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

Detachment & Acceptance

I thought I would stir off topic a bit from the apprentice to get into one of my favorite subjects. Life! I can talk about this subject for hours!

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine about how we many times take ourselves and things so seriously. We give so much meaning to things that it holds us back from being as “care free” as we would like to be. In fact in our society being carefree many times is looked at as bad. If you are not busy and stressed you are not being productive and there is something wrong with you. Plus, everything we do must have a goal or an end result in mind or else you are "wasting time".

Most people think that wanting and focusing on an end result will make it happen faster or assure it happening. However, so much of our energy is wasted on wanting an end result that it adversely affects the quality of everything we do. Think about it, when you are involved in something doesn’t the fear of failure or the desire for success take an enormous amount of your thinking? Notice the last time you screwed up in something important for you and you will probably find that during the situation you were probably saying to yourself “I hope I don’t screw this up” or “I have to succeed or else I’ll be dissapointed”. This attachments and fears actually prevent people from giving it their very best.

Now, I do not mean to have no motivation to succeed or not to have goals in life. In fact it’s the complete opposite. I often use the phrase “being committed to an outcome but yet not attached to it”. I got this phrase from one of my mentors and it reminds me every time to focus on the journey not the destination. The byproduct of this practice is that everything you do is more enjoyable (instead of stressful) and the end results end up being much better than you can imagine!

How do you stop being so attached to an outcome? Every time you are trying to get to a goal you must be o.k. with whatever happens and realize that it doesn’t have to determine your happiness. I have been asked this many times “how do you do it to be so happy?” or “how do you stay positive with people even when they might not be?”. ACCEPTANCE. I accept situations as they are and people as they are. Granted it is more difficult with some situations and people than with others.

How do you begin doing this?
Value the simple things and lower your standards/expectations for what makes you happy. Value the fact that unlike other people in the world you will never starve or be hungry, you will probably always have water to drink, and it is unlikely that you will ever be without shelter. Same with validation, value a simple smile from a stranger or even better a smile from YOURSELF. So if you were to realize that you will always have everything to be happy what would you be afraid of?

Once you build the capacity and realization of needing less you will have far more power over your life. Why? Because, you will have NOTHING to loose and thus nothing to fear.