The Growing Resilience project will be hosting an Open House on Sunday, December 4th, 2016 from 2:00-4:00pm at the Black Coal Senior Center at 4 Great Plains Rd., Arapahoe, Wyoming. All interested community members are invited to attend and refreshments will be provided. Brief comments by project partners will be at 2:30pm.
The Growing Resilience project staff and the Community Advisory Board invite the Wind River community to join them in celebrating a successful first year of the project, to find out more, or to enroll in the study. This year the projects needs about 45 more interested families from the Reservation to join study which is measuring the impacts of home gardening on family health.
Participating families come to health data gathering sessions four times over two years, while half get a home garden right away and half wait two years and then receive a garden. Because of the patience and generosity of the families who are waiting for their gardens, the project is able to have this “randomized controlled trial” design – which has meant that it could get five years of funding from the National Institutes of Health and that the results show nearly for certain what impacts gardening has on Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho family health. Growing Resilience is the first such trial of home gardening ever done in the US.
In the first year, nearly 60 members of 18 families have joined the Growing Resilience project. With support from Blue Mountain Associates (BMA), 10 families started beautiful and productive gardens in 2016. In total, they planted over 1000 square feet and produced a wide variety of vegetables and a few fruits and are looking forward to continuing and expanding their gardens in 2017. In 2018, the other 8 families will get their turn to start their home gardens with BMA’s help.
In a testament to the commitment of the participants and the project team, every single one of the 18 families who came to the first health data collection session in February 2016 returned for the follow-up session in August. The principal investigator, Christine Porter at University of Wyoming, says she has been bragging about the beautiful gardens, this 100% family return rate for data collection, and the leadership from the Community Advisory Board members, BMA, Eastern Shoshone Tribal Health, and the Wind River Development fund to anyone who will listen, everywhere she goes. The new president of the University of Wyoming, Dr. Laurie Nichols, highlighted Growing Resilience in her first “state of the university” speech and Wyoming Public Radio featured an “open spaces” story about it in August.
Wind River tribal members are encouraged to attend this Open House if they want to learn more about or sign up for this gardening and health project. Growing Resilience project staff and the Community Advisory Board will be on hand to answer any questions and screen applicants for the next round of the study. Please bring the family and tell your friends about the Open House where home gardens will be discussed as a means of creating a healthier environment. For more information, visit www.growingresilience.org, or contact Melvin Arthur (307 231 6414 or [email protected]).
Growing Resilience
University of Wyoming
1000 E. University Ave, Dept 3196
Laramie, Wyoming 82071
Phone: 307 399 3247
Fax: 307 766 4098
Email: [email protected]