Over the course of ten months, eight members of the Healthy City Fall River Design Team participated in monthly training sessions provided by The Massachusetts Partnership for Healthier Communities. The MassForum offers community teams and individuals a unique, extended opportunity to enhance skills and learn new strategies to create healthier and safer communities. The MassForum centers on a series of nine full-day monthly trainings devoted to exploring ideas, enhancing skills, developing strategies, learning how to better recognize and address opportunities, accessing tools and resources, and advancing the goal of building safer and healthier communities. Trainings are conducted by recognized national and local experts such as Tyler Norris and Diane Barry, MS.
 

(Top row, left) Maureen Ryan Estes describes some of the activities in Fall River that help to develop a sense of community. (Top row, right) Christian McCloskey, Jeanne Santos, Dave Weed and Maureen Estes listen to one of the presentations. (Middle row, right) Dave Weed summarizes some of what the group learned while Jeanne Santos, Christian McCloskey, Maria Evora-Rosa and Maureen Estes respond. Michael Aguiar, Nic Charest and Beth Focarelli also participated in the Forum. The 2004-2005 Forum consisted of six teams from across Massachusetts each of whom was working on developing healthy communities.