The Winter Park Health Foundation (WPHF) focuses on improving health in the communities of Winter Park, Maitland and Eatonville. Through ongoing data collection and monitoring trends, our team identifies health issues and needs. Our strategy is to engage partners and empower residents to support healthy behaviors; address barriers to health; create healthy habits where people live, learn, work and play; and make health a priority.

Our Spring 2023 grantee organizations and their innovative projects do just that. From art programs for older adults served at the Miller Center in Winter Park to Community Gardens in Eatonville and Maitland, the funds provided for these important projects underscore the WPHF mission of optimizing the health and wellbeing of residents from Eatonville, Maitland and Winter Park.

Here’s more about our cohort of Spring 2023 grantees and their exciting projects: 

Grant: Arts at DayBreak
Grantee: Crealde School of Art

The return of “Hands-On Inspiration Fine Art Classes” will enhance the quality of life of Day Break participants through artmaking. The objectives identified by Crealdé and Easterseals (provider of the DayBreak adult day care program at the Miller Center) are to create a pleasurable experience, boost self-esteem, improve fine motor skills, enhance socialization, and stimulate reflection.

Instructor Fabiola Hansen has uplifted seniors through hands-on visual art projects at Crealdé’s outreach locations for 17 years. From 2015 to 2020, Fabiola worked with a class of 25 to 30 DayBreak participants for 1½ hours each week to create fine artwork such as sculpting, painting, memory shadow boxes, and more.  

A grant from WPHF will enable Easterseals and Crealdé to resume this worthwhile and impactful program at DayBreak.  At the end of the yearlong effort, the DayBreak participants’ artwork will be displayed at the Miller Center, then at the Center for Health & Wellbeing for the community to enjoy. 

Grant: Storytellers Teen Documentary Photography Project in Eatonville
Grantee: Crealde School of Art

This funding for Crealdé School of Art will support the 20th Storytellers project in Central Florida. Created by Peter Schreyer, CEO/Executive Director and senior faculty member at Crealdé, this eight-week class will help 10 teens from Eatonville explore their own community as photographic documentarians and storytellers. Classes will be taught on site at the Boys & Girls Club in Eatonville, as well as three sessions at the Crealdé studio and Hannibal Square Heritage Center. 

The project will culminate with an exhibition of 25 archival, framed pieces that will become part of Crealdé’s permanent collection. Initially, it will travel to the Hannibal Square Heritage Center for a three-month exhibition; the exhibition will also travel to the Eatonville Branch of the Orange County Library and be shared with the community at the Center for Health & Wellbeing.

Grant: Community Gardens
Grantee: Ideas for Us  

IDEAS for Us (IDEAS), a regular Community Education Program presenter for WPHF at the Center for Health & Wellbeing, has requested grant support from WPHF to bring garden-focused community education programs to various locations in the WPHF impact area.  This funding will support community gardens and education in three locations: the Eatonville Chamber of Commerce/Community Nook in Eatonville, Winter Park Presbyterian Preschool in Winter Park, and Asbury United Methodist Church in Maitland.

Grant:  Rollins College Sustainability Program – Campus Urban Farm 
Grantee: Rollins College

The Rollins College Urban Farm started as an independent study project with student Andrew Lesmes (2015) and faculty from Environmental Studies. Funding was provided by the Gordon J. Barnett Memorial Foundation. The farm is managed by the Sustainability Program and typically has volunteer opportunities to get students from across the Rollins campus involved.  

Grant support from WPHF will help provide teaching opportunities for Rollins classes in which professors from across disciplines will partner with the urban farm as a venue for lessons.  The urban farm will harvest and provide fresh produce for the food pantry managed by the Student Support Foundation.  This grant will allow the Sustainability Program to continue to hire student employees and help with maintenance costs associated with the farm. 
 

Grant: Family Place Library
Grantee: Winter Park Public Library 

Obtaining the Family Place Library designation for the Winter Park Public Library will greatly benefit both the children and families in Winter Park, and the community-at-large. The Family Place model promotes the transformation of public libraries into welcoming and developmentally appropriate environments for very young children (ages 0 through 5) and their caregivers.  

Thanks to a grant from the Winter Park Fund at the Central Florida Community Foundation, the Winter Park Public Library has completed Phase I of Family Place certification which entails formal training for Library staff. Additionally, the Winter Park Health Foundation funded a new Toy Library and Walking Classroom kits, which will continue to be an important component of Family Place Library integration. 

Phase II of the Family Place Library effort is to: 

1. Augment current toddler and preschool furnishings to maximize appeal and engagement, and foster learning through play.  
2. Establish and manage two, five-week parent-child development workshops in coordination with early childhood, and family support specialists.  
3. Expand the physical collection of resources targeted to healthy childhood development, early literacy, and local resources. 

With this grant, the Winter Park Public Library will be positioned to apply for national Family Place certification in May 2024. 

Grant: Arts in Health: Clinician and Program Surveys & Social Pharmacy Pilot
Grantee: True Health 

In 2022, Winter Park Health Foundation partnered with CFCArts and Grounded with Data to develop a survey to help identify barriers and motivators for teaching artists.  Grounded with Data created, hosted, and analyzed the results while CFCArts offered their expertise for the survey content and deployed the survey to their roster of artists. The results of the survey were presented by CFCArts and Grounded with Data at the Arts in Health collaboration meeting in December 2022 at the Center for Health & Wellbeing. 

During the Arts in Health collaboration meeting, there was agreement that data was needed from the clinical community and individual education participants to inform future arts in health work.  It was suggested that a survey like the teaching artists survey should also be conducted with clinicians to help identify their perception of arts in health and their willingness to participate in “social prescribing. Social prescribing enables physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals to refer patients to a range of local, non-clinical services to support their health and wellbeing. It was also suggested that a small group of arts program providers update their program satisfaction surveys to better reflect the participants’ perceptions of how art program participation is affecting their wellbeing.   

This grant will provide the funding needed for the creation, distribution, and analysis of the clinician survey as well as the implementation of questions to obtain personal wellbeing status for arts program participants from a small cohort of local art program providers. 

Additionally, this grant will support the buildout and implementation of a social pharmacy at True Health, a private, non-profit community health center, which has served Central Florida since 1977. The organization operates eight locations within Orange and Seminole Counties, which includes eight neighborhood health centers.) The social pharmacy will be utilized by case managers to directly link True Health patients with non-medical interventions like arts, cultural, and social events and programming, with the aim to reduce the burden of healthcare concerns and chronic disease and improve overall patient wellbeing. The Center for Health & Wellbeing’s Community Education programming, along with other WPHF partners including libraries and CFCArts, will be primary sources for referrals.  Funding will help with staff time to create the virtual hub of community resources as well as purchase tickets for patients’ admission to or participation in key events/programs.