We are proud to announce the winners of our 2nd Annual Prevention Honors! Our Prevention All-Stars represent the full engagement of the Healthy Lamoille Valley coalition across individuals, businesses, organizations, and volunteer collaborations as we work together towards our common goal of reducing youth substance misuse and encouraging youth to make substance free healthy choices. Awards were presented at our last Coalition Meeting on October 5th, 2021. Watch a recording of the awards ceremony and hear ways you can get involved with Healthy Lamoille Valley here:
Prevention All-Stars
River Arts and Studio Store
Project – Live Your Why: April Vacation Camp
A home-based arts and crafts camp for students in grades K-12 that helped young people explore their creative interests, express themselves, reflect on their experiences, and build self-awareness.
River Arts
River Arts and Healthy Lamoille Valley teamed up to facilitate this vacation camp for our Live Your Why initiative. River Arts Co-Director of Events & Programs Lisa Wolfgang coordinated the distribution of almost 50 art kit bags to families in the community. Lisa also created a bound workbook of all the activities for the week (all of the art for the workbook was of Lisa’s own design) and took the lead on two Facebook Live art & craft demonstrations. We look forward to future collaborations!
Studio Store
Often when we think of business partners we think of our retailers who are on the front lines of keeping substances out of the hands of minors. This year’s business partner is a little different. We would like to express our deep gratitude to the Studio Store in Johnson. Michael and Kyle the owners were enthusiastic partners, helping us to source the materials for the 50 kits at cost. This was not an easy feat when supply chain issues caused shortages in art supplies around the country. Michael worked with Lisa at River Arts to find the best fit for our young artists. Their generosity allowed 50 youth to connect around art (at no cost), when much of life was still remote! Thank you!
Special thanks to Lamoille Area Youth Coalition member, Elli, who volunteered to cut out the 50 birds that went in each of the bags, and later became part of a community art project!
Peoples Academy Middle Level Health and Counseling Team
School Collaboration: Academic Year 2020 – 2021
The collaboration between Peoples Academy Middle Level (PAML) and Healthy Lamoille Valley has been growing through the years. This past academic year, even in the time of a pandemic, it deepened on many levels. With an enthusiastic Health Educator, Jenn Quevado, PE teacher Angie Faraci (and full Health and PE Wellness team) and equally motivated and passionate SAP Margo Warden, Peoples Academy Middle Level (PAML) expanded their commitment to youth substance misuse prevention in the academic year 2020-2021. Initially, PAML embraced Healthy Lamoille Valley’s Live Your Why Initiative and convened a Vermont Kids Against Tobacco group Fall 2020. When 5th-8th graders returned to classes January 4th, their Wellness and PE teachers had prepared to engage all in-person students with the Catch My Breath Vaping Prevention Curriculum (including training peer leaders) and then presenting their experience during a regional Zoom event for other local school partners. In the final weeks of the academic year and leading up to the summer, once again, this team embraced one of our pilot projects, offering the TimeWise: Take Charge of Leisure Time curriculum to all 7th and 8th grade students. From their authentic receptivity and support to creative youth engagement around prevention and building protective factors, PAML has demonstrated their priorities of supporting their youth. We have been so impressed with this team and look forward to our future collaboration!
Green Mountain Public Access TV
Communications: Healthy Lamoille Valley Coalition Meetings
We recognize the amazing work and dedication of the entire team at Green Mountain Public Access TV (GMATV)! The GMATV team has always been there to help support our activities by increasing accessibility of our programs to those who were not able to attend in person or who wanted to rewatch a presentation. During the last 18 months they have continued to support our efforts, recording meetings and trainings and making them available almost immediately for us to share out with the community! They are such an important part of our community and coalition. At each recording the GMATV staff are incredibly helpful and are quick to answer any questions we might have. Thank you for making our work accessible to all!
Dr. Katie Marvin
Resource Creation: Physician/Parent Card
Dr. Katie Marvin has been an active participant of Healthy Lamoille Valley and friend of prevention for many years. In her role as a Primary Care Physician she has fiercely advocated for members of our community to be free from the negative influences of substances. She is one of the founding planners of the annual opioid forum and a regular member of Upstream Lamoille, a workgroup that comes together to support opioid related issues. She regularly attends coalition meetings, often sticking around after the meeting to chat and share ideas. At a Healthy Lamoille Valley coalition meeting last fall she first shared the idea to create a resource to help local doctors have conversations with families to help them understand the risk factors that their young people are facing and how parent/caregivers can support them. This resource was published this summer. It is with great joy that we recognize Katie’s work!
Kate Lewton
Youth Member
Kate has been involved with Lamoille Area Youth Coalition (LAYC) and Healthy Lamoille Valley since February 2021. Right from the get-go she was ready to take on almost any project presented to LAYC starting with serving on the Healthy Lamoille Valley 3-4-50 mini-grant subcommittee. She is an active participant in LAYC, consistently attending meetings, participating in activities like Sticker Shock and contributing thoughtfully to group discussions. She partnered with another LAYC member to create and deliver a presentation to Stowe middle school health classes all on her own. In May she joined the Healthy Lamoille Valley Steering Team. Kate has shown a lot of leadership and initiative through helping develop a student listening series and student voice club envisioned by the Steering Team’s youth subcommittee. She has taken a leadership role with this project at Stowe High School. Kate is always on top of communicating and following-up with people in a timely and professional manner. She goes above and beyond what is asked of her and we are so impressed and grateful for all she has accomplished in just 8 short months for Healthy Lamoille Valley, especially considering how involved she is with many other internships, clubs, jobs, and projects. We are thrilled to have her intern with us for her senior year at high school!
Maria Davies
Adult Member
Maria Davies is a fierce advocate for Healthy Lamoille Valley and everything we represent. Maria first became involved with Healthy Lamoille Valley’s Growing Up Stowe efforts a few years ago and became a member of our steering team in 2019. As a member of the Steering Team’s youth subcommittee she has been an active proponent of the youth listening session series and the student voice committee. This past year, Maria testified twice before the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare about S.24, legislation that would eliminate the sale of flavored tobacco products and e-liquids, a topic that initially drew her to her prevention work years ago. She followed this testimony with published op-eds in many local papers on the topic. Maria’s support for substance misuse prevention permeates our community in many ways – through her work on equity issues, as a school liaison and parent workgroup member, when initiating conversations when tabling to share prevention resources, when meeting with municipal leaders and in other examples in her day-to-day life. Maria is all about action and we are so grateful for her unwavering commitment!