Healthy Community Champions are the neighborhood level grassroots advocates and educators of the Let’s Get Healthy, Boston! initiative. Let’s meet a few of these commuity leaders:

Souad Hajani

Age: 51

Organization: East Boston Social Center, Family Engagement

Neighborhood: East Boston

Topic Area: Active Transit, Smoke-Free Housing

Why did you become involved with the HCC program? I always want people to be healthy. I start in my home. I cook every day and my home is smoke-free. I want my environment to be smoke-free, I exercise and I want to eat healthy. Now, with the Hubway, I can ride bikes. There’s a group of the HCC’s and we want to encourage each other to ride.

What are you most proud of accomplishing? Getting the Hubway in East Boston. We set up tables at meetings and encourage people to join. People can ride from Maverick to Orient Heights and it’s great!

Leonide Lacet

Age: 75

Organization: Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition

Neighborhood: Mattapan

Topic Area: Healthy Food & Beverage

Why did you become involved with the HCC program? I’ve lived in Mattapan for over 40 years, but wasn’t involved. Now that my children are older, I’m free to do other things. I wanted to learn from people and they can learn from me. I wanted to be aware of what’s going on in the community and this gives me the opportunity to get involved with the city and help.

What are you most proud of accomplishing? I like helping a lot of people. They were unaware of how much sugar is in a beverage. I’ve taught people how to read the labels and choose less sugary beverages. I also helped with a cooking class and have learned about new vegetables that I don’t have back home in Haiti –like about swiss chard and how to cook it.

Takiyah White

Age: 36

Organization: The Boston Project Ministries and Talbot Norfolk Triangle Neighbors United

Neighborhood: Dorchester

Topic Area: Active Transit

Why did you become involved with the HCC program? I became involved with the HCC program as a part of a funding source through my work with The Boston Project Ministries, a grassroots, faith based organization that serves the neighbors in the TNT neighborhood. It was the perfect opportunity to further our passion to help support our neighbors in living a more active and healthy life style.

What are you most proud of accomplishing? I am most proud of accomplishing our very first annual, “Let’s Get Moving” event, also “Let’s Get Biking” event that were both well attended and were a lot of fun and we were able to educate our neighbors at the same time regarding active transit and healthy life style choices.