Working Together Toward Solutions
The Amherst H. Wilder Foundation strategically engages partners to improve the quality of life in Saint Paul and the east metro area. By working together with a variety of organizations and individual residents, we take on community challenges by working together toward a lasting solution.
Capacity to Care
Capacity to Care is a community initiative designed to build the capacity of family, friend and community caregivers. As few as 19% of the 500,000 Minnesotans providing care to a loved one identify as a caregiver. The initiative’s initial goal is to raise awareness and increase caregiver self-identification.
By raising awareness of the important role that caregivers play, Capacity to Care seeks to increase the number of current caregivers who seek support, the number of community and family members who offer to help those providing care, and the number of future caregivers who begin preparing for their role as a caregiver before crisis strikes.
The Capacity to Care initiative includes:
- Comprehensive public awareness campaign–www.whatisacaregiver.org–designed to increase caregiver identification
- Caregiving in Context research study, designed to promote a better understanding of the informal networks of support that surround caregivers
- Pilot projects designed to strengthen existing informal networks of support for caregivers or connect caregivers to new networks of support
African-American Babies Coalition
The African-American Babies Coalition is a collaborative of African-American community leaders committed to improving early childhood development in the African-American community.
The work of the group builds on the Babies Project, including the
Babies in Minnesota study conducted by Wilder Research in 2009. The Coalition seeks to close the achievement gap by ensuring that African-American babies get the support they need in their early years to learn, engage and thrive as they grow.
The goals of the African-American Babies Coalition are:
- Discover, through community-based research, how brain development research can be brought to parents, grandparents, child care providers, and community members in an accessible, applicable, and culturally relevant way. A series of focus groups with African-American community members will explore values and behaviors that promote and inhibit healthy child development.
- Implement a community engagement plan that infuses brain development into community life and grassroots parenting techniques through convening, public awareness and education.
- Evaluate the success of the implementation, gleaning lessons learned and opportunities for replication in other communities.