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Grantsville City Intergenerational Community Garden

Hosted by: Tooele County Health Department- Grantsville City Communities That Care

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Please briefly describe your Communities Talk activity.

Our coalition coordinated with the local senior center, the University Extension program, 4-H, and Grantsville City Library to create an Intergenerational Community Garden. We collaborated with the Create Better Health program through our University Extension program and our community garden clinic to teach attendees over a 12-week summer session about healthy, balanced eating (following the My Plate guidelines) as well as how to make use of garden produce in meal planning. Attendees also learned about proper timelines for watering, fertilizing, planting, and harvesting as well as how to identify noxious weeds and appropriately treat pests and fungi in gardens. Through this program we helped to create community awareness of the coalition's mission and vision (which runs under a Communities That Care model, https://www.blueprintsprograms.org/communities-that-care-ctc).  

Our coalition community survey had found that there was a shortage of structured summer programs for youth and that our older adult populations needed more opportunities to interact with other members of the community for their mental and physical health; hence, this created the perfect opportunity. For more information, visit the coalition’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=779182574296935&set=pb.100066155972583.-2207520000&type=3, the Tooele County prevention page at https://tooelehealth.org/prevention-services, and the Tooele County Utah State University Extension at https://extension.usu.edu/tooele/.  

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How does alcohol and other drug misuse affect your community?

Attendees building Intergenerational Community Garden.

Our local police force and school administration have become concerned about the increasing rates of youth who are experimenting with alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco (primarily via vaping). There has also been an increased rate of confiscations among our police force and school administrators of counterfeit drugs that have been mailed or trafficked across our borders. In the area, 80% of households have both parents working full-time, and 70% of parents commute over 45 minutes for work. There has become an increased need for additional pro-social opportunities for youth and older adults alike in the community, since their caregivers are often caught in traffic on their way home from work. Our local Emergency Medical Responders had reported an increase in elder neglect, and our city leaders reported concerns about youth who get into trouble due to boredom or lack of activities in which they can be mentored.  

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Which prevention strategy(ies), as defined by SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, best fit your Communities Talk activity?

  • Community-Based Process Strategy - focuses on enhancing the capacity of the community to address AOD issues through organizing, planning, collaboration, coalition building, and networking.
  • Alternative Strategy - focuses on redirecting individuals from potentially problematic situations and AOD use by providing constructive and healthy events/activities.
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What goal(s) did you hope to accomplish with your Communities Talk activity?

  • Hold meetings or discussion groups on alcohol and/or other drug misuse prevention.
  • Develop strategic plans to reduce and prevent alcohol and/or other drug misuse.
  • Build coalitions with other agencies or programs to reduce and prevent alcohol and/or other drug misuse.
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Did you accomplish your goal(s)?

Yes

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What challenge(s) did you face in planning your activity this year?

  • Lack of interest from the community
  • Lack of promotion/awareness of our activity or organization
  • Inexperience hosting Communities Talk activities
  • Pre-arranged transportation to get individuals there.
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How did you overcome these challenges?

In our struggle to work with the school district to promote the program to parents and youth, we resorted to paying to boost posts on social media to better promote the program. We also sent an informative email and postcard mailer to all our current registrants for 4-H to see if we could increase youth participation. Our big, learned experience from this was that it is better to have the community members who are interested drive the programs and interventions. We also learned that if we don’t have the school district on board to start out with, it is really hard to get youth and parents present at our events.

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What are your next steps?

Older adults interacting with youth and young adults in the community.
  • Expand our coalition with new partnerships in the community
  • Support new prevention policies, legislation, or social ordinances
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If you’ve conducted Communities Talk activities in prior years, how has your repeated participation contributed to progress in achieving your prevention goals?

This was my first time as a coalition coordinator applying for this. 

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Organizations that conduct Communities Talk activities often involve other organizations in the planning and execution of events. Please indicate which type(s) of organizations you involved in your activity planning.

  • Colleges or universities
  • Local businesses
  • State and local government agencies (e.g., public health departments)
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Which of the following best describes the primary audience(s) for your Communities Talk activity?

  • Youth
  • Parents
  • Senior Citizens
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How did you reach and engage your primary audience(s) to encourage them to participate in your activity?

We were able to build working connections with our university extension as well as our senior center and local library, which will help our coalition in moving forward. We created an opportunity for parents to bond more with their children or to give them a little respite in caring for their child so that they could run errands or shop for groceries. We also created an opportunity for older adults to interact with youth and young adults in the community to improve mental health and overall physical wellness.

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Which Communities Talk resources (or other SAMHSA resources) were most helpful for your activity?

Attendees create Intergenerational Community Garden.
  • StopAlcoholAbuse.gov website
  • Communities Talk website
  • Communities Talk toolkits
  • Communities Talk Find an Activity Map

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