The Wellness Coalition organized, planed and implemented a MLK Day service project and a community discussion around the film "The Children's March"

Service Project: Called "Smart Choices". Youth Volunteer Corps participants organized a healthy food project that helped educate youth and community members about healthy alternatives to drinking soda pop. We held a taste testing contest to select the official drink for YVC in 2012. We juiced several different types of fruits and vegetables and held a blind taste test were participants could rate and select their favorer drink. The Carrot Apple blend won hands down and was adopted as the Official YVC 2012 Drink. We will try to serve the drink during our programming during out of school time and our large Summer Block program. We will strive to offer healthy alternatives to typical youth program snacks like cookies and sweets. Letting the youth choose their favorite healthy alternatives helps with buy-in and acceptance. We had 16 youth and community members in attendance.

Film Screening and Discussion: Segregation in Alabama. We screened the film "The Children's March" and held a discussion and reflection exercise afterword. The youth and community members in attendance broke out into small groups and each group discussed an element of the film and then reported back to the large group. In many of the presentation youth took the lead in reporting.

Learning Activity: Make inspirational posters and march to the park and back.

This year's MLK Day event was a kick off for our year long Smart Choices program.