Small scale change for long term success

One of the communities that was involved in the Inter Nation youth forum last week was Gitga�at, more commonly known as Hartley Bay. The health director there, David Benton, is spearheading a number of small changes on big leverage points in that community. One of the real successes that Hartley Bay has experienced is with a program called Brighter Smiles that brings student doctors and dentists from the University of British Columbia to the community every month to learn about the culture and to provide some acute medical care. The program started with a desire to lessen the amount of dental problems among the community’s kids. Today, David sent me a link to a Knowledge Network documentary about the program. If you visit the site (which uses Flash and Quicktime), you’ll see a neat little film with some of the folks I have been working with and some of the shiny results of the program.