Mission Statement: Providing access, education, and agency to children and families about integrative healthcare.

Vision Statement: Empowering communities to take care of their children collectively by facilitating access to integrative healthcare
and experiences with growing healthy food and caring for
their own body, mind and spirit.

Our Mission Statement conveys two main spheres of activity: 

•      access to integrative healthcare 

•      experiences with growing healthy food and caring for themselves.

Founded in response to the needs in our communities for reliable information, support, and participation in health-promoting activities and experiences for our children, Third Circle leaders have been creatively working to develop programs and cultivate resources to meet those needs. 

To that end, we developed a Community Garden in 2013 and added an intern in 2014 to provide both the children and their families with the experience of growing healthy food together in our own neighborhood.  We received help from the Greater Lansing Food Bank in the form of grant money, volunteers, and garden leader education training when we began and continue to receive their ongoing support and knowledge.

During the pandemic, the garden took a pause. We will assess resuming the garden in 2024.

 You can learn more about the Garden Project of the Greater Lansing Food Bank and our Community Garden on the Facebook Page and Website.  

 In 2014, we began a collaboration with the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and the Sparrow Family Practice Residency Program by engaging in a longitudinal study on the effect of experiential learning about nutrition and other lifestyle factors on the health of the children in our participating families.  We recruited families from the Leslie Community, where the garden is located.After obtaining approval of the project through the institutional review board for research involving human subjects at Michigan State University, we began a series ofSunday afternoon events where we engaged the kids and their parents and extended family with activities where they learned about food, nutrition, and health and then participated as a group in making and eating a healthy meal together. We collected food diaries and assessments of how the kids perceived their health status at the beginning and the end of these five meetings.

This project was successful not only in helping families learn about healthy habits and make positive changes in their lives, it has also been instrumental in the education of the eight medical students and three residents who participated. 

Our medical director (David Grimshaw, DO) provides families with medical advice and help obtaining needed services for children.  He coordinates medical information, helping families to understand and assimilate the meaning of a child’s condition.  He also provides help with referrals, treatment of problems, and access to both conventional and holistic forms of health care based on the needs and interests of the family. This care is free of charge, but his number of patients is limited. Please inquire to get on his waiting list.

We also hold “Back to School, Back to Health” and “Fall into Health” events in the fall, which bring together all aspects of our mission: we provide a demonstration of garden salsa with a take home pint, teach animal t’ai chi facilitated by a pediatric physical therapist, and hand out information from medical professionals such as nutrition, sports injury prevention, stress management for families, pass out toothbrushes from local dentists, among other activities!

We also provide talks on issues such as Nutrition, ADHD, ACES ( Adverse Childhood Events ) and Managing Stress as a Family, given by doctors and teachers.