Saturday, May 2, 2009

Walking Wednesdays & Trotting Thrusdays

Presenting (drum roll please) "Walking Wednesday!"

We kicked off the kids walking program with a bang on Wednesday at Munroe Elementary. Chantay, Jeannine, Rachel and I started out by setting everything up, from educational posters, to balloons, and snacks. Soon the parent volunteers showed up. I greeted Hilda one of the volunteers as she spoke to me ecstatic to be a part of today's activities.

We quickly mobilized to encourage the kids to start walking around the field as they read the educational posters, talked to their friends and got tallied for the walking class competition. I found the event very energetic kids were running telling me "hey! hey! that's my seven lap!". It became a very positive event were even staff from school, parents and everyone got involved jogging or walking with kids, high-fiving kids as they walked and just cheering them on.

My team and I had a blast walking around talking to the enthusiastic kids. However, at one point my team had to leave and set up at Knapp Elementary. This was tough because both events overlapped each other. Soon the bell rang and all the kids ran in but of course some still wanted to keep on walking :) .

After everyone was gone it was time to clean up and take the posters and other materials to the other school so we could quickly use them for the next event. I'm interrupted in the middle of this by a voice that says "Hey Mr.!...can you get my backpack from the playground?" It was the voice of a young boy from 1st grade i believe he had been left behind. I got his backpack and to make sure he got to class o.k. i walked with him inside. He told me that his name was Alex but i could also call him Alexander. Its so refreshing how kids are so open.

I dropped him off in class and quickly rushed to Knapp Elementary. I got there and the event was almost over! Jeannine and I had planned a surprise to bring more fun to the kids at Knapp. Since, the mascot from this school was a knight i decided to dress up as a knight. I had not seen the costume before that day and believed it to be a lot less silly than it actually was. The costume consisted of a silver vest and helmet just made of fabric. Also, it came with every knight's best friend. A white stuffed animal horse...jajaja. I was cracking up as i was putting it on in the parking lot.

I got to the scene with my horse and all the kids swarmed me. I began joking around with the kids and parents about them riding my horse and so on. The kids really enjoyed having their school mascot there and I had a ton of fun.


Julian at Castro Elementary!

I would like to keep this short and only focus on one story that was very special.

Here we did the same drill of setting up and we were ready to get started long before the event was scheduled to start. Soon, a young boy showed up and we quickly encouraged him to walk. I walked and talked with him about sports and being physically active. We really became good friends. He told me that his name is Julian and that he always walks to school.

As we interacted I saw a lot of myself in him. It was funny how much I was learning from him. I started understanding as i kept on talking to him that everyone just wants to be listened to and acknowledged. Soon after more students started joining us. I met a lot of kids and started introducing them to each other and just formed this great group energy.

The whole event continued for more than an hour and Julian still stuck with me like a champion. I asked him "so how do you like this?'' he responds "oh I love walking!...I'm always walking everywhere...". Julian kept on walking with me even when the other students would leave to go play in the playground. There were some funny moments when other kids would ask Julian " Is he your dad?" jajaja...he would respond "no, he's my friend".

Today was an incredibly successful walking day that almost all students participated!

Oh yeah, also 4 news and other media covered the event. The kids loved the idea of being in front of the camera and being famous. :)

I feel very grateful to have had the opportunity to meet all of the great kids from all the three school it was truly the best thing of the whole project.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Implementing the Strategic Plan

After coming up with the strategic plan there was research that needed to be done. I began to explore resources like www.walktoschool.org that provide an tremendous amount of information on walking to school.


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!