Wichita County AIM Coalition

07/15/2025

Time to gear up for the annual Arty Rito Memorial Race!!

07/22/2024

🏃‍♀️🚶‍♂️Bright and early next Saturday!! You will be done in plenty of time to go to the Fair Parade. 😁🏃🚶‍♀️

click to register: https://forms.gle/6UaxESwZT