Kids from Ignacio, Bayfield and Durango filled Bayfield's Eagle Park Tuesday at lunch time for the Celebrating Healthy Communities Coalition 24th anniversary celebration.
Along with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, watermelon and birthday cake, kids learned how to make giant dish soap bubbles, ran sack races and three-legged races, and did the ring toss and corn hole toss. Kids packed around adult helper Trevor Leahy as he filled water balloons for them.
"This is our 24th year of promoting healthy kids," coalition director Pat Senecal said.
One of the coalition's themes is celebrating the majority of kids who DON'T use drugs or alcohol, rather than lamenting those that do.
"Seven of 10 teens in La Plata County haven't used alcohol because they are too busy," Senecal told the kids. "You don't need alcohol to have fun."
Elizabeth Strong, a community organizer for San Juan Basin Health, announced Bayfield's Adult Role Model winner, Bayfield Middle School teacher Michelle Wennerstrom. She also presented a runner-up award to Bayfield School Resource Officer Dan Cyr of the Bayfield Marshal's Office. Another runner-up role model, Josh Kitchen, was not present.
Each spring, area youth are invited to nominate adults as role models. It's based on a system of 40 youth assets that promote safe, healthy behaviors in youth.
One of those is having positive adult role models. Strong said more than 250 adults received nominations in the county this year.
Winners are chosen for Bayfield, Ignacio, the Native American community, the Hispanic community and Durango.
A Collaboration Award was presented to the Garden Project of Southwest Colorado which is working to establish gardens at every school in the county. Twenty have been established so far, and volunteers have given 2,200 hours working on those.
Senecal presented the award to Garden Project director Sandhya Tillotson.
Senecal introduced her predecessor as coalition director, Char Day. Day was with the group from the beginning, when it was the Lasso Tobacco Coalition. "I started with four people," Day said. "Now it's hundreds. (Back then) we didn't have any money and no support. This is how it's grown."
Various community groups work with the coalition, including the Family Center, the Ignacio-based Boys & Girls Club of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Durango-based Boys & Girls Club of La Plata County. There have been discussions about establishing a Boys & Girls Club in Bayfield, possibly just west of the Pine River Library or at a proposed new school site.
Information about the coalition is at www.OurHealthyCommunities.org
