Healthy Hampshire

Healthy Hampshire focuses on building communities that support nourished, active, and joyful residents who are empowered to shape the places they live and the lives they lead. We do this by working with community organizations, municipalities, and residents to create ample access to affordable healthy food, as well as safe, inclusive, and beautiful public spaces.

 

Building communities that support nourished, active, and joyful residents

Mission

The mission of Healthy Hampshire is to engage residents and institutional partners in co-creating healthy communities through collaborative, power-sharing processes that lead to systemic change.

Our Work

Healthy Hampshire’s work fits into three categories:

image of three people holding up a poster together and smiling

Community Planning

We work with stakeholders who share our goals to identify policy, systems, and environmental change priorities through community assessment and planning processes.

person presenting in front of a projector screen to a room full of seated people

Coalition Building

We help launch and sustain community coalitions to work on priorities identified through community planning processes.

image of a van that says Hilltown Mobile Market on it, with three people standing in front presenting it

Program Design and Implementation

We help partners launch programs and projects that emerge as community priorities.

Approach and Values

All of Healthy Hampshire’s work is accomplished through partnerships. We work with a diverse array of community partners throughout Hampshire County and the Hilltowns to foster healthy communities. We do this by:

  • Building relationships among people with diverse perspectives to cultivate shared understanding and develop collaborative visions.
  • Understanding how white supremacy, settler colonialism, and the other systems of oppression are the root cause of health inequities.
  • Cultivating practices that actively disrupt oppressive dominant systems, heal generational trauma, and realize life-affirming ways of working and being together.
  • Continuously experimenting with different ways of sharing power, including utilizing decision-making methodologies that are non-hierachical, relational, and consent-based.
  • Amplifying and centering people who are systematically excluded from power in goal-setting, decision-making, and evaluation.

Click here to read more about the values and guiding principles our work is rooted in.

Healthy Hampshire Team

Rossana Salazar

Rossana Salazar is an Early Childhood educator for Latino Families. One of her areas of expertise is comprehensive child care and Early Childhood stimulation. She is an RN, has a Masters in Public Health in the specialty of Community Health Education, and a Graduate Certificate in Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies from the University of Massachusetts. She has many years of experience working with the Latino community, providing direct support to parents, children and families. Her work experience extends to public schools as well as to other institutions dedicated to community work.
Rossana is currently teaching Soluciones Positivas: Sesión 5: En esta sesión se examinarán estrategias específicas que se pueden utilizar para promover el comportamiento positivo en los adultos y en los niños, tanto en el hogar como en la comunidad. Please click on the workshop title to register.

Rossana Salazar is a Community Engagement and Evaluation Specialist who specializes in working with Latino families and communities. She is an RN; has an M.P.H. in Community Health Education; a Graduate Certificate in Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies; and is a doctoral candidate in the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Environmental Conservation Department, working with Latin American Indigenous Communities. She has many years of experience working with community projects, research, and outreach, and providing direct support to families and providers. Her work experience extends to public schools as well as to other institutions dedicated to community work. 

Rossana’s professional life has always been linked to direct work with populations of different ages, from newborns to the elderly, studying and understanding the different stages of the life of a human being and then moving on to direct care with the patient and taking charge of their care and recovery both physically and mentally, considering that person as a bio-psycho-social entity in a community context. These experiences have enriched her as a person and allowed her to learn that every human being is unique and singular and all humans need to be treated equitably. As a Public Health professor, Rossana trained students to understand and build the connections between their professional role and the population/people served. In her graduate studies and community projects, she has developed effective working relationships with different communities in the area. As part of the Latino community in this country, she feels a great responsibility to support and work for her community as well as broaden her experience to other communities to improve their quality of life, always seeking social justice. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, The House of Representatives, named Rossana the recipient of the Latino Excellence Award for the 3rd Hampshire District in 2022.

Position: Community Engagement and Evaluation Specialist

Email: rsalazar@collaborative.org

Talya Sogoba

Talya Sogoba is a non-binary, Black Muslim from Boston, MA and a first generation Malian- American. They have experience in facilitation, community building, organizing, and program planning. Talya is a UMass Amherst alumni, with a BA in Journalism, African American Studies and French. They believe in centering community in every aspect of their life, and finding and highlighting moments of joy. Talya is passionate about creating and supporting space to be authentically “Blackity Black” and unapologetic about their identities.

Outside of working towards liberation and dismantling whiteness, they spend time managing their cat’s instagram, sneaking new plants into their apartment, and working on interior design projects for their friends. Pre-Covid you could find them at brunch, on picnics, and traveling.

Position: Inclusive Engagement Specialist

Email: tsogoba@collaborative.org

S. Clarke Bankert, MPH

Clarke Bankert (she/her/they/them) is the Senior Manager for Community Inclusion Strategies, and in this role she facilitates a variety of community-led processes to promote healthy communities, shift power to people most impacted by health inequities, and dismantle systems of oppression that concentrate power in the hands of the few. Prior to this role, she managed Healthy Hampshire for eight years and has worked in the field of public health for over a dozen years to create healthier communities by supporting community-led processes for change. She has been involved in all aspects of the change process, including assessment and data collection, program design, program implementation, evaluation and organizational capacity building. Through each of these elements, Clarke brings a passion for community-led efforts that center the voices and actions of people who experience the greatest burden of health inequities in our communities. Prior to her work at CES, Clarke was a Prevention Specialist with the Western Massachusetts Center for Healthy Communities, a program of Cooley Dickinson Hospital supporting regional public health efforts. While at the Center for Healthy Communities she conducted the first Community Health Needs Assessment for the hospital and provided technical assistance on community food systems to the Holyoke Food and Fitness Policy Council.

Position: Senior Manager, Community Inclusion Strategies

Email: cbankert@collaborative.org

Kristen Whitmore

Kristen Whitmore (she/they) is Special Projects Coordinator at the Collaborative for Educational Services. She works on the Healthy Hampshire initiative, which engages residents and partners in creating beautiful and nourished communities through collaborative, power-sharing processes aimed at systems change. Kristen is white, queer, and working class, and they spent the past 15 years learning and practicing community self-determination, food sovereignty, and liberation. They have worked with family farmers, food justice organizations, community coalitions, and students of all ages in New England and Latin America. Her work has included managing farmers markets, farm share programs, a Produce Prescription program, and a food hub; bookkeeping and grant writing for food businesses and organizations; conducting participatory, qualitative, and ethnographic research on food systems; teaching, facilitation, and mentorship in community and University settings; developing narrative strategies and communications tools; and community organizing to build the power of oppressed peoples. Kristen holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Gender Studies from Mount Holyoke College and a master’s degree in Regional Planning from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Kristen was raised in western Massachusetts by a family of farmers, food workers, and truck drivers. They love cooking, learning new things, and hanging out with their partner and two corgis.

Email: kwhitmore@collaborative.org

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