Pueblo West is a community with minimal fitness promotion and needs help! The Alliance for Empowerment (AFE) is a 501 c 3 organization whose goal is to create, implement and evaluate youth and community betterment projects with the overall goal to "empower youth to prosper." The basic minimum is health and fitness. This organization is forming a club at the local high school (Pueblo West High School-PWHS) and its first project is to instill the benefits of fitness from the elementary students all the way through high school. The Junior Alliance for Empowerment (JAFE, middle school students) would like to create a contest to raise awareness in the elementary students to focus on fitness with a variety of areas of participation.
The JAFE would like to plan activities such as essays, poster contests, and journaling of fitness activities with the elementary students at Sierra Vista Elementary over a period of time to pilot the fitness concept. AFE's high school students will participate in supporting the JAFE's efforts by serving as team leaders for the activities and reviewers of the elementary students' essays, poster entries and assisting with the final day of activities that rotate around "playground" activities, such as jump-rope, hopscotch, basketball and other ideas.
This is a timely project, as PWHS's athletic program is gearing up to involve the community in establishing its grounds as a Sports Complex. PWHS's AFE will lead area organizations in not only the need to create and improve existing facilities, but to instill the overall focus of fitness, in general. AFE and JAFE will be supporting fundraising, grants, and other activities associated with the establishment of the sports complex by motivating their parents, families and other students.
The only available fitness oriented opportunities that are community available are a football field, softball field, tennis courts (located 4 miles from the school), a community sidewalk, and a park with softball fields and playground equipment. This grant would help AFE firmly establish a project that would be the grassroots of the overall community effort to focus on fitness from elementary school students all the way through high school (and community alike!).
