The Northfield Healthy Community Initiative (HCI) has been making a difference in the lives of youth and families in our community for more than 20 years, working behind the scenes in support of successful programs like TORCH, Take It to The Box, Accelerate Northfield, the Mayor’s Youth Council and many, many more.

Over the past eight years, HCI has helped to bring in over $4 million in state and federal grants to make a difference for our kids, and HCI has been recognized statewide and nationally for our collaborative approach to local issues. HCI’s work has been funded in part by a generous federal grant, which has now expired. We ask your support with a tax-deductible donation to close our funding gap and ensure that our work can continue. Together we can make a difference and leave a legacy that will make the health and well-being of our children our first priority both today and tomorrow.

Here are a few of HCI’s success stories:

• Over 300 low-income and minority youth in grades 6-12 participated this past year in the TORCH graduation initiative. Since TORCH began, Northfield’s graduation rate for Latino students has climbed from 36% to over 90% today. Young people who previously considered dropping out of school are now graduating from high school and pursuing postsecondary education.

• More than 1,100 Northfield youth have spent time this past year in free summer and after-school programs through the HCI-supported PRIMEtime collaborative. Evaluations show that young people in these programs are doing better in school and feel more connected to our community.

• More than 6,000 pounds of medication have been collected locally through the Take It to The Box program, which started in Rice Counity and is now in dozens of communities across the state!

Because it does not run specific programs per se, HCI is uniquely positioned to help build bridges between groups and to pull partners together to look strategically at community issues and solutions. Consequently, HCI has been repeatedly trumpeted as a “champion” for youth organizations in the community, able to provide the extensive support and connections that these groups need to further their work, but are unable to do themselves.