We also began visiting the schools to find out more about the walking program already established. I talked to the parents to both get volunteers and establish a relationship with this community.After these meetings my main purpose was to continue these relationship with the parents since I was the only Spanish speaker.
Organizing Volunteers:
I began calling all the parents from both Knapp and Munroe Elementary to have them volunteer on the big walking Wednesday event. The parents were very receptive and excited to make a difference not only with the health of their children but also that of the whole school's health. The parents response was phenomenal parents excitedly committed to the walking day and I had gotten a solid list of committed volunteers.
Promotion:
After getting the volunteers togother it was time to promote the actual event. I designed two fliers one to be sent by the school to the homes of the students and the other to be delivered personally by us to each house of the local community.
The first flier included information about the event, facts about why its important to walk to school and information about incentives for the kids. The sencond flier that was to be delivered to the homes by us included information about the event and encouraged people to drive safely around this new "walking community".
Distrubution of Fliers:
On Monday April 27th Chantay and I went to the schools to ask them to print out the fliers and send them home. The schools were more than happy to do so. However, our day had not ended yet. We started canvassing the community with another flier that had as its main purpose to make the community a safer place to walk. I went from home to home informing people that there was a walking event happening every wednesday and to please be careful when driving. Canvassing homes didn't only create a safer enviroment but also increased the awareness of the program in the Westwood community.
I also wanted to create a direct communition with the teachers and students of all of the three schools. The best way to do this was to have the principal make an announcement about the event. This announcement included a few fun educational facts about health and exercising to keep up with the purpose of spreading health awareness in the schools. I created the script for the principal of both Spanish and English to tailor to communicate with both language speakers.
After exploring the different resources of information that Livewell Colorado gave us I found another great idea to promote the event. The idea was to have the school create a banner about walking in art class. After seeing these banners I was very impressed to say the least. The banners were these big pieces of art workthat portrayed kids happilly walking to school.
The final piece of the promotional aspect of the project was to come up with a incentives to give to the kids.For this we decided to give them healthy snacks in the morning to everyone who walked. Also we would tally everyone who walked to make a class competition to see which class had the most walkers.The winning class got a trophy prize that would be passed around classes depending on which class wins every week.
Also, decided to give away a very special individual prize to the first student who starts walking during the day.
Radio Interview:
In the next couple of days after canvassing the Westwood community I received a phone call from a radio station that wanted to do a report on the event. We talked about what the walking program and event was. I told them what the purpose of this campaign was and who was going to be involved. It was a great interview that gave state wide exposure to the program and created a buzz about the walking events that were coming up.
Survey:
Before the actual events I decided it would be a great idea to survey the parents after the event to find out what they thought about the walking program and the safety of their community. This would give me a great insight about the parent's perspective on the program how to make it even better. Plus, how to address some of the safety issues the community might have.
Sorry to cut this post a bit short but I have to get going and present all of this information and much more to Livewell Colorado, Kaiser Permanente and The Colorado Health Foundation.
Stay tune for the inside scoop on what happened on the actual events! This was the best part of the whole project so you do not want to miss it!
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