, this partnership has led to two workshops held at HFC’s Family Counseling Clinic which provided information on the connections between mental and physical health, and engaged participants in hands-on journaling and art-making activities.
The Healing Garden will serve includes any client receiving services in our Camden County and Gloucester County programs, as well as partnering with other Southern NJ programs and agencies that desire to host events or programming in the Healing Garden.