StreetHeart Project Awards

This is the first StreetHeart Project Award that helped to connected a local organization with neighborhood residents.

The StreetHeart Neighborhood boundaries include Galewood Elementary School, a school specific to the area Kindergarten aged students. The school leadership team applied for a StreetHeart Project Award that would provide flowers and pots that students could work together on with their classes to plant flowers to be delivered to the Neighborhood Senior Apartment Complex, Edmond Apartments, as a May Day Celebration.

Students worked with their classroom teachers, and their art teacher to plant flowers, decorate pots, and they each made a creative umbrella to carry with them on their walking field trip to deliver the flowers.

With four groups of 60 students at a time, all of the children were able to walk from the school to the Senior Apartments with their creative umbrellas on display. Each group toured through the apartment complex to delivery potted flowers to each resident door along with adding many flowers to the community room space for all residents to enjoy.

This project encouraged healthy behaviors with a walking field trip for students & improved wellbeing for residents who had such thoughtful flower delivery’s to their doorways. This also added vibrancy and joy to all who witnessed this project happening.

This is the first StreetHeart Project Award that helped to connected a local organization with neighborhood residents.

One StreetHeart neighbor partnered with the management team of her Senior Apartment Complex within the StreetHeart Neighborhood to build raised garden beds to be installed in the outdoor patio space that could be used by all. This resident listened to the concerns and wishes of her neighbors who missed having the opportunity to garden after moving into senior housing, and she herself really missed having an outdoor garden in the summer months. This resident applied for two 4ft raised beds and two benches with garden boxes at each end. She chose these items specifically to reduce mobility barriers to fellow senior residents allowing them to stand up with a walker to garden, or sit down on the provided benches to pick salad ingredients. This resident has been involved in many opportunities for neighborhood change over her lifetime in other communities, but has not felt hopeful for change in her current neighborhood until she was provided this StreetHeart Project Award opportunity. Since completing this project she expresses excitement about future opportunities, and is already working on another project for her neighborhood. She has been overwhelmed by the impact of this project including watching fellow neighbors engaging with the garden spaces by watering plants, gathering nearby, tending plants, and verbalizing how calming and beautiful that the space has become. This resident states that this project has had a bigger impact than she ever expected, and that neighbors are dreaming about what plants they can grow together next season. This resident is already working on another project, and would be interested in becoming a Neighborhood leader.

StreetHeart Neighbor, Joanna, was walking home from a downtown event with her young daughter when she realized how dark her neighborhood was after the sunset. With some vacant buildings combined with the dark spaces it made the walk feel unsafe at times. This resident used her StreetHeart Project Awards to apply for 36 solar lights that could be gifted in groups of two to each of the neighbors on her face block. Prior to completing the project Joanna and her children only knew two of their neighbors after living in the neighborhood for four years. While handing out these solar lights to her neighbors she quickly, and unexpectedly began to build relationships with each of them. Not only do each of her neighbors have matching solar lights that help to make their neighborhood brighter, but her daughter told us that she “feels safer now that she knows her neighbors”. This project increased access to  healthy activities within this neighborhood allowing for residents to walk after dark with increased lighting for safety. Joanna and her daughter are both eager to expand this StreetHeart project, and work with neighbors on other visible neighborhood improvements. 

StreetHeart Neighbor, Merry Jo, wanted to add color and vibrancy to her Neighborhood Senior Apartment complex. With the help of a StreetHeart Project Award she ordered 1,150 perennial flower bulbs and invited the whole community to come together to plant them together.  Merry Jo created and organized maps of each garden bed with specific bulbs assigned to each space making planting easy and available to Neighbors of all ages and abilities.  Her vision of waves of color flowing throughout the  gardens beds will come to life in the Spring for everyone who walks by to enjoy.