Progress 09/01/11 to 08/31/15
Outputs
Target Audience:4 years working with Head Starts Early Childhood Services- 400 different youth Ages 3-5 years old Tribal, descendants, non members-Arlee, St. Ignatius, Pablo, Ronan, Polson, Elmo 4 years Making Fitness Fun- 500 different youth Ages 7-18 years old Tribal, descendants, non members Arlee, St. Ignatius, Pablo, Ronan, Polson 4 years Native Games-1,500 different participants ages 3-60 plus,Tribal, descendants, non members Arlee, St. Ignatius, Pablo, Polson, Ronan, Elmo 2 years Boys and Girls Club 150 participants- ages 6-16, Polson and Ronan Tribal, descendants, non members. 4 years of Family Nights 600 different participants- Tribal, descendants, non members. Arlee, St. Ignatius, Pablo, Polson, Ronan, Seely Swan, Elmo Changes/Problems:It took us an extra year to spend down the money because we had other grants that we were closing out, so we needed to spend those down first. We also had a stretch where we lost employees to other jobs. Which gave us an oppurtunity to add another year of activities. One of the cool things with this grant the head starts ended up hiring a physical activity advocate to help with health education materials in the classroom. The head starts teachers have also started taking some of our curriculum (CATCH Whoa, Slow, and Go) and using it in their classrooms. Headstarts have started using healthier foods during their events. At one of their events, the "Baby Fair," they used cakes as prizes. That year instead of bringing a cake, we brought a fruit basket. The next year they started giving out fruit baskets. It seemed this last year we made significant progress in showing Tribal Council the importance of youth health programming, especially at young ages. I think within the next couple years we will see policy changes in tribal health because of these projects.We have found it difficult to effectively evaluate our headstart programming. We have used different techniques but don't have the staffing to really evaluate the youth one on one. We know that the programming is working but creating techniques to help evaluate would be great. With the headstarts we would also like to see them more then just once every two weeks. It would be great if we had the staff to create programming on a weekly basis. They don't have very long attention spans, so we try to keep it very simple and not very long. We also have purposely repeated much of the health education, so they will retain the important information. We have the teachers participate in the health and nutritional education, in hopes that they will carry on our teachings into their classrooms. In our summer program we have found it difficult to keep kids in our program who really need to eat healthy and exercise. Somehow they will talk their parents of taking them to our program. We know that some of these kids are spending a lot of time inside and are not eating the proper foods. We try to create activities that everyone will enjoy and activities for every physical activity level. We have added hiking, swimming, waterslides, wall-climbing, archery, fishing, and canoeing. This next year we are trying to work with our tribal forestry program and math and science program at the college to create activities that involve low impact but also have fun educational activities. We hope to capture more at risk children this way. Staffing has been very difficult in our programming. We have had problems hiring qualified staff in the area of health and physical education in our area, so training these staff becomes difficult. The staff we hire usually haven't work with youth before so they struggle with leadership and job specific skills. Another important barrier is trying to get the parents more involved with their youth and increase the parent's knowledge in health education. We find it hard to get parents to show up to our family nights. We plan on adding take home family materials for youth, if the youth does the activity with the family, they will have an opportunity for prizes. We hope to create better healthy family activities, so that healthy habits are formed at home. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Our training programs involve a lot of CATCH materials and Eagle Book readings. We use health education and physical activity materials from the CATCH programs and the CATCH program also have great education materials on gardening. The eagle book reading provide Native American health education and diabetes materials for youth to betterunderstand. We provide information from my plate websites and basic nutrition guidelines. We also follow USDA guidelines for our summerfood program, so youth are getting balanced diets. We are providing training to our headstart teachers, headstart cooks and their physical activty coordinators. We have trained over 20 head start teachers over the past 4 years. The head starts have hired a physical activity coordinator, so that they can continue to do physcial activites, CATCH, and gardening curriculum. Each summer we hire at least 3 SKC College srtudents and 7 Salish and Kootnai teenager to help with our summer healthy program, so over the course of 4 years we have had 10 different SKC college students working with us and over 20 different summer youth employees. For our summer program we provide trainings for serving the USDA Montana Summer feeding Program. We train are whole summer staff in serving sizes, food safety, healthy foods, and rules. For the Native games, our Native games specialist, Paul Phillips, has trained and hosted, teachers from the local schools. