UNC Center for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention
Community Designed Programs
What are Community-Designed Programs?
Community-designed programs are initiatives developed and shaped by community members to address their specific needs, challenges, and aspirations. These projects emphasize collaboration, inclusivity, and local knowledge, ensuring the solutions are relevant and sustainable. These projects aim to create meaningful, impactful outcomes that reflect the community's values and priorities by involving community members in the brainstorming, planning, decision-making, and implementation processes.
Food for Thought
Warren County
Food for Thought is a youth summer program dedicated to providing nutrition education and hands-on access to fresh food to youth ages 5–14 in Warren County. Serving approximately 20-30 participants, the program offers a variety of activities to teach youth the full cycle of food, from seed to table.
In collaboration with local partners, notably Warren County 4-H and Place-N-the Country farm, campers engaged in a wide range of experiences including: planting vegetables of their choice, giving each camper ownership over something they'll watch grow throughout the summer, learning mushroom growing practices, making nutritious meal and snack recipes, sourdough baking, a visit with chickens and ducks from Cooperative Extension, physical activities to keep minds and bodies active throughout the day, field trips to local farmer's markets, where campers practiced their food budgeting skills and sampled local produce like cucumbers, plums, and peaches, and much more!
Women on the Move
Orange County
Women on the Move is a collaboration between the UNC Food, Fitness, and Opportunity Research Collaborative and Fairview Community Watch. It offers physical activity opportunities and nutrition classes to women in the Fairview Community.
Throughout the program, participants attended 75 classes, totaling over 4,500 minutes of physical activity. They were able to achieve 80% of the recommended amount of physical activity solely through Women on the Move programming.
In addition to physical activity, women completed a series of 8 nutrition education classes provided by NC Steps to Health. Children's nutrition classes were also offered during group sessions in partnership with educators from the Carolina Hunger Initiative.
Furthermore, the program invested in new exercise materials, including dumbbells, aerobic steps, and resistance bands, to enhance participants' physical activity experience.
Community Circles
A History of Collaboration...
Community Circles was a program FFORC launched in 2015 where gatherings aimed at fostering dialogue and igniting positive change within six rural communities were hosted.
These dialogues yielded tangible outcomes, culminating in the initiation of our three current community-driven projects.
Learn more about the Community Circles initiative and completed community-designed projects on our Completed Projects page.