Wello reaffirms commitment to 'curb cuts,' targeted solutions with broad benefits
I have two young kids. Like many parents and caregivers, we like to go on walks using our stroller. While walking from street to street, we easily go up and down the sidewalk’s curb cuts — the concrete ramp that connects the sidewalk and street — as we parade through the neighborhood.
If you’ve ever benefited from the ease and accessibility of curb cuts, you have Ed Roberts, a disability activist and founder of the independent living movement, to thank.
Let’s back up. In the late '60s and early '70s in Berkeley, California, Roberts, who is paralyzed from the neck down, began organizing with other disability rights activists to make the spaces and places around their community more accessible through the addition of curb cuts. Their grassroots efforts resulted in a citywide policy to include curb cuts in the streets and sidewalks throughout major commercial areas in the city.
It wasn’t just people in wheelchairs who this solution helped. The lives of people pulling suitcases, making deliveries to local businesses and pushing children in strollers all were improved by the ease and accessibility of curb cuts. This targeted solution had broad benefits.
Here at Wello, our mission is to co-create community conditions that are fair and just to drive high levels of health and well-being for all. We believe that how we do that work matters. Curb cut thinking is our way of putting equity into action by working with the community to identify innovative, high-impact solutions to some of our most pressing health and well-being barriers.
So, how do you go about finding and implementing a curb cut? The thing is, curb cuts are often organic and surprising. You may not know what they are at the onset of a project or when you begin to tackle an issue. This is where the importance of how we do the work comes in.
All our work at Wello centers on community, meaning those most impacted by an issue take center stage in the solution. We have found one of the most effective ways of doing this is by starting small to build relationships and trust, which then develop a strong foundation to take on bigger challenges.
By working together, we also learn from and with each other, by doing. We leave the meeting room and test our ideas with the community. This in turn builds local capacity for sustainable impact, change and positive health outcomes. We lead with an entrepreneurial spirit that leaves room to be nimble, change course and follow the needs of the community.
In this way, we can, together, identify the curb cuts that will positively benefit the lives of our neighbors, friends, coworkers, and families living in Brown County.
A recent example of a curb cut was the purchase of a refrigerator for a local nonprofit, We All Rise: African American Resource Center. While working together to increase access to fresh, nutritious foods from local farms, we faced some bottlenecks. It was determined that if we could purchase an industrial refrigerator, we could not only keep foods fresher, longer, thereby serving more people, but we could also expand product offerings.
This meant that when local meat packing company, JBS, had meat to donate, We All Rise had the capacity to accept it. This curb cut, the purchase of an industrial refrigerator, was not the aim of our work together at the onset. However, this seemingly small, targeted solution has brought about broad benefits for the community.
As we ring in the new year, Wello reaffirms our commitment to do things differently, center community, explore the possible, and cultivate community all while seeking curb cuts along the way.
Natalie Bomstad is executive director at Wello. Wello's purpose is to co-create community conditions that are fair and just to drive high levels of health and well-being for all. Share your thoughts, questions, and topic suggestions by emailing hello@wello.org.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Wello reaffirms commitment to targeted solutions with broad benefits
