Food, Fun, and Better Indy Babies! 12th Annual BIBs/Healthy Families Family Picnic was a Blast!
6/12/2012
On Friday, June 8th, Better Indy Babies/ Healthy Families (BIBs/HF) held their 12th annual family picnic at Garfield Park to celebrate the accomplishments of the families we serve! The weather was perfect, and we had a record crowd with 287 adults and 311 children, totaling 598 people coming together for some fun! Families enjoyed hot dogs, baked beans and chips as they walked the park participating in fun games for the kids.
Everywhere you looked, there were children getting their faces painted, fishing for prizes, playing Plinko, picking the winning rubber duck, digging for treasure, planting beans to take home, making crafts, selecting a sucker from a wooden tree, and even dancing with Chuck E. Cheese!!
Information tables were set-up for parents that included sun smart materials, smoking cessation education, community resources and much more! They also had the opportunity to enter to win one of the many raffle prizes. Staff were able to secure some very generous donations and the prize baskets included gift cards to Kroger, Little Caesars, Subway, Family Video, Dream Cuts, Mike’s Express Carwash, Papa Murphy’s, Southside Harley Davidson, Portrait Innovations, Cherilyn’s on Shelby, Penn Station, and AMC Theatres – just to name a few! In addition, staff were able to pull together other in-kind donations to create some fun themed baskets such as a hygiene basket, cleaning basket, family movie night, girl and boy infant baskets, outdoor activities basket, among others. Prizes also included Indianapolis Indians baseball game tickets, roller skating passes, recordable storybooks, smoke detectors, cookbooks, and Pacers and Colts items.
During the picnic, BIBS/HF Director Denise Kaspar presented an award to Marilyn Reid, BIBs Pantry Director, and Doris Fowler, a long time volunteer at the Pantry, for their 20 years of service helping the Better Indy Babies participants. The award read, “For 20 years of tireless efforts to make life easier for those in need. You are what makes our world a better place.” The BIBs Pantry is located at University Heights United Methodist Church. It is sponsored by the local unit of the United Methodist Women with more than 20 volunteers from the church family. The Pantry provides expectant mothers with nourishing food, fresh-food/meat vouchers, maternity clothes and hygiene kits. The mothers may also receive layette items for their newborn babies, which include clothes 0 - 3 months, diapers and wipes, blankets, and bottle kits. The mothers come to the Pantry by referral only from HealthNet’s Better Indy Babies/Health Families program.