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have made our program available at different community events to educate youth and parents of the obesity and diabetes epidemic on the Flathead Reservation. Each of the years we have been involved in baby fairs (200 participants), headstart pow wows (200 participants), local pow wows (200 participants), River Honoring (750 participants), Tribal Social Services community forums (300 individuals), summer youth program end of year event (250 people). Over the four years we have been involved in many local newspapers (Charkoota, Valley Journal, decribing the programs we offer and our mission behind our programming (2,500 participants). More programs are asking us to come present our programs for their organizations. For example last year, we presented to the Ronan Tribal Indian Education Commitee and based off the presentation they help provide us with a 5,500 grant to help spend on physical acivities. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We impacted over 500 different summer youth in our summer program over 4 years. We averaged over 65 particpants for 160 activity days. We were able to see summer youth participants being more aware of health education, summer youth started choosing healthier foods for their lunches. Over the four years we had over 50 summer youth particpants make their own double ball sticks. We have digital stories from over 5 youth participants from our summer youth program and collected surveys from 60 youth particpants and their parents. We were not able to start-up lacrosse leagues this year but started a Native Games tournament at our local Pow Wows and we helped provide 10 Sticks Lacrosse Program with some lacrosse equipment in year 2 of the grant. Over the 4 years conducting NAtive games , we have made contact with over 1,500 different partiicpants. We had over 250 headstart youth grow their own vegatables in the greenhouse. These headstart youth took part in CATCH gardening curriculum from our gardening educator. Over the 4 years we had over 100 summer youth particiupants grow their own vegatables. We were able to pre and post headstart youth in obstacle course times and health education. Both tests showed huge improvements from pre and post tests. The headstarts have shown great interests in our headstart physical activty program. They continue to call each new school year to set up their weekly activities.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/13 to 08/31/14
Outputs
Target Audience: Headstarts Early Childhood Services- 200 youth Ages 3-5 years old Tribal, descendents, non members-Arlee, St. Ignatius, Pablo, Ronan, Polson Making FItness Fun- 250 youth Ages 7-18 years old Tribal, descendents, non members Arlee, St. Ignatius, Pablo, Ronan, Polson Native Games-800 particpants ages 3-60 plus,Tribal, descendents, non members Arlee, St. Ignatius, Pablo, Polson, Ronan, Seely Swan Boys and Girls Club 150 partipants- ages 6-16, Polson and Ronan Tribal, descendents, non members. Family Nights 350 particpants- Tribal, descendents, non members. Arlee, St. Ignatius, Pablo, Polson, Ronan, Seely Swan Changes/Problems: Lacrosse Leagues have been hard goal to accopmlish. Our first year of this grant we were able to help provide Lacrosse Sticks and Helmets, to 10 sticks Lacrosse. That was the first year that the 10 sticks Lacrosse team was starting out on this reservation. They used 20 sticks and 20 helmets for 3 months. Since then, the 10 Sticks lacrosse team has continued and has had success for the last 3 years. We have had great success doing Native Games all over the reservation and in some places off of it. Paul Philllips, one of our coordinators, was even asked to take part in a sports exchange with the University of Montana. With this exchange, Paul was able to go to China for three weeks and show them the sport of Double Ball. We have also struggled with building Native tools and Native Games sets for the youth. We ended up losing one of our key contributors, who helped build Native tools sets to another company. However for this last year we still plan on reaching our goals in this area. We hope to build the headstart youth and summer youth participants native games sticks(200 youth), in hopes of them taking up the Native Games. Holding a end of year camp has been tough as well because of all the risks involved with keeping youth overnight. We also don't have the staff to support a large camp. However, we plan on creating a two day youth fitness challenge with a variety of activities. The youth will will have teams of four or five partipants and will compete to see which teams are the fittest. