Partners in Action for Healthy Living

Partners in Action for Healthy Living's  (PAHL) mission is to support South DeKalb residents to make healthy choices that support their best quality of life. We do this by empowering and educating individuals through gardening and urban agriculture, connecting people to the land, to their food and most importantly, to each other.

PAHL, a community nonprofit in South DeKalb County, Georgia, has a successful track record of impacting resident and community health through a food and agricultural programs. 

We encourage our community members to grow their own groceries by renting a plot in our Belvedere Peace Community Garden. Half of the Peace Garden is used to grow fresh fruits and vegetables for our community and the local food pantry.

Our School Garden Support Program in South DeKalb public schools awards garden grants and maintenance funds, provide garden education to teachers and children and most importantly provide community organizing to get the wider school community involved.

Our Healthy Harvest Youth Farm program teaches high school students how to grow food to market. Our interns learn valuable leadership and entrepreneurship skills along the way. 

Our Gardens for All Program supports faith-based, and community gardens in our community to build the local food system so everyone in the community has access to healthy, fresh and local food.

We provide beautiful places in our community to gather, learn, grow, share and enjoy.

We demonstrate sustainable practices that nurture, sustain, and protect our air, land and water.

History

The Healthy Belvedere Initiative (HBI) was first established in 2005 by Kaiser Permanente in partnership with The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. Following a thorough environmental scan, Kaiser selected DeKalb County’s Belvedere Park community as the focus of a multi-year health initiative designed to bring about environmental and policy change to improve residents’ health. The Initiative evolved over several years and created innovative approaches to community health issues while becoming deeply embedded in the community. Inspired by these successes, the HBI spun off in 2013 to become an independent 501c3 nonprofit, changed its name to Partners in Action for Healthy Living (PAHL), Inc. and expanded the target area to include all South DeKalb communities.