Well, folks, I'm Jeff Slakey and I am here at the Economic Development Council of Mason County upstairs. It's on the corner of 7th and Alder in downtown Shelton.
And I am with Julie Knott. Good morning, Jeff. How are you? I'm doing well.
Thank you. I'm glad to talk with you because I think a lot of folks know you around our community, especially when it came to Blue Zones, Mason County, which was a big effort that you, along with the health department, put on to kind of get Mason County a little more aware of the different things they could do and a lot of variety of what they could do to help them live longer and maybe live better. And there were some things in there when we talked a couple of years ago that were things people didn't even think about, including enjoying wine perhaps in moderation and things like this.
Just good ways for you to enjoy yourself and enjoy our community. The other thing that you are now associated with, which is a good opportunity for us to kind of get it out there and understand, is that you are spearheading Mason Matters. Yes.
And I went through some old interviews from the radio station from many years gone by, and I had talked to one of the previous directors of Mason Matters, and then it kind of went off a little radio silent for a while. But you're back now. And so tell us, for those who don't know you, kind of your background and how you got to Mason County.
Wow. Well, I'm a Pacific Northwesterner, been living here my whole life. I raised my kids in Jefferson County as rural community children, which fits nicely with Mason County, when mostly I've been involved in community collective health types of projects most of the time here, specializing again in rural communities.
So when the job announcement came for the Blue Zones Activate Mason County project, I jumped at the chance to see if I could be part of that. And basically what that project was, was a two year project designed to improve the health of the rural community in Mason County. And we were one of the first that was selected for this project by Blue Zones, the corporation.
Sure. And Blue Zones Global, we'll just say, has a lot of publicity out there about, you know, six or seven spots around the world where they have found that there are people that live longer than other folks. And so Blue Zones comes in and surveys them and checks out the area and tries to figure this out and then bring it in to rural communities that may not have those same opportunities of, you know, especially here in Mason County, you know, ample sunshine all the time or opportunities for fresh fruits and veg maybe, or larger opportunities for exercise and the whole host of things.
So to be able to bring that into a small rural community, I think is a really worthwhile mission. And again, you were here for a few years doing that and it's transitioned now into kind of a lot of the Mason Matters stuff. Right.
So back in the day, the Blue Zones project was guided by the steering committee, which was Mason Matters. So for the first two years of the Blue Zones project, Mason Matters ensured that what we were doing was in line with the community health assessment to making sure that our actions were appropriate here. And so that's how we started.
And then when the Blue Zones project ended, we continued our goals through Mason Matters. And a lot of the efforts that we had ended then, we just kept running currently. And Blue Zones had, or I mean, Mason Matter had been a little bit quiet during COVID.
So we reactivated for the Blue Zones project and then really reactivated this year when we brought this 501c3 back to life. Tell me a little bit about the overall health makeup of Mason County and its residents. Well, right now we're on the lowest quartile in our health index.
And so that's one of Mason Matters. Our biggest goal is to improve our health index by 20 percent, which would bring us from the lowest quartile of health to the next highest. And that's a pretty lofty goal.
And that's what we're about. We've had a lot of community input. We've done summits.
We've worked on our policies and made sure that all of our actions are in line with improving our health index. And there's a lot of opportunities there. When I go through and think about your partnerships with the health department, and I know you work closely with Director Windham there.
Additionally, you have been involved as the transition has occurred into the Catalyst Garden area with the Master Gardeners. You also have worked with Maria over at Hope Plaza and things like that, which will get into. But there are pockets of the community, I'm assuming, that probably need a little more either awareness or assistance when it comes to things that they can do to help themselves be healthier and help the goal of coming out of that quartile.
Yeah, we started with food policy in the built environment and a lot of other larger communities do tobacco, alcohol, things like that. But we started with a smaller amount of focus just so we could get things going here. And so that would be, you know, the tenets of health are a lot about being together, being with your family, having love in your life, faith.
It's not just about broccoli. It can be about having a glass of wine with your friends after work. And so a lot of the work that we're doing is to help bring health to the community, to everyone who lives there.
So it's accessible to everyone. You, I'm sure, have a great partnership with the hospital, Mason Health, and I think they are some of them are on your board. Let's kind of go back to this because coming up from that 25th quartile or whatever you said there up to the next level up seems lofty.
And I want to kind of get an understanding of how the board and you came up with these goals. It is lofty and we are I think we're feeling very lofty because this board has been together. We haven't missed a meeting in three years.
And so since the Blue Zones Project started, it's a strong board. We've got Dave Windham from Public Health. He's our chair.
Eric Moll is our vice chair. He's with Mason Health. We have Patty Stone.
She's with Hospital District Two. We have Sandy Robertson. She's with Hospital District One.
She's with Hospital District Two. I think we've got Kevin Schutte, the director of the EDC, Claudia Swastiki. She's with the YMCA of Shelton.
