Stories of Change and Community From Our 2022 Impact Report
Our 2022 Impact Report is packed with stories about our work and partners, detailing the charity’s journey to Healthy Futures and the impact of the programs we’ve launched over the past two years. It also features many of the changemakers who are driving innovation in their communities and the real people who are impacted by their efforts.
Check out these three stories pulled straight from our inaugural impact report that showcase the values and vision at the heart of our work, and be sure to check out the full report to learn even more about Rite Healthy Futures and our signature initiatives!
Empowering Children
Before visiting The Painted Turtle in Lake Hughes, California, at age 13, Sophie had never been to a summer camp. As is the case for so many other kids, her experiences at a SeriousFun camp were life-changing ones.
Sophie, who has an undiagnosed form of ataxia, a central nervous system disorder, is assisted by both a walker and a pink wheelchair and often finds that keeping up with the other kids around her is difficult. But while visiting the Painted Turtle, a camp in the SeriousFun global network of camps and programs serving children with serious illnesses and their families, Sophie never had those feelings.
“At camp, I’m able to swim, ride horses, and fly through the air on ziplines. I take on adventures and try new things,” Sophie said. “I don’t need my mom or my aide to help me do anything. I fit in and I’m just like everybody else. And that’s what means the most to me there. At camp, the kids want to be my friend.”
Sophie’s experiences aren’t unique, and SeriousFun is renowned for not only its ability to provide kids and parents dealing with a serious illness a place to feel the freedom of childhood but for fostering a true bond of community between campers, staff and family.
As a part of our Empowering Children initiative, SeriousFun camps are helping kids step beyond the limitations of their illness and learn new things, make new friends and take home new memories.
The recently expanded partnership between Rite Aid Healthy Futures and SeriousFun Children’s Network will advance critical new racial and health equity programs, helping ensure kids from all backgrounds can grow and thrive at camp and join in the SeriousFun experience.
Connecting Communities
In May of 2022 volunteers gathered in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, to transform a small concrete plaza into something more: a community garden. The volunteers, staff from Penn State Health Children’s Hospital, filled prepared planting beds with herbs, vegetables and pollinators with the hopes that the space will grow not just food but new opportunities for the neighborhood surrounding it.
“We’re excited to have students here and have the community come, pick from the garden, taste fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Laurie Crawford, a project manager with Penn State REACH. “As I’ve learned over the years, when we give kids and people food picked right from the garden, that connection really opens their eyes to it, makes them try new things. And we’re hoping it’ll just put more fruits and vegetables into their diets.”
The garden not only connects people with the soil and the vegetables that come from it but also links one of the region’s major health providers with a community center, a local school district and an impactful nonprofit institution serving the city.
The Chestnut Street Community Center donated the courtyard space for the garden and the center itself partners with Lebanon County Christian Ministries by supplying overnight sleeping spaces for individuals and families in need of a safe space. The community center’s central location – near the bus stop, banks and the post office – makes it an ideal location for emergency shelter guests to spend the night before waking up to go to work or a nearby resource center.
All-in-all volunteers and visitors hope the garden will continue to develop and benefit those in the community, whether they’re in need of food, a safe space or a good spot to make new connections. Penn State Health is demonstrating what are Connecting Communities initiative is all about – building new bridges between local hospitals and the people they serve.
Strengthening Cities
Grassroots Gardens of Western New York (GGWNY) began in the early 1990s when a group of community activists saw the potential for the city’s vacant land. Over the next 15 years, the small, volunteer-led organization created a network of roughly 30 gardens.
Over time, the gardens began to offer more than just safe passages and fresh produce. New programming focused on powerful subjects like community organizing, environmental justice, food access and nutrition. GGWNY grew from being the dream of dedicated neighbors into a vital community resource serving Buffalo residents.
At GGWNY, support from Rite Aid Healthy Futures is helping to strengthen family and youth engagement, grow resources, expand urban agriculture workforce development programs, improve food access, and establish food-based micro-enterprise training and opportunities.
“We learned long ago that our community gardens are so much more than food sources for our communities,” said Mary Ann Kedron, lead gardener at the GGWNY’s Farmer Street Community Garden. “Sometimes they are quiet, safe places, and sometimes they are places of play.”
Mary Ann’s thoughts capture the everyday good that can be done through an organized green space, and how its presence can join and empower a community. GGWNY started with a small goal — to transform the unused lots of Buffalo into neighborhood hubs, where residents could find renewed food sovereignty and foster new connections.
Today, that vision has become a vast network of gardens that make it easier for people to experience health, wellness and happiness in neighborhoods that have been historically underserved.
Read More
These highlights are just a sampling of the impact that our initiatives and partners are having on their communities, with new stories of change and togetherness emerging every day. Read our full 2022 Impact Report to learn more about how Rite Aid Healthy Futures and its partners are working together to bring lasting change to the neighborhoods we serve.