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? This year we have provided 120 health education and physcial activity sessions with 180 headstart youth and 20 headtstart teachers including the early childhood centers hiring a physical activity specialist. These teachers are learning curriculum so that they can add bits and pieces into their classrooms. Making Fitness Fun Program- 40 days of physical activities and 15 days of health education devlopment with summer youth participants. We hired 8 summer youth employee 16 years and older to help develop their health education, physical activites, job, and leadership skills. We also hired 5 employees for our summer programming in which we trained them to cook healthier, educated then in health, buy healthier, lead physical activites, and lead physical activities at the Boys and Girls club. Native Games- Helped train 13 people in presenting Native Games Gardening Curriculum- Had SKC extension garden specialist lead headstart teachers and youth in gardening education. Also, had gardening specialist lead our summer youth participants and workers in gardening education. Montana State University Extension- Their teachers came into our summer program and had great health education ideas and evaluation ideas. They offered our 15 summer program staff and summer program participants professional development in health ideas. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? We are currently working on getting information out in local newspapers(1,000 possible people). We are also working with 12 participants of parent health advisory board and 15 members of health commitee board to get our programs out there more. The biggest way we disseminate our information is by getting out into the six different communities and talking about success's of our programs and offering Native Games in these communities. We also make ourselves apart of different family nights in the communities by offering Native Games. We plan on presenting our program to the Tribal Council to let them know how successful our programming as been and getting more support from our College board of Directors. We have made our program available at different community events to aware youth and parents of the obesity and diabetes epidemic on the Flathead Reservation. We have been involved in baby fairs (200 participants), headstart pow wows (200 participants), local pow wows (200 participants), River Honoring (550 participants), Tribal Social Services community forums(300 individuals), summer youth program end of year event (250 people) we have been involved in local newspaper describing the program we offer and our mission behind our programming. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We'll continue to offer our Healthy Headstart program, Summer Making Fitness Fun program, and Native Games programs. We have added physical activites to the local Boys and Girls Clubs during the summer and hope to add physical activites during the spring. Provide a Lacrosse League in Spring 2012. With at least 4 teams. We plan on creating Native Games Tournament and the two local pow wows. We have added another Native Games to attract more people partipating in these games. Adding two more Making Fitness Fun Physical activity and summer feeding sites- We plan on creating sites in St. Ignatius and Arlee in 2015. Have 100 youth grow vegatables- We plan on exceeding this number for 2015. 150 headstart youth, 100 summer youth particpants=250 total youth We will work with the Headstart 150 youth and 100 Boys and Girls Club and 80 of our summer Making Fitness Fun program participants to create at least 100 youth with Native game sticks and tools. For this last year we want to create a end of the year Fitness obstacle course. Youth will take part in a variety of games and activites to find who are in the the best shape all around. I believe we can increase our outreach with other camps, especially providing Native Games
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Impact over 300 different participants for summer program- We had over 250 youth signed up this year for our Making Fitness Fun program. We averaged over 70 youth a day for 40 days this summer, which is our highest ever average. Youth take part in Native Games, Hiking, Swimming, Sport Games, Dodgeball. This year we added 30 physical activities and health education days at the two local boys and girls clubs in Ronan and Polson- Over 150 partipants Native Leagues and workshops-We held over 15 different Native Games Workshops- Worked with over 800 different participants around the reservation. We ended up buying a new Native Game called Stickball to increase our numbers and activites in NAtive Games trainings Have at least 40 participate in over 25 of the programs days 50% of the Kids lower BMI Pre- and Post Program - We had 39 participants make at least 25 days of the 40 possible. We had over 61 partipants make it 20 days of the summer which is over half of the activites days. Participants show improvement in knowledge in Nutritional Foods- Through our headstart program we were able to see increases in nutritional knowledge of foods and health knowledge through the 6 months of the