Healthy Community Initiative

“What’s pretty amazing and unique about HCI is there’s this really clear, ambitious mission, but all of that work is done through really strong, creative, trusting, innovative partnerships with people and organizations in a lot of different fields and disciplines and areas. But everyone is coming together with that same shared purpose.

The Healthy Community Initiative (HCI) Board of Directors enthusiastically announces that Tom Steinmetz will serve as the organization’s new Executive Director. Steinmetz will start Monday, Jan. 13. 

By Martha Lundin as a Guest Columnist for the Northfield News Northfield YouthBank has granted $7,390 to five youth-led community projects for 2024-25, including two spearheaded by middle school students. The theme for this grant round was “level the playing field.” Twelve YouthBank members were involved in the granting process. The projects that received funding […]

By Naidine Villa as a Guest Columnist for the Northfield News As a non-traditional student, I spent years feeling stuck in my educational journey, largely due to the stigma surrounding not completing my degree straight out of high school. I often found myself needing to explain my circumstances, and the thought of starting over felt […]

St. Olaf College alumna Nahal AfsharJavan has plenty of reasons to toot her own horn, including a literal one (she’s a French horn player in a Twin Cities adult concert band). AfsharJavan is an accomplished conductor and music educator with a B.M. in Instrumental Music Education, committed to fostering student-centered learning. But she is best […]

Capturing school spirit and mentoring students in sports broadcasting Ten minutes to game time, eighth grader Sam Mathews puts on a headset, scans a script, and prepares to go on the air. As a junior varsity soccer player, he’d probably attend this match anyway, to cheer on the varsity boys. But thanks to NorthfieldLive, he […]

During a lesson about multiples early in the school year, fourth graders in Tiffany Ryan’s class stand in a circle and take turns counting aloud to 100—ZERO, one, two, THREE, four, five, SIX, seven, eight, NINE—while one student marks the multiples of three with a green dot on a number line. Ryan then asks the […]

By Sandy Malecha as a Guest Columnist for the Northfield News In this fast-paced world, leaders of nonprofit organizations are kept so busy juggling present challenges and anticipating new ones, they rarely have the luxury of planning how they’ll hand over responsibilities when they move on to other positions or retire altogether. And yet the […]