LAC's Past Activities

The Collaborative's primary achievements over the past nine years are as follows:

• Worked with the City's Public Facilities Department (now the Department of Neighborhood Development) to create four one-stop shopping centers that provide grants, loans, and advice to low and moderate-income property owners in Boston.
  
  
• Provided technical assistance to and organized 15 educational and skill-building forums for community-based organizations and individuals on lead poisoning issues. Topics have included the effects of lead on pregnant women; City initiatives to better involve community groups in their lead poisoning efforts, and countering lead through various ethnic nutritional diets. Skill-building workshops have focused on such topics as public speaking, media outreach, and project evaluation.
  
  
• Working with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Lead Program, developed educational posters featured on public trains that ran through Mattapan, Dorchester, Roxbury, and Cambridge.
  
  
• With funding from local foundations and corporations, awarded more than $500,000 to community-based organizations to carry out lead poisoning prevention programs.
  
  
• Initiated Lead Awareness Week, a citywide outreach campaign involving the public and private sectors. In addition to our own annual event, we have given community groups the help they need to host their own Awareness Week activities. Due to our efforts, Governor Cellucci signed Lead Week into Law in 1997 as an annual event.
  
  
• Produced the Boston Lead Poisoning Prevention Resource Guide to help community advocates refer their constituents to the right sources for help with everything from lead abatement to lead-safe gardening, from tenants' rights to homeowner's responsibilities.
  
  
• Organized the 1998 Lead Action Collaborative Annual Meeting at which the Executive Director of the Boston Public Health Commission as well as several other leading lead poisoning prevention officials and advocates spoke and brainstormed for future programming.
  
  
• Worked with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the New England Lead Coordinating Committee to provide tabling opportunities to 19 community groups and government agencies to educate people about lead-safe renovations at the 1999 North American Home Show.
  
  
• In 1999, we held three forums for dozens of health, housing, parent and neighborhood activists in lead-safe renovation procedures, moderate-risk de-leading methods, lead-safe gardening, and lead paint public policy issue. We also provided skills-building workshops in public policy and advocacy.
  
  
• Helped 11 grantees organize 17 events during Lead Poisoning Prevention Week in 1999.
  
  
• Helped the Department of Neighborhood Development organize the Lead Poisoning Prevention Fair where Collaborative members staffed lead-related educational tables and organized logistics.
  
  
• In, 2001 the LAC (along with the Boston Public Health Commission, the Codman Square Health Center, the Massachusetts Prevention Center, Teens Against Gang Violence, and the West of Washington Committee) hosted Codman Square Summit: "Performs Better Unleaded". LAC assisted with event organizing and publicity. Over 70 people participated in the environmental justice walk and workshops like "The impact of lead on school performance, " Tenant rights under the lead law, and Lead poisoning prevention resources available for families with at-risk children.
  
  
• Television interview on Dorchester House Cable Channel 3: This half hour interview appeared live on the Dorchester House Cable New Station and was also circulated in its recorded version for a week after the broadcast. LAC was also given publicity on the station for Lead Poisoning Prevention Week activities, especially the Children's Health and Housing Fair.
  
  
• The Lead Action Collaborative was the major sponsor and organizer of Lead Poisoning Prevention Week along with the Boston Public Health Commission. Other sponsors included the Department of Neighborhood Development and the Codman Square/Four Corners Alliance. More than 700 families and children (more than twice last year's attendance) participated in the 4th Annual Children's Health and Housing in the Franklin Park Zoo. This fair concluded weeklong activities for Lead Poisoning Prevention Week.
  
  
• On November 29th, 2001 the Lead Action Collaborative hosted the "Let's End It Here!" Boston Summit on Childhood Lead Poisoning, along with the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Tufts Institute of the Environment. More than 80 legislators, policy makers, government officials, and community leaders came together to brainstorm ways for Boston to end childhood lead poisoning in the next couple of years.