IGA Hometown Healthy Challenge Perspective

Lawrence Brothers IGA Plans a Month of Healthy Events

A message from...
Blake Meek
Manager
Lawrence Brothers IGA
Roswell, N.M.
LDC: Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc.

IGA Hometown Healthy Challenge is going on now through the end of April, and many IGA stores around the country are taking advantage of the extended timeframe to schedule a number of community-related events. Today, Blake Meek, manager of Lawrence Brothers IGA in Roswell, N.M., shares his plans for the event.

We participated in last year's IGA Hometown Healthy Challenge here at the Roswell location of Lawrence Brothers IGA, and we had a lot of positive feedback from our customers for doing our part to make our community a healthier place. When we realized we would have an extended timeframe for this year's event, we decided to take advantage of some of that time to plan an event with more participation from our community.

Over the last month we've been able to recruit a number of people to help us spread the healthy living message—so many, in fact, that we've created a series of in-store healthy activities that begin next week and run all the way up to March 5, when we'll hold our all-day event.

At various times throughout the month of February we'll have the local bloodmobile coming in for a blood drive and glucose testing, the Eastern New Mexico University health students doing body fat analysis and delivering food safety tips, and the local Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP) coming in to talk about how people can put healthy food on the table with food stamps. Then on March 5, all of those organizations will be back in the store for our all day Healthy Challenge celebration.

We're really excited about the March 5 event because we're also going to have some things to help kids recognize that physical activities can be fun. We'll be setting up putting greens inside the store and The First Tee—a World Golf Foundation organization—will be on-hand to talk to young people about the benefits of golfing, and we're also setting up a catch-and-release trout fishing pond right outside the building. Then we'll round out the day with healthy recipe demos from a local chef.

It's going to be a great month for our store and for our community!

Blake Meek

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