programming. In our Making Fitness Fun evaluations we were able to see youth were reatining nutrition and health education. Have 50 kids build 1 native game- We had 20 youth particpants help build double ball game by collecting sticks and helping carve them. 50 Participants Plant and Grow 1 type of Vegetable in Gardens- We did see tremendous increases in gardening education and participation this last year. We had over 100 headstart youth grow vegatable starter plants and they took part in 4 CATCH Gardening lessons, , we had another 25 summer youth partipants grow their own starter plants and we had over 80 youth help seed the gardens-growing beets, carrots lettuce, peppers, squash, etc. Hold one end of the year camp-Traditional Tools and Foods involved and be a part of two other camps Outputs by year 3- We were not able to hold our traditional tools and food camps(Unless you count our physical activities camp) but we were apart of 1 additional camp this year doing Native Games. It seems that these camps fall at the same time our camps are.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/11 to 08/31/12
Outputs
OUTPUTS: We have participated in over 20 events spread across the reservation. We held events in Arlee, St. Ignatius, Ronan, Pablo, and Polson. These events include; Health fairs, the River Honoring, Tribal Education trainings, Native Games, Lacrosse Camps, baby fairs, family nights, culture camps, and college courses. During these events we conduct Traditional games and activities, health education, as well as helping prepare healthy meals and snacks. With these family nights we have developed strong partnerships with Tribal Health Fitness Center staff. We have worked together well to provide physical activities and better awareness of community health. We have added a variety of physical activities to our program this year. We have conducted sledding events, basketball tournaments, bowling events, Native games, snow shoeing, and dodge ball.During each of these events we average over 45 people per event, over 300 students for river honoring event, 125 baby fair, 30 per family night events, and Midnight Family night over 100 youth, so were looking at close to 900 physical activity participants. Head-start, worked with 12 different head-starts, over 200 youth students, October 2011 through May 2012, 3 Arlee programs, 2 St. Ignatius Programs, 3 Pablo programs, 2 Polson programs, 2 Ronan programs. We work with each of the head starts on a weekly basis for close to an hour a day. With the head starts we have been reading the four Eagle Books over and over to the children. We also have been going over healthy foods and unhealthy foods each time we meet. For 30-45 minutes we have designed a fun physical activity that the kids take part in to finish out the day. The head-start children are learning about history of traditional games, (Shinee, Lacrosse, Doubleball), nutrition and physical education books, nutritional and diabetes information, CATCH program, and fun physical activities and games at community gyms. Summer program we had over 35 days of activities in the summer, over 4 hours a day, youth buses from Arlee twice a week and Elmo twice a week,youth from Arlee, St.Ignatius, Ronan, Polson, Elmo, and Pablo, and our end of the year summer event. Summer Food Program 35 days of Healthier food options served throughout the summer. We conducted many of our activities outside for our summer program. We believe in improving participation of youth in outdoor activities. Pilates and Senior Citizen Centers, Arlee, Polson, and St. Ignatius worked with on a weekly basis for 3 months, April, May, June. We worked with over 50 individuals in these classes. We were able to hire a physical activity coordinator, who specialized in pilates and showed interest in helping the senior citizens. We were able to help provide lacrosse equipment and a healthy breakfast and lunch for a three day lacrosse camp in Pablo. Equipment helped out over 20 individuals who would not of been able to participate otherwise. We have increased our partnerships because of all the activities that we are conducting in the community. Also, some of our past partnerships have gotten stronger because of the activities we offer. I have listed our new partnerships in the partnerships narrative. PARTICIPANTS: Mike Tryon, Project Director, Worked on implementing Head-start, Senior Citizens, Pilates, Family Nights, Summer youth program, summer feeding program. Paul Phillips, 1/4 time to half time, Physical Activity Coordinator/Summer Cook, headstarts, native games Jenny Fowler 1/2 time-Healthy Foods, traditional Foods, head starts Melinda Smith-Physical Activity Coordinator 1/2 for 3 months, headstarts, pilates, senior citizen classes CDC Traditional Foods,CSKT Tribal Health, Big Brother and Sisters,Community Health Organizer,DHRD Summer Youth Employment,DHRD Transportation,Tribal Forestry,SKC Transportation SKC Extension Office, Nkusm,SKC Education Dept.,CSKT Diabetes Coordinator, Arlee & St. Ignatius Fitness Center, Two Eagle River School, People Center, Boys and Girls Club,Healthy Montana Kids, Lake County