Madelia: Rethink Your Drink! Park Days Activities!

When exploring opportunities for engaging the community about the Madelia: Rethink Your Drink Project, the Madelia Community Based Collaborative (MCBC) decided it was best to go where the people are: the annual Madelia Park Days Celebration. The group planned several activities to co-inside with the town celebration and kicked ok the event by hosting a Sidewalk Chalk Contest. The contest encouraged both young and old to get out the sidewalk chalk and create drawings which featured ways people could rethink their drinks towards healthier options. Community members were encouraged to create their drawings outside Luther Memorial Home, the Madelia Community Hospital or their own home, and upload their photos to the project Facebook Page. Two Madelia family fun pack prizes (which included four passes to the pool, bowling alley and movie theater) were awarded, one at random and the other based on the number of Facebook ‘likes’ received. 

 

 The group also participated in the Park Days Family Night, where a movie was shown in the community park. MCBC set up a booth which featured an educational beverage display which detailed the amount of sugar found in popular beverages. The group also provided three fruit/veggie infused water options, water infused with lemon/lime, water infused with orange and water infused with cucumber.  The cucumbers provided for the taste testing were grown in the edible landscape by the children at the Early Childhood Education Program at the Madelia School. “The kids loved the water, some were surprised by how good it tasted. I was equally surprised at the number of kids who preferred the cucumber flavor over the orange. One little girl kept coming back for more water. I consider it a huge success!” Jodi Ulman, MCBC member.

 

 

To close out Park Days, MCBC participated in the city parade. Volunteers handed silicon bracelets which read Rethink Your Drink in both English and Spanish. Volunteers also had fun squirting parade viewers with none other than, water.