Live Your Healthy Lyfe: Connecting North Minneapolis Residents with Health Resources

If you’re in the Twin Cities, you’ve prob­a­bly seen inde­fati­ga­ble entre­pre­neur Teto Wil­son on the air­waves, in mag­a­zines, on bill­boards, or at com­mu­ni­ty events. Through every­thing he does he keeps his North Min­neapo­lis neigh­bors cen­ter stage, and he’s affect­ing real change: He hosts town hall events to fos­ter com­mu­ni­ty con­ver­sa­tions around key top­ics at his icon­ic West Broad­way bar­ber­shop, cre­at­ed a col­lege schol­ar­ship pro­gram for area stu­dents and worked close­ly with the MN Dept. of Health to edu­cate peo­ple about the ben­e­fits of COVID vac­ci­na­tions.

And now Teto and sev­er­al oth­er com­mu­ni­ty and busi­ness lead­ers, includ­ing Brit­tany Clausen and LaTasha Sims, are cre­at­ing Live Your Healthy Lyfe – an event by the North­side com­mu­ni­ty for the North­side com­mu­ni­ty. The sum­mer block par­ty is designed to draw as many as 2,500 peo­ple to the area while pro­vid­ing Black res­i­dents with addi­tion­al acces­si­bil­i­ty to and aware­ness of health ser­vices as they fight the stig­ma around address­ing health-relat­ed con­cerns due to sys­temic racism.

We first met Teto through our work with the Minor­i­ty Busi­ness Growth Alliance, and when he told us about the idea he was work­ing on, we jumped on board. Our agency con­tin­ues to focus on devot­ing more resources and atten­tion to diver­si­ty, inclu­sion and equi­ty efforts, and we’re work­ing to ampli­fy the mean­ing­ful work BIPOC busi­ness own­ers are doing in our com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing pro­vid­ing pro bono com­mu­ni­ca­tions sup­port for this impor­tant event. Spon­sors include Children’s Min­neso­ta, North Memo­r­i­al Health, PrairieCare, Life­Source, Twin Cities Habi­tat for Human­i­ty, Arubah Emo­tion­al Health Ser­vices, and oth­ers. There’s still time to join these great orga­ni­za­tions and become a spon­sor if you’re inter­est­ed in being a part of the inau­gur­al event.

Live Your Healthy Lyfe will take place on Sat­ur­day, August 20, 2022, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., on West Broad­way Ave. in North Min­neapo­lis, between Penn Ave. and Logan Ave. The event will fea­ture guid­ed com­mu­ni­ty con­ver­sa­tions, health­care screen­ings and vac­ci­na­tions, men­tal health con­sul­ta­tions, a vari­ety of Black-owned ven­dors, art activ­i­ties and music, all to empow­er the Black com­mu­ni­ty and help ele­vate the qual­i­ty of life for res­i­dents through men­tal, phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al well­ness, edu­ca­tion and activ­i­ty offerings.

Teto says it best: “It’s going to be a block par­ty that not only feeds people’s bod­ies and minds, but their souls, as well.”

We’re hon­ored to be a part of it.