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.

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!

Quick update

The implementation of the strategic plan is done. Stay tuned later today for a snapshot of the implementation phase of the plan. Plus, the inside scoop of the actual events! They were full of surprises.

"Small Steps to a Healthier Life"

"Pequeños Pasos Para Una Vida Saludable"

Small Steps to a healthier life is the message behind the walking campaign in the elementary schools of Westwood. The Westwood schools include Castro Elementary, Munroe Elementary and Knapp Elementary. The mission is to encourage kids to walk and integrate physical activity as part of their daily lives. Moreover, the program also seeks to increase health awareness throughout the communities of Westwood.

Why walk to school?

• It is a physical activity

• It is an opportunity to teach kids how to walk safely

• Keeps kids healthy

• It promotes the safety of the community

“Walking Wednesday” and "Trotting Thursdays" is the name of the programs that will kick off April 29th and 30th. Kids will be encouraged to show their school spirit by wearing the school colors and walking with their parents to school. If walking to school is not an option for some kids they can also enjoy a fun morning walking in school grounds. They will get healthy snacks and participate in a walking competition between all classes. The class with the most walkers in the month will get a special party!

There will be volunteers tallying children who walked to school and giving them stamps. There will also be a table set up in the main playground to provide kids with healthy snacks and give everyone health education materials.

The will be so much happening that i would ruin the surprise by writing about it all. So please, join us if you can on Wednesday April 29th at 8:00 am at Munroe Elementary or at 8:30 at Knapp Elementary. There will also be a "Trotting Thursday" on the 30th of April at Castro Elementary.

Stay tune for details on the execution of our strategic plan and more!

Project #4 - The final project!

So we have made it this far and we are all really excited for this new project yet a bit burnt out.

In this project we will be working with Live Well Colorado, The Colorado Health foundation, and Kaiser Permanente. Our mission is to work with kids from three elementary schools in west central Denver to encourage healthy activities like walking on a daily basis. One of our main objectives is to get parents involved in creating this healthier lifestyle for their children.

Now, that is all I can reveal for now but stay tune for the next posts to find out more!

The end of the CHFA project part 2

The day of the presentation had come. I was pretty nervous and i have to say that obsessing over the marketing plan day and night for the past week did not help.

The presentation started and everything seemed to go pretty smoothly. We were getting our points across clearly and consistently throughout the presentation. Personally, since working with Jesse on the last recycling project I have learned the art of "winging" presentations as he called it. :) Now, it does not mean being unprepared but rather speaking without notes just letting the knowledge of everything you have done and created flow out. This has made a huge difference in the quality of my presentation skills.

After we finished the presentation we had the longest Q&A sessions thus far. Shortly after we also received some feed back on what we did well and what we could have improved on.

Throughout these projects i keep on learning the importance of keeping a constant flow of communication with the organizations we are working with. The importance of research in a marketing plan and presenting the sources of this information to create more credibility.

Overall, this project has been extremely regarding I think for everyone involved. It has brought great insights to all parties involved. In the end although we had areas we could have definitely improved on I'm pleased with what we put together in the short amount of time.

The end of the CHFA project part 1

This was certainly a tricky project. At first glance when I heard of the project it seemed like a very straightforward easy project. In fact I jumped at the idea of building a marketing plan. I felt like it would not only give me more experience in my field (marketing) but that it would make a difference in the community and in the economy perhaps.

The Confusion:

We started out pretty well it seemed like we were each given our part and felt how we fitted in the project. However, like everyone knows not everything goes according to plan and so the jobs that were in the beginning clear began to fade away. There was a sense of no direction and no momentum on the project. I decided I had to get the project moving so I decided to take on the marketing plan and take initiative by contacting the people we had as resources for information.

The Journey:

Meeting with people - I started setting up appointments to meet with people and get all the information we needed to figure out a direction for the marketing plan. This definitely gave me a clarification on the project and exactly what was needed in the marketing plan.

Researching & Brainstorming – I began researching tools and systems that would not only help the current marketing strategy that the Colorado Foreclosure Hotline was using but also created a new Marketing system. The marketing system would be based on the educated demographics we were targeting, the need for confidentiality and the continuous accessibility to educational resources for homeowners.

Building the marketing plan – This was by far the most time consuming and hardest task I have taken on in the whole Apprentice competition. I had to bring together all of the research information into a solid plan that can reach not only the target demographic but also be used in other marketing efforts by the organization. For about a week or so I woke up to work on the marketing plan and went to bed still thinking about it. Nevertheless, in the end the objective had been met there was a vision for a marketing system, the weaknesses and strengths of the current system had been identified, and the only thing left was to implement and element of the plan.

The Team:

After going with me to meet with Silvina Sansot, Jeaninne took it upon herself to research the demographics to put together the marketing plan. She also put together the budget of all the tools the marketing strategy would have.

After we decided to include a new website as part of the marketing system. Rachel put her web building skills to work and created a great page tailored to our mission of reaching our target demographics but also provide easily accessible education to homeowners.

When I finished the marketing plan I still had some missing parts of the puzzle. Fortunately, Jesse stepped up to the plate and brought another marketing vision that helped piece together the marketing puzzle. This was proof to me of how well we work together in these kinds of projects. Not only do we support each other but we compliment each others strengths and weaknesses. In the end the marketing plan became very solid and ready to be presented to CHFA.

At this point Chantay already had the basic structure for the PowerPoint she just needed everyone’s part to be presented. Well this was easier said than done. It became another full day of work consisting of making last minute changes to the PowerPoint and the budget. We were tying loose ends and getting everything ready for the presentation, and everyone was burned out by this point.

Stay tune next post is the presentation and what I learned from the whole project.

Felipe