And then Vinfried Donke from Mason Public Health, Mason Health. So we have a very strong board. And I think what's more important is our strong partnerships that we've developed since that Blue Zone work, the capacity that we could bring to Mason Counters just by building our vision with the community.
We had lots of community summits and we really dug deep to see what the community was ready for, for our arrival. Talk to me a little bit about how you, I guess, talk to me a little bit about how you're rebranding, in a sense, Mason Matters, bringing it back. It was quiet, as I mentioned.
And I had conversations with a former director many, many years ago on the radio. And so as people move through their lives and COVID was a heck of a deal, how do you reframe and bring back Mason Matters in a impactful way that you can use and leverage some of those board members? I mean, I'm sure Mason Health, I was at a thing the other day and Eric and Vinfried both spoke so highly about what is happening at the hospital, right? And we always hear from Claudia at the Y about the efforts there. And the EDC, of course, has just got that big grant, you know, so they're able to help get more word out there.
But talk to me a little bit about the rebranding of Mason Matters or what you're doing to get it back out there. Well, we know we built a good foundation and we have a pretty good idea of what the community is needing and wanting and what kind of capacity we have to do it. And so now we can look at where the capacity is needed the most and we can focus on reinforcing that.
A lot of the projects that we're doing are based on readiness. And so, for instance, the USDA grant that the EDC was awarded, we were able to be the matching partner for that grant because we'd already worked through the food goals for the community that we've gotten to that far. So we knew when the EDC was proposing this next level of work, which is a remarkable three year project and the first the highest grantee in Washington state and one of 43 in the nation, we were ready to help them because we knew the community was ready for it.
How do you reach? So there's Shelton, right, the only incorporated city in the county, and then it just kind of it's like a spider web out the rest of the county there. And sometimes it's hard to find people or people are so busy these days, their lives are so stressful that they have, you know, people use the word bandwidth a lot. There's very limited bandwidth to take even a few moments, either for some, some breathing, a walk, anything like this.
And then you put on top of that any of these kind of societal pressures that are going on, the political landscape that's happening right now. How are you able to get into not only folks who have a few extra moments of free time, but also kind of the marginalized members of our community who, I mean, they may not even be able to with, unless there's translation services, understand what you're even saying. How do you do that? Well, we go to the community leaders that are the leaders in those communities.
Let's take Maria Parra, for instance. She's one of the strongest leaders that I have seen in Mason County, and she speaks two different languages. She has access to so many leaders in the community that can support that 20% of the population that you can't always reach.
So we'll go straight there. Same with Mason Public Health. They have a new food initiative called the Charlie Cart.
We go straight to Rebecca Shipman, the brainchild behind that, and we support those kinds of projects. So explain that Charlie Cart thing. The Charlie Cart is a revolutionary mobile kitchen, and it comes with curriculum.
It comes with menus by the year, and you can bring it to schools and to public events. And you can teach cooking, like even, you know, how to make tortillas and guacamole and things in your schools, and schools can use them to advance new foods for kids. And generationally, it's really brilliant because we're starting with the kids in this.
And just a small example, every school district in Bakersfield, California has a Charlie Cart. We're the first rural community in Washington state to have this teaching tool. It's very unusual, and it took a lot of motivation and work to bring that mobile unit to our community.
It's brilliant. And it's just the beginning. If you get a piece of equipment into a community that you might not have access to, that kind of a project can grow, especially our food systems in Mason County.
When I think about that, I think often on how, like you said, you get a kid involved in this process, then they go home and they're like, guess what I learned how to make today? Yep. And it's healthy, and we're going to make this now. And the parents almost have to be drug along because the kids are on it, and they're excited about it.
And what better advocates to have an upward change than those youth who may not have ever... I was talking to somebody the other day, and they were doing some sort of an initiative where kids came in from the city onto a farm, and minds were blown when they realized that that cow in the pasture is where they get ice cream. You know, kids do not have a sense of understanding where the food comes from. Many people might think they just go into the back room of the grocery store, and that's where all the fruits and veg are.
We're doing a six-week pilot project at South Side Elementary right now. And two weeks ago, the kids made homemade butter, herb butter. And last week, a kid looked at me and he said, is this marjoram? And I about fell over.
And he said the butter was delicious, and they were making it himself. But he never knew what marjoram was. Sure.
A couple of kids didn't know what an avocado looked like. One kid called it a dinosaur egg. So yeah, it's all, it's the recognition of food and then the trust in the process.
It's really, it brings out a lot of creativity. These programs are all great and they're well and good, and you've got good lofty goals, but how on earth are you supposed to actualize results? When you go to your board a year from today and they say, well, Julie, it's time for your review, you sure are great in the community, but tell me how you see us making that shift into the next quartile. What, how do you realize that kind of a goal? We leverage the gifts we have in this community.
There is so much great leadership and so many emerging leaders, and we get everyone together and we focus. That's how we do it. And that's how we are doing it.
We're making some really big changes here and positive changes. And if you look around, you know, I think a lot of Mason County leaders are noticing this, and I think the community is too, that we're headliners these days. We're getting grants, we're focused on collective leadership.
