KANSAS CITY, Kan. - “Many Voices, One Goal – Healthy Living” is El Centro Inc.’s newest program focused on educating the Latino community about the benefits and necessity of a healthy lifestyle. After receiving a grant from the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, El Centro is excited to begin their work throughout both Wyandotte and Johnson Counties.
During the last 10 years, public dialogue has been central in creating momentum toward a movement of healthy lifestyles and awareness across the nation.
However, there are crucial segments of the broader population who are not being heard and not making themselves heard as to what would be effective strategies for them, and one is the Latino population. El Centro’s “Many Voices, One Goal – Healthy Living” program will help reach this population, benefiting our community as a whole.
The “Healthy Living” program will center around five main efforts: outreach, recruitment, training, retention and empowerment.
The program will hold informational meetings, recruit specific members of the community at these assemblies, train these individuals to promote a healthy lifestyle along with El Centro, and then back away and let the community help themselves.
This program will not only significantly educate the Latino community in the Kansas City area, but it will teach the community to learn from each other. Through this program, El Centro hopes to see less necessity for their intervention, and more of the Latino community working together.
El Centro’s previous success with healthy lifestyle education through their Promotores de Salud program will be a great foundation for “Many Voices, One Goal – Healthy Living”.
Aude Negrete, Director of Johnson County Family Services, and Cielo Fernandez, Promotores Manager, will be the community anchors for this program. Their extensive experience in community organizing and healthy lifestyle education will see that this program is a great success.
El Centro Inc. was established in 1976 for the purpose of meeting the needs of the Spanish-speaking and low-income citizens of Kansas City in their struggle with poverty and economic depression.
El Centro’s mission is now “strengthening communities and empowering families by providing educational, social and economic opportunities”, and it plans on obtaining this with the “Healthy Lifestyles” program, thanks to the support of the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
