Has cancer had an impact on your life? How can you harness your interests or passions to prevent cancer in your community? Are you part of an organization passionate about bringing new leadership to cancer prevention, but unsure how to tackle the issue?
The University of Minnesota Extension and Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center Community Outreach and Engagement (MCCCC COE) are partnering to deepen community education and engagement around cancer prevention. They are seeking a community host organization in Southeast Minnesota to partner in hosting a cancer prevention leadership program, including an informational forum and a Changemaker Retreat.
Reducing cancer across the spectrum, from prevention to survivorship, includes many activities. This may include health and nutrition programs, promoting physical activity, or clinical trial education, such as:
- Advocacy training programs
- Communication campaigns, including culturally-tailored options on healthy living, risk assessment, genetic testing, screening, treatment, survivorship and navigational support
- Community research registries and clinical trial matching
- Education about clinical trials and enrollment support
- Focus on preventive lifestyle behaviors
- Training and empowering cancer advocates
- Web-based interventions, stool testing options, and community health advocate training
If your organization addresses health in any of those areas, and you would like to engage community members to participate in these actions, consider applying to host a Changemaker Retreat in your community.
Why are we doing this project?
It’s simple:
- MCCCC wants to build the leadership capacity within rural Minnesota to address cancer prevention.
- Fostering local innovation is important to Extension’s model of community leadership. It also helps ensure that cancer prevention strategies meet the needs of local people and are sustainable.
- Changemaker participants engage in activities with others, developing a strong sense of personal and collective identity. They also increase their confidence and courage to take risks as they move their ideas into action.
Hosting a Changemaker Retreat
A Changemaker Retreat involves people coming together to work on an issue they're passionate about. Individuals participate in a two-day retreat, engaging in activities designed to spur innovative thought, strengthen leadership skills, and nurture ideas for action. Retreats encourage participants to imagine, explore, and create as they are guided through a process to inspire big thinking and new ideas.
Working alongside others generates a shared community and builds a network for motivating and supporting individual projects and ideas.
Selection criteria for the community host organization
- Nonprofit or fiscally-sponsored organization
- Serves a population within MCCCC’s service area in rural Minnesota
- Members/staff are a demographic diversity of the population served
- Demonstrated reach and impact within their community, including evidence of trust building with the broader community(ies) they serve
- Organizational capacity to partner in program implementation by assessing local energy and/or opportunities related to community cancer prevention:
- How have leaders in your community addressed cancer prevention?
- Do groups across your community work on cancer prevention and advocacy?
- Is there new energy around cancer prevention, or a need to revive past energy?
Does this sound like your organization? If so, we'd love to hear from you!
Benefits of being a community host organization
- The opportunity to energize, motivate, and engage community-led projects around cancer prevention.
- An informational forum led by Mayo Clinic experts to share the latest cancer rates and cancer prevention data specific to your county.
- Support to continue selected projects over a calendar year.
What is the community host organization’s commitment?
People and time
- Serve as co-host for an informational forum and Changemaker Retreat.
- Identify a key contact from your organization for assisting with community logistics (e.g., location, meals, child care).
- Recruit community members who bring diverse perspectives about cancer prevention in your community.
- Serve as a member of the Changemaker Retreat Selection and Planning Committee from March 2025 through July 2025.
- Select individual projects will have ongoing activity through June 2026.
Funding
Free! Extension and Mayo Clinic will cover the cost of the Changemaker Retreat and forum process, meeting venue, food and beverage expenses, and barrier reduction for participants. We welcome communities to provide in-kind support for additional barrier reduction related to the event.
Timeline
- Applications due: Saturday, May 31, 2025
- Community interviews and selection: June 2025
- Community Forum and Changemaker Retreat: Will be scheduled in collaboration with the community
Questions?
Please direct questions to Holli Arp at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you!