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The Visitacion Valley Community The Pottruck Family Foundation provided major funding for the Visitacion Valley Community Resiliency Project (VVCRP) in San Francisco from 1999 to 2004. First conceived in 1999, the Project was administered by Youth Empowering Systems (YES) and the Health Realization Institute. The cornerstone of the VVCRP is Health Realization training. Health Realization teaches people to access their innate resiliency and to move beyond psychological limitations that block their abilities to thrive. The Health Realization approach to individual empowerment has been a catalyst for community change efforts throughout the US. Similar projects have positively impacted a variety of social services, prevention and community revitalization efforts throughout the country. Participants are trained to see how their thinking affects how they experience life. Through this training, participants understand how to access their innate mental health and common sense. This results in significant personal change which in turn enables them to become engaged in, and contribute to, positive change in themselves, their families and their community. During the five year period that the Foundation was involved, the VVCRP sought to promote self-sufficiency, to leverage community development efforts currently underway in VisValley, and to maximize the potential for positive, meaningful community change. All VVCRP staff, including youth, had been hired from the community, providing skills development to a core group of people and ensuring that substantial funds stayed within the community. Residents, youth and providers (including social workers, therapists and teachers) were trained in Health Realization, and that training continues to this date. The Foundation made a commitment to support the VVCRP locally over a five-year period (1999-2004), and hired Melanie Moore Kubo, PhD to evaluate the impact of the Project; Dr. Moore-Kubo’s report is below. In addition, Lone Pine Media was contracted to provide video documentation of neighborhood change; to view the video Voices of the Valley, please contact the Foundation. The VVCRP would not have been possible without a number of other funding partners including Wells Fargo Bank, Charles Schwab Corporation Foundation, Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Isabel Allende Foundation, McKesson Foundation, Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, S.H. Cowell Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, Milagro Foundation, and Dresdner RCM Global Investors. The Pottruck Family Foundation wishes to thank everyone involved with the Project – the VVCRP staff (Barbara Glaspie, Dorothy Thomas, DeJuan Redwood, and Eleanor Colbert); Roger Mills, PhD and the Health Realization Institute, the CBOs and residents of Visitacion Valley, evaluator Melanie Moore Kubo, PhD, Lone Pine Media, Anthony Reese and the National Community Development Instititute (NCDI) and all the funders who made this work possible. For more information on the VVCRP, please see the Evaluation report below or contact the Pottruck Family Foundation. For more information on the Health Realization model, the Center for Sustainable Change, or to contact Dr. Roger Mills, please go to www.healthrealization.com or www.centerforsustainablechange.org. Evaluation Report |