Schools, Polson, Arlee, Elmo, St. Ignatius, Ronan, Tribal Waves,13 different Headstarts in Polson, Ronan, Arlee, Mission, Turtle Lake, Pablo Arlee, Mission, Polson Senior Centers, CSKT Suicide Prevention, AlterNative Solutions, Ethnotech, Arlee and Elmo Pow Wow, Youth with a Mission-YWAM,Cultural Camps, Hunting camps, Wellness camps, USDA Summer Food, Field and Home. TARGET AUDIENCES: Early Childhood Youth ages 3 to 4 year olds classroom, instruction involves culture, tradition, physical activity and nutrition, CATCH and Spark Curriculum Headstart children ages 5 years old, classroom instruction involves culture, tradition, physical activity and nutrition, Spark and CATCH Curriculum Summer Youth Program Ages 7 to 18 year olds, physical activity, healthy breakfast and lunches, Fitnessgram testing and BMI Summer Youth Employment Program, work with 14 to 20 year olds, Develop good work habits, get them ready for employment as a adult. Family Nights, Ages 1 through 80 plus, Physical activity, Native Games, healthy eating habits, healthy meals, Native games events, 3 years and older Senior Citizen Centers, 55 year plus, physical activity and health education Pilates, ages 16 years plus, physical activity, health education PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Fitnessgram testing and BMI testing of summer youth applicants. We had issues of getting this testing passed through our college IRB. When we did provide some of the testing some youth didn't understand the testing. We still will provide the pre and post testing for the next year. We have already added plans for headstart youth to begin planting some vegatables to see how they grow. Our college extension program also has a greenhouse that we are hoping to use this Winter and Spring. We plan to add some digital videos of the youth that we work with. These digital stories will give a better picture of what the youth are learning and experiencing.
Impacts
We did see an increase in the number of summer youth involved in our program. We average over 61 youth a day for over 35 days. We had over 208 participants sign-up for our summer program. We improved the foods that we served to the children. We planned more hiking trips to where kids got to try out huckleberries and wild onions and strawberries. We hiked in areas this summer where most of the youth had never been, Glacier Park, Swartz Lake, McDonald Lake, Twins Lake, and many more. We started our FitnessGram and BMI testing for our summer youth camp but we fall short on experienced workers to help conduct the testing. Next year we will have a better idea of how to conduct the testing. Our summer youth have talked about being more active and eating healthier. We have had youth say that our foods are too healthy. Many youth who at first did not want to try the healthy food have said when they tried it they actually liked it. We were able to see over 40 youth who have participated in our program in years past continue participation this year. We have already had questions concerning the summer program and when it will start next year. There have been parents who have said, their child has been gaining weight and they can not wait to enroll their child in the summer program. We have been providing Early Childhood Head start Centers with physical activities, Eagle Books readings and Nutritional education since the start of November, 2011. We have had huge success with the youth retaining much of the cultural, nutritional, and physical education. We saw in improvement in participation in the activities throughout the course of the year. We saw improvements in levels of nutritional knowledge, and physical activity levels. With the head-start children, the parent's and teachers have said, they have noticed tremendous changes in their children since our program started. We have discovered that these head-start kids are learning from Eagle book readings. These kids are learning about playing outside more and about getting moving to increase their heart rate. We have youth who have shown that they have learned the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods, from the first time we introduced them. We have heard from parents, that their youth are saying what healthy and unhealthy foods are at home. The head-start kids are learning about gardens and what foods grow in gardens. Next year, we will have them start growing their own vegetable with the help of a green house. Because we increased our partnerships we were able to offer more family nights, hiking trips, garden education, more transportation, more swimming trips, trips to the water slides, more hired help, healthier food options, and more healthy education for youth in the program. Our summer program was able to work with CSKT transportation to help bring kids to our summer program from Arlee and Elmo. We have had community members who have wanted to continue Senior Citizen classes and Pilates Classes but we lost our coordinator for those two different classes. Will look into providing those classes in the future because of the need.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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