The Convergence Partnership promotes equity, respects and recognizes that communities have existing assets, learns from new evidence, and strives to have the wisdom to redirect its efforts when circumstances call for such a change.
- Equity. Not all communities are created equally when it comes to opportunity to live healthy, strong lives. Low-income communities and communities of color have fewer grocery stores that stock healthy fresh foods, are more likely to be unsafe for children to walk to school or play outside, and have few places for children and adults to engage in physical activity. Residents who live in unhealthy environments are more likely to suffer from diabetes, asthma, heart disease, and high blood pressure. To create healthy places, these underlying inequities must be addressed. The Convergence Partnership focuses its activities and investments to improve the places most affected by such inequities.
- Respect. People who live in unhealthy communities know better than anyone what needs to change. Their voices and leadership are crucial in identifying the changes that are most needed, in advocating for those changes, and in sustaining them over time. The Convergence Partnership supports strategies to ensure that community residents are partners throughout the change process.
- Learning. The Convergence Partnership’s vision and strategies are based, in large part, on what has been learned from advocates and practitioners working to create healthier environments in communities across the country. Our vision is large and our goal ambitious. The Partnership believes it can succeed because we can learn from, and share, new evidence being generated nationally as people transform their communities into healthy surroundings.
- Responsiveness. The Convergence Partnership recognizes the importance of regularly reflecting and evaluating its work so that a change in direction can be made when experience dictates we should.
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