We are pleased to update you on the successful implementation of our first community wide, collaborative project known as the 21st Century Prevention—Oldham County. The Oldham County Community Foundation led this project, beginning with discussions with Oldham County community leaders, service providers, and community funders about the needs in Oldham County, culminating in a project focused on educating fourth grade parents about certain risky behaviors.

In September, through the Oldham County School System and Operation Parent, an introductory video was launched featuring School Superintendent Greg Schultz, followed by the distribution of approximately 1,000 Parent Handbooks in the “Take Home Tuesday” folders for all of Oldham County’s fourth grade students. In October, the first of five videos, “Anxiety” was launched and distributed, narrated by Karen Lawrence (Jennifer Lawrence’s mother). This first video reached 7,889 recipients.  A second video, narrated by Heather French Henry, on “Cyberbullying” was launched on Feb 14th, (with over 3,200 views from Operation Parent’s Facebook alone) and a third video, narrated by Demi Lovato’s mom on “prescription medication misuse” launched in April.

The videos on “Healthy Eating” and “Vaping” will be launched later in the school year. There has been a variety of media coverage including a WHAS-TV spot featuring Jean Schumm with Operation Parent and Karen Lawrence, a WLKY spot featuring Christie Crawford, guidance counselor at Locust Grove Elementary school, KET’s production of a separate segment on “21st Century Prevention,” which will cover more than just the Oldham County initiative, as well as articles in The Oldham Era, Insider Louisville, The Voice Tribune and the Courier-Journal. Operation Parent and the Oldham County Schools Communications Director are continuing their social media marketing effort and Operation Parent is contracting with a professional marketing firm to develop a strategic multi-media plan for ongoing marketing of the videos and overall program.

Largely due to the success of the program in Oldham County, Operation Parent has received grants from Texas Roadhouse and the Norton Foundation to distribute Parent Handbooks in Jefferson County Schools and across the 20 pediatric offices of Norton Healthcare. Additionally, CVS (pharmacy stores) has approached Operation Parent about a partnership that would have a national impact. All of these serve to validate this project that we caused to happen and the partners we chose to develop and own the program going forward. It also serves to validate the eight community funders and other individuals that pooled their respective resources to fund this $47,500 project.

Now that this first project has been fully funded and is well underway, we are focused on our next community impact project. As we did with our first project, we have held discovery meetings with subject matter experts at area nonprofit organizations; we have interviewed government and community leaders, potential funders and some of our largest employers; and we have obtained the commitment and conviction of the leadership who will own the implementation and ongoing management of this project. There are specific items, approvals and roles that need to be confirmed before we disclose the nature and scope of this new project.  However, from these many discussions, we are excited about this community-wide collaborative project that addresses several of the needs identified during these discussions.

Our goal is to implement this next project in 2019. Stay tuned for more updates as this project comes together!

 

*The Oldham County Community Foundation is an affiliate of the Community Foundation of Louisville.