Healthy Community Initiative

October is Substance Use & Misuse Prevention Month, and we’re highlighting stories from our community! Sharing your experiences, reflections, and journeys is a powerful way to inspire others, and we’d love to hear them. If you have something you’d like to share, please email ashley@healthycommunityinitiative.org. My name is Charity, and I am an addict. Growing […]

October is Substance Use & Misuse Prevention Month, and we’re highlighting stories from our community! Sharing your experiences, reflections, and journeys is a powerful way to inspire others, and we’d love to hear them. If you have something you’d like to share, please email ashley@healthycommunityinitiative.org. My name is Shantel Arett. I want to start by […]

By Mariana Cruz and Byrd Lenzen as Guest Columnists for the Faribault Daily News Northfield YouthBank is a youth philanthropy program dedicated to uplifting the voices and ideas of young people in the Northfield community. YouthBank has its roots in Ireland, where it started in 1999. Since then, the YouthBank model has been adopted all […]

October is Substance Use & Misuse Prevention Month, and we’re highlighting stories from our community! Sharing your experiences, reflections, and journeys is a powerful way to inspire others, and we’d love to hear them. If you have something you’d like to share, please email ashley@healthycommunityinitiative.org. I struggled with addiction for many years and almost lost […]

Check out this good news story featuring Northfield students and staff! KSTP-TV aired the story on Wednesday about the success Northfield Public Schools is seeing with reading scores since implementing a science-based reading curriculum in 2022. HCI is proud to have helped make the teaching training possible. Having all children be at grade level in […]

October is Substance Use & Misuse Prevention Month and we’re highlighting stories from our community! Sharing your experiences, reflections, and journeys is a powerful way to inspire others and we’d love to hear them. If you have something you’d like to share, please email ashley@healthycommunityinitiative.org. How did I get here? I asked myself this question […]

In honor of Student Parent Month 2025, the Minnesota Department of Higher Education shared the following story from Samantha Becker, a student at the Northfield Community College Collaborative (NCCC). Read on below for more of her story: Samantha’s journey back to school didn’t start in a classroom—it started with a decision to take her life […]

Healthy Community Initiative (HCI) recently received a $72,980 grant from the Minnesota Humanities Center (MHC) to fund Sound and Sight Explorers, a new project to support 1,000+ youth in Rice County with no-cost art and music exploration experiences. Youth involved in PRIMEtime programming, HCI’s out of school time network initiative, are expected to benefit from […]

In honor of Student Parent Month 2025, the Minnesota Department of Health shared the following story from Naidine Villa, who recently completed her associate degree with support from the Northfield Community College Collaborative (NCCC). Read more about her experience at the NCCC in an article she wrote for the Northfield News last year, and read […]

By Ashley Gardner as a Guest Columnist for the Faribault Daily News September is National Recovery Month, and at Healthy Community Initiative we are celebrating both the power of recovery and the harm reduction work that’s been accomplished through the efforts of the Rice County Chemical and Mental Health Coalition (RCCMHC). Here are some highlights of […]