Welcome To Our Garden

Dear Friends,

It is our great pleasure to welcome and introduce you to the HARMONY GARDEN. The HARMONY GARDEN is an independent community research and education center that works to promote the health of girls. We engage in Community Based Participatory Action Research to explore and better understand the issues identified as most concerning to community residents.

Our research and educational experiences have taught us that individuals who gather together for change can transform the environment, beliefs, and norms of the community. We are committed to building a collective community effort to address the health and wellbeing of girls through the formation of partnerships with girls, their caregivers, and organizations serving girls. We are excited to work together with community residents to explore the idea of participatory research as a means of informed engagement in community action.

HARMONY GARDEN has accomplished several milestones since our doors opened in September 2006. We began a partnership with Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority to develop a Community Resident Research Team (CRRT) in the West End of Cincinnati. This team has learned research skills and impacted over 750 residents living in their community. The CRRT research has generated several solutions to address health in their community, including the West End Youth Leadership and Community Service Program; Healthy, Happy, Hazard-Free Program; and a STOP the Violence Rally.

In addition to the West End CRRT efforts, we were excited to launch our Healthy Communities, Healthy Girls initiative in the Covington and Price Hill communities in the spring of 2010. This initiative is designed to catalyze development of a community-wide agenda for girls’ health. In the first phase, Picturing Girls’ Health, mothers and daughters are armed with digital cameras and journals are asked to venture into their neighborhoods to take photos to represent what a “healthy girl” means to them. They are also encouraged to capture images that reflected their views on the kinds of supports that promote health and the barriers to girls’ health currently existing in their community.

Thank you for joining us in our efforts to catalyze a collective community vision to achieve and sustain the health of all girls. We hope you will unite with us in our mission to build partnerships to grow healthy girls through research, education, outreach, and advocacy.