Live Well Arizona incubates ideas to improve community health and well-being

Superior-native Chris Casillas was living in Texas four years ago when one of the worst symptoms of an American culture in poor health flared up — a mass school shooting. It shook the former tech industry professional to his core. 

Did he want to bring children into this kind of world? Could he help make a “sick society” better?

The school shooting tragedy launched a yearlong period of reflection and discovery that ultimately led Casillas to one of his favorite places in the world — home. 

Casillas founded Regenerating Sonora three years ago to do the collaborative work of neighborhood development that he believes is essential to individuals’ health and well-being. He would start in Superior, the small mining town east of the Phoenix metropolitan area, with ambitions to go beyond.

The nonprofit’s mission and vision is to restore and strengthen the community by bringing people together. One of the first things Casillas did was buy the former Leo’s Grocery, which, back in the day, was an extension of the neighborhood, and convert it to a community center that serves a variety of purposes, from youth programming to incubating other projects that benefit the community. Regenerating Sonora also created a community garden to grow what Casillas calls “natural capital.”

A place for pro-social connection, like Leo’s, is an indirect but substantive way of addressing some of the things that ail the community, including substance abuse. 

“People turn to substance abuse when they don’t have a lot of hope and they don’t have the right kinds of conditions to live a healthy life,” Casillas said. “Leo’s being a space that’s safe to come to, to connect with other members of the community, is one way to do that.”

And now, after spending most of this year in the Live Well Arizona Incubator, Casillas is confident about the nonprofit’s plan of action to meet neighborhood development goals. Regenerating Sonora purchased a lot this year to expand the community garden, and it is planning a March 25 celebration of a fundraising effort underway to retire the loan for the community center. 

“The (Live Well Arizona) Incubator has been a game changer for us, to say the least,” Casillas said. 

Twenty projects across Arizona have participated in the Live Well Incubator since it began four years ago through a joint venture with the Arizona Partnership for Healthy Communities and Vitalyst Health Foundation. Next year, APHC will continue the Incubator project in rural and urban communities statewide with management support from LISC Phoenix.

The Live Well Arizona Incubator rises from the understanding that place-based health challenges are best addressed with multi-sector solutions that target the specific underlying issues where people live. 

“At LISC, we know it takes local partners on the ground to make any real, lasting change in a community, that’s why we supported the Live Well Incubator from the start,” said Terry Benelli, LISC Phoenix Executive Director. “Grassroots projects like those that come through the Incubator can have the most sustained benefit for their communities.” 

Serena Unrein with the Arizona Partnership for Healthy Communities said the Incubator gives local groups and their leaders the support to grow and sustain efforts to address health issues and conditions unique to their communities. They have the vision and the answers, but they don’t know how navigate their way from Point A to Point B, to get the right people to the table, to create an action plan, she said. 

“That’s the niche the Incubator is trying to fill,” Unrein said. “How do we get those early-stage teams to that next step where they can be really competitive for funding, where they can have some traditions or norms as a group so they can keep on going?” 

Coaches, who Unrein calls the “secret sauce” of the Incubator, provide insight and wisdom about community development work. They don’t do the work for groups in the Incubator project, but they care deeply about the work and the community, and they have connections and insight about resources. 

“It really helps,” Unrein said, “to have someone hold the space, keep people on track. The thing about collaborative work is that it’s real easy to get frustrated and throw your hands up and say forget about it. A coach is the thing that keeps people moving forward.”

Casillas agrees, calling coaches “part of the wise design of the Incubator project.”

“That means it’s more of a hands-on approach,” Casillas said. “Nic (de la Fuente), as our coach, was able to understand our unique context and specifically work with what was going to be the most beneficial for us.”

De la Fuente, the coach for Regenerating Sonora who has long been active in community collaboration and food security work, said Casillas and his board of directors didn’t need what coaches typically provide, such as help with meeting facilitation. He focused on strategic planning and making regional connections.  

“Chris is obviously brilliant,” de la Fuente said. “He’s got a lot of ideas of what they would like to achieve, and it’s inspirational. I saw that immediately. … I just took a step back and didn’t really view it as a coaching role, but as a partnership.” 

Cynthia Melde, a senior program officer for LISC Phoenix, has coached groups in the Live Well Arizona Incubator with the goals of removing barriers to doing the work and helping groups translate answers for building healthy communities into practices. 

“There’s a lot of autonomy in the Incubator,” Melde said. “It’s their idea. They have a table that’ve already set. It’s their project. We come and share our wisdom, become a thought partner, listen, help build connections that might need to be made.” 

South Mountain WORKS (Working to build Opportunities, Resources, Knowledge and Skills) was in the first cohort of the Live Well Arizona Incubator and is among the groups Melde coached. The diverse coalition came together in 2008 over concerns about the prevalence of substance abuse among south Phoenix youth. 

Shomari Jackson, a prevention specialist and now chairman of South Mountain WORKS, said the coalition had made some impact on youth substance abuse, but its members were exhausted from fighting the good fight. 

“It’s very tiring work when you don’t have the support to do it the way you want and the way it needs to be done,” Jackson said.

With a state report showing south Phoenix has one of Arizona’s highest rates of adverse childhood effects (ACEs), the coalition focused on root causes of youth substance abuse, including toxic stress in the community. The Incubator helped South Mountain WORKS build capacity to address community trauma.

In what Jackson said is an “extreme sign of growth,” South Mountain WORKS has applied for nonprofit status to advance its efforts to build trauma-informed communities and schools. 

“I see the value in the work the coalition does,” Jackson said, “and I’m trying to build a structure and an organization that can be led and ran by those who, live, play and work in south Phoenix.”