And so in a year from now, hopefully Mason Matters continues to dig out the potential in the community and bring capacity to it and bring some bravery to our leadership, and I think we're all ready for it. So you are, as a 501c3 nonprofit, you work closely with groups that are like applying for grants, like the EDC was one, and I think you've helped out some others as well. Explain how that all works for those who are unfamiliar, especially when it comes to receiving state or federal dollars to help boost these programs.
Well, one, we're very careful about it. Our board has actively been continuing to keep our leadership fresh. We take classes to the Washington State Nonprofit Association.
We take budget classes. We take oversight classes. We just make sure that we're fresh and that as leaders in Mason County, we know that you can count on us for how we manage our public funds.
That's really important to us. But then we also share that knowledge with other nonprofits. We work together on data collection.
We're working together on just making sure that our targets are in line with other organizations' targets here. It's really important that at the end of the day, we're pushing forward as a team. What do you do in your personal life that is what you're selling to the people out there in the community? Interesting you would ask.
Well, my favorite thing to do is bike touring and bike packing. And funny enough, the founders of Blue Zones came up with the Blue Zones idea while they were also bike touring on a really long bike tour across Asia, I believe. And that's my favorite thing to do, too.
This summer, I'm planning on riding up to Ketchikan, Alaska, to see where my family was from. From here? Yeah, a little bit of busing, the Alaska Marine Highway, things like that. But yeah, I do live my personal life very actively and I eat the right food when I'm doing it, too.
I try to make new friends and, you know, have a purpose when I'm out there. I think all of those things are the healthiest things that I can do. By the time this interview comes out, it will have been past opening day of the Shelton Farmers Market.
There's also things up in Belfair as well for folks to get locally produced fruit and veg. And I know one of their big pushes this year is to really explain where your food comes from. If it's pulled from California, you mentioned California earlier, but if it's pulled from a farm in California, it takes hundreds of miles and CO2 and hours and yada yada and all this stuff to get here.
Whereas local fruit and veg comes, you know, 25 miles or less that was picked that morning or the day before. And even those smart choices make big impacts, right? Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that we're working on for the next three years through that USDA project and then our local projects with Mesa Matters is increasing the markets for farmers here and then also increasing the ability of industry to buy from those farmers and including schools.
Mason Health at Mountain View Cafe is a really good example of increasing their local buying from farmers and changing their menus to reflect what's purchased locally. Yeah, that's if you haven't been there, that is an amazing project. They just opened in February.
So there's a lot of opportunities. I'll put the links to the website. You guys are going to be out and about talking with folks around the community, not only on things here and what the board is talking about here, but the collaborations with the cafe you mentioned, Hope Plaza there.
And that's up at Faith Lutheran, right there on 1212 Connection Street is that address. Also, Catalyst Garden over on Harvard. The Master Gardeners are working on a big plan to rehab and reimagine what that space looks like.
And then the Salmon Center too, right? Salmon Center, Master Plan. And then another really big project here is our child care grant that we received this year. We were one of 11 communities in Washington state to have that grant.
And we're finishing up a year of coalition meetings. We've surveyed the community in two different languages to come up with survey results about the opinions about this project. And then we've done engagement meetings all throughout the county.
So we'll be putting out a child care assessment shortly in June that we can rely on as a collective team here in Mason County to know where we can direct our efforts and funds to get the most impact out of our child care needs here, because we need child care here. Everyone needs child care. And that's that's a really key to our healthy community.
Well, it's just something really important here in the community, of course, in Mason County and beyond, really, when you're looking at rural communities to have a good, healthy basis, a good, healthy floor, we'll say. And if you're able to then make incremental changes in your lifestyle that help not only yourself, but generations to come, it really will impact the type of workforce that's able to come and stay in a rural community. It will impact the just the benefits of visiting here or living here.
People are more prideful of what they have here in the community, so they share that out more. And then especially, too, if you're talking child care and the different survey needs, as folks may know, in the upcoming years, there is a huge project in Bremerton at the shipyards. It's a billion dollars, multi-billion dollars project to rehabilitate that whole shipyard.
Well, they're going to need crews and workers and all sorts of things. And that's going to trickle down through Belfair, into Shelton and around our surrounding areas. So if folks like Mason Matters and the EDC and the Y and the hospital districts, both of the hospital districts in the county are able to have a firm grasp on what they need to do to push forward a strong message.
I mean, I think it only is going to, you know, one of those lift, lift all the boats kind of scenarios. The boats are definitely being lifted and we've got a very strong Child Care Action Council and our coalition is very strong. And so you'll be hearing more about us informing the community about what we learned in our assessment and also what we want our elected officials to forward on our behalf here in Mason County.
So it's a good opportunity for you to share the word, spread the word. Mason Matters is back and working hard on advocacy for all of the health across Mason County. And again, I'll put the links to all the show notes there as well.
Good to see you. Thank you. OK, thank you.
Thank you.
