This information will be reviewed for program planning purposes and be made available to donor groups, policy makers, resource developers and other interested parties. Staff and interns working at the Healthy Cities Commons will be resource specialists and provide information and referral services. They will talk with practitioners to help communities assess and define their needs and access appropriate resources. Resources Tools of the Healthy Cities movement are many but often need to be organized, and extended to people who can make use of them. Many more will be developed as experience and research provides additional useful material.
Practitioners are a rich untapped reservoir of information.
People to people support has in fact been the fuel of the Healthy Cities movement when relationships across communities become tools to transfer successful social technologies. The IHCF will help transform vital experiences of practitioners into pragmatic educational materials. As ideas and models emerge, methods and technologies to share them will be developed. Many projects will train current or future leaders in diverse fields. These will be designed to promote increased participation in the Healthy Cities movement and new patterns of collaboration as well as to leverage resources from many sectors and areas of expertise.