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Our Group Members

The Franklin County Team Service Project (FCTSP) is made up of six members:

Kellan Kent, Kathy Leone, Hannah Anderson, Dawn DiMaria, Alida Proctor, and D Lightman.

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Overview of Project

The FCTSP completed a 7-week-long CHII survey of each sidewalk within a roughly quarter-mile radius around Greenfield Middle School.

Our goal is to advocate for accessibility and safety of these sidewalks so people can easily walk/roll to schools or any destination.

We will compile this information into a report on the study area to be used by any department for improvements in the future.

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Project Inspiration

We started out the service term by thinking about what populations in our community we wanted to focus on. There were a lot of ideas, but we really wanted to do something with a focus on disability/accessibility!

Rachel Stoler of Mass in Motion pointed us in the direction of the grant and helped us edit it

Christy Moore let us know how we could best help her department with the grant

Once we were awarded the grant, the project started moving pretty fast

We’re all happy about the results of the work and are thankful for everyone who helped along the way!

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Connection between CHII and Mass in Motion

-Mass in Motion is a statewide movement that promotes opportunities for healthy eating and active living in the places people live, learn, work and play. We focus on increasing health equity—ensuring that we recognize when particular groups of people have inequitable access to these opportunities for health.

This year the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards (MAHB) teamed up with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Mass in Motion and the Office of Health Equity to offer mini-grants to existing Mass in Motion communities interested in using the Community Health Inclusion Index (CHII) to assess how inclusive their community’s healthy living resources are to people with disabilities, particular those with mobility issues.

-Around the time these mini-grants were announced, the Dial/Self Americorps Team Service Project approached Rachel Stoler, who is the Mass in Motion Coordinator for Franklin County, to ask if she had any ideas of a project they could do to increase access to recreation for people with disabilities. Rachel had just learned about the mini-grant, and the rest is a match made in grant-writing history. �

-Rachel invited Christy Moore (Greenfield Parks and Recreation Director) as well as other municipal staff to participate in the project, and Christy has been actively involved since the beginning, giving the guidelines for how the project would be most useful to the town.

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Our Study Area

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The Community Health Inclusion Index (CHII)

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Tape Measurer

As part of the measurement section, we took note of how wide each sidewalk was at various points along the survey. It’s easy to neglect having a sidewalk that is 5 ft across, but it’s difficult for people in wheelchairs/motorized scooters to get around if the sidewalk isn’t wide enough.

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Digital Level

We also took the cross slope of each sidewalk into account, since a steep slope can be difficult for people in wheelchairs as well.

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Digital Level

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Our Data Collection

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13 ½ miles surveyed!

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Beautiful trees in the Greenfield area

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Acknowledgements

We found a number of well-kept sidewalks and are grateful for the hard work of the DPW.

Examples of very well-kept sidewalk include:

-Federal street

-Holly street�� -Church/Union Intersection

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Improvements

Sidewalks that could use improvement include:

-Riddell Street

-Maple Street�� -Pond St�� -Union St

Common features were: too narrow, dips and breakage, steep cross slope, tree root disruption

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Focus Groups

We wanted to gather input from students in the community about what they thought of their daily walks to school! Alida and Kellan organized a couple of focus groups and collected a lot of responses.

Majority of middle and high school students are comfortable walking/biking to school
Students suggested improvements regarding transport to school were less buses and more bus routes
Most students feel crosswalks near schools are placed well and safe to cross

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Learning how to work together

SOLUTIONS:��-Splitting into teams� -Information Liasons� -Data Collection/Writing Team� -Focus Groupers��-Using the right medium to communicate� -texts better than email

CHALLENGES:� �-large project load��-lots of moving pieces��-scheduling

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Activity!

Survey the room! Use the CHII to decide if the room is safe to walk through.

What was it like working as a team?

What was it like working with a deadline?

What was it like coordinating schedules?

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