HOST 1: For the past three years, billionaire Mackenzie Scott has been donating significant amounts of money to small non-profits around the county. Last week, the long reach of this philanthropic giving touched the South Bronx.
HOST 2: The Yield GIving project donated $2 million dollars to Health People, a long-standing non-profit focused on preventing and treating chronic diseases. As Tommaso Baronio reports, this windfall will change the organization’s focus.
BARONIO: It’s Tuesday morning, in the offices of Health People in the South Bronx. And even a week after the announcement.. Chris Norwood, the organization’s founder and executive director, is still shaking her head in disbelief in receiving two million in unsolicited funding.
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NORWOOD: We almost never would dream of receiving funding like that.
BARONIO: It was a surprise that Health People received the money, a happy one. … Health People was started in the early 90s to help people with AIDS. It’s continued that work…but this new money will allow them to extend their support for diabetes.
NORWOOD: We're going to start a peer training institute to train peer educators in, providing good self-management education for diabetes and chronic disease and preventive education.
BARONIO: The South Bronx has the highest diabetes rate in the City. Norwood says one grim statistic? Diabetes-related amputations have increased a hundred percent in the past decade.
But “Knowledge is power,” as Norwood usually repeats
NORWOOD: We teach people to read every label. if your nutrition information has come from TV ads since the day you were born, you just won't know much about nutrition.
RIVAS: I was diagnosed with diabetes type 2 in 2014.
BARONIO: Today, Evelyn Rivas is a peer educator at Health People. Her life was very different when she got the diagnosis.
RIVAS: when they first did the blood work, and they told me that I could have gone easily into a coma, I was like in a state of shock.
BARONIO: That moment changed her life.
RIVAS: I learned how to eat be tter. I started reading labels. I started eating by portions. I started, eating differently
BARONIO: Rivas says one of the worst outcomes of poorly managed diabetes is the risk of amputation.
RIVAS: Before you used to get on a public bus, and you would see maybe one wheelchair with, you know, a person, um, but now you get on a public bus in the Bronx, and you're gonna have like maybe four or five wheelchairs in one shot.
BARONIO: Dr Robert Borrow teaches at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. He says type 2 diabetes is not genetic.
BORROW: There is no excuse for almost everybody with type 2 diabetes. There's no reason, And you have to hear it from someone you trust
BARONIO: Borrow says he trusts Chris Norwood and Health People to use their newfound grant wisely.
BORROW: 2 million extra in Chris's pocket is a wonderful thing. It makes a huge difference in just, just lighting a fire under people's understanding.
BARONIO: Health PeoplePeer educator Evelyn Rivas says people in the Bronx know how to do things for themselves.
RIVAS: We have to learn how to eat better, look for better prices, when we go to the supermarket, make better decisions, stay away from the sodas
BARONIO: She says the $2 million dollars from Makenzie Scott will go a long way to spreading these messages in the South Bronx.
Tommaso Baronio, Columbia radio news.
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