Healthy Air For North Denver (HAND)

Green Team

NCCC Youth Corps and Americorps

FrontRange Earth Force Partnership

Photovoice

Environmental Justice Outreach Partnership

Eliminating Lead Poisoning

Environmental Justice Outreach Partnership in the Spanish-Speaking Community

In May 2004 EPA awarded Groundwork Denver a grant to identify, train and assist monolingual Spanish speaking residents in the use of the Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) Model. The CPS Model represents a systematic, community-based approach for stakeholders to achieve lasting solutions to local environmental concerns. Click here to download pdf.>

We recognized that Denver’s monolingual Spanish-speaking residents had been very difficult to engage with regards to environmental issues even though they experience negative environmental effects more than the population as a whole.

Because of its cultural relevance, the in-home health promoter (promotora) model of outreach was used. We conducted more than 500 home visits, which informed residents about indoor air quality issues, tapped into their concerns, and recruited resident leaders.

Since the implementation of this grant, leadership groups in Northwest Denver and Commerce City have emerged and become active voices in their community with regards to environmental health and environmental quality issues.

Read about what we learned in this process in our “Best Practices for Engaging the Spanish-speaking Community in Environmental Health, Environmental Justice and Environmental Quality Issues” [Click here to download pdf]