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Rocky Boy Schools get $50K Healthy Kids grant

Representatives of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana surprised Rocky Boy Schools Superintendent Voyd St. Pierre and members of the schools' faculty and staff when they showed up Friday during staff orientation day with a Healthy Kids, Healthy Families $50,000 check.

Blue Cross Blue Shield Public Relations Coordinator Randi Heigh told St. Pierre and the faculty and staff that the grant application covered all five pillars of the program - nutrition, physical activity, disease prevention and management, supporting safe environments, and suicide prevention and mental health.

"This particular grant addressed every one of those five pillars and it was the best grant we've ever seen, and we've been doing this for many years," she said.

St. Pierre said the credit for the grant application goes to the faculty members who worked on preparing the application and on the grant writers, RJS and Associates.

"This is everyone's success," he said.

St. Pierre came back from meeting with faculty and staff during the orientation to talk to Heigh and Jesse Zentz, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana's manager of community relations, in a meeting he thought was an update on the application.

"This is awesome," he said when Heigh told him Blue Cross Blue Shield awarded Rocky Boy the grant.

He then took the two to meet with - and surprise - the people undergoing orientation.

The grant application says the Rocky Boy Schools Healthy Kids, Healthy Families Program's goal is to improve the health and wellness of children through nutrition education, physical activity, disease prevention and management, supporting safe environments, and suicide prevention. This goal will be achieved through the implementation of after school and summer programs for the youth in the community.

The first objective is to impelement, starting Sept. 1 and running through Aug. 31, 2018, a youth gardening program with a detailed list of key activities.

The second objective is, over the same time period, to implement a nutrition and hiking program.

 

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