Good & Grounded

In the state of Colorado, more than 1,100 women are released from state prisons and 44,000 from local jails each year. The Empowerment Program exists to help those women build healthier lives through trauma informed and gender responsive services. When Liza was released from jail, The Empowerment Program was there for her. For the past 14 years, she’s worked for the program and helps thousands of women every year do the same. Listen to the story of Liza and the Empowerment Program in our latest Good and Grounded.

Mental health services are difficult enough to access in the metro area, but the mountain communities are hit even harder. There is a higher suicide rate, fewer mental health providers and a lack of in-patient facilities. However, Dana Erpelding from Eagle Valley Behavioral Health joined us on Good & Grounded to share news about big changes coming to Eagle County – and it couldn’t be happening soon enough.

Denver Urban Gardens executive director Linda Appel Lipsius isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. To know you only have to look at the myriad of initiatives the organization is tilling up. From working with schools to harvest more outdoor learning opportunities to connecting people to their cultural heritage through foods their ancestors grew to helping regenerative agriculture take root— there’s a lot on their plate! Listen in on the latest episode of Good & Grounded.  

There are 3,735 children and youth living with a foster or kinship family in Colorado. On this episode of Good & Grounded, the founders of Courage Community Foster Care and Foster Source share ways you can make a difference – even if you aren’t ready to become a foster family. 

Political divisions, hesitancy and inequality in our health systems have kept people around the world and here in Colorado from getting inoculated, which has just prolonged this already taxing pandemic. In this episode of Good & Grounded Jim Licko and Ramonna Robinson did a deep dive into the heated topic of vaccine inequality with Father Dang, a community outreach worker within the Vietnamese community, Fernando Pineda-Reyes, the founder of CREA – who works with diverse communities throughout Colorado and Cali Zimmerman, the emergency management coordination with Denver's Department of Public Health & Environment (DDPHE). Listen in as our guests describe why there is such misinformation and how we, as a community, can work together to change the conversation. 

FACT: 1 in 5 women in the United States has chosen Planned Parenthood for health care at least once in her life. On the latest Good and Grounded episode, Laura and Jim talk to Adrienne Mansanares, the newly named CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. Tune in as she shares how the pandemic exacerbated an already looming public health crisis, and how Colorado is poised to become a regional haven for reproductive healthcare after passing House Bill 1279 in late March.

Do you know what signs to look for to signal that a child may have been a victim of abuse or neglect? On this episode of Good & Grounded, Jade Woodard, executive director of Illuminate Colorado, and Margaret Ochoa, child sexual abuse prevention specialist at the Colorado Department of Public Safety, join us to share what to look for and encourage us all to call the state hotline at 1-844-CO-4-KIDS to make an anonymous report.

As Ukraine remains under attack, Coloradans are stepping up to help our Ukrainian neighbors on the Front Range support their family and friends back home. In this special edition of Good & Grounded, Jim Licko and Laura Love speak with the president of Ukrainians for Colorado about how nearly 300 Ukrainians living in Colorado have rallied together during the past month to help the war raging in Eastern Europe and how you can get involved to make a difference as well.

A hometown favorite - Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats - do so much more than create incredible music. They also launched The Marigold Project to support historic institutions, brilliant ideas and driven individuals and just recently created “Ground Cover” -- a community conversation series at the lived-in and timeless Skylark Lounge (which was purchased by Rateliff in 2020). This series creates dialogue around the importance of community and subverting the systems that don’t serve us. Listen to this episode of Good & Grounded to hear more about how one of our local heroes is giving back to the community and how you can get in on the conversation.

Most of us are well aware of the hot housing market, rising prices and lack of affordable housing along the Front Range – our mountain town neighbors are being hit even harder. On Good & Grounded this week, Laura and Jim talked with the Colorado Market President of Gorman & Company, Kimball Crangle, about what is happening with housing in our mountain communities, and what innovative measures local communities are taking to slow the problem down and make housing attainable for the local workforce.