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Our Mission:
Cultivate community well-being through partnerships with local residents and community champions.
About Us
Currently operating in Southwest Denver, Lifespan Local activates community-driven solutions to collectively identified challenges by partnering across sectors, breaking barriers and elevating community voices. By maximizing sustainable assets within a neighborhood, we are able to reimagine what is possible, creating community spaces where health and wellness thrive.
We approach our work from a systems and strengths-based perspective, with an emphasis on diversity, equity and community-based leadership. We are placemakers, convening partners with a shared commitment to healthy living and social change.
Lifespan Local works closely with a network of community partners in Southwest Denver. The work of community building can never be done alone.
In The News
Our Activities
Lifespan Local will support a range of community-driven activities that promote neighborhoods where all of us want to live.
Westwood Redeemer
Lifespan Local has purchased Westwood Redeemer and this site will be the future home of Lifespan Local and a host of community groups and nonprofits.
A capital campaign for this project is currently underway and the construction at the site began in June of 2022. Download the case statement here.
A Front Porch
Inspired by Dr. Lydia Prado’s success as the driving force behind the Dahlia Campus for Health and Well-Being, Lifespan Local plans to establish a ‘front porch’ for community partnership in Southwest Denver. Lifespan Local is working to establish ourselves as neighbors and service partners with community residents, for the common good.
On front porches in various communities across this country, people feel comfortable spending time together, listening and learning, and building relationships of trust. When institutions desire to build partnerships with historically marginalized groups, conversations can be most meaningfully invited on a welcoming “front porch.” At Lifespan Local, we address major social issues by taking direction from the people most affected by the challenges, but we cannot take direction we have not heard. Lived experience, best practices in the diversity and inclusion field, and community participatory research methodologies affirm the importance of genuine connection; communication crosses cultural, linguistic, and economic barriers best in familiar and safe gathering spaces.
Dr. Lydia Prado connects with community members in Northeast Denver at the Mental Health Center of Denver’s Dahlia Campus for Health & Well-Being.
Years of Deep Community Listening
During 2018, Lydia Prado, Lifespan Local’s Director, has connected with more than 100 individuals and groups in Southwest Denver— a vibrant region, characterized by ethnic diversity and a long history of resilience against the odds. Dr. Prado has heard repeated concern about gentrification and safety, and need for affordable housing, mental healthcare, and childcare supports. Local activists are busy addressing these complex social issues and Lifespan Local can help by establishing a neighborhood presence and offering shared space.
At this proposed Front Porch, we hope to have a space for community partners, a kitchen, childcare space, meeting rooms, produce gardens, and a playground— amenities that demonstrate everyone is welcome. Throughout the week, we would expect a variety of pro-social trainings, meetings, forums, and events. These activities would serve both their own ends— education, service delivery, coalition-building—and inform Lifespan Local’s continued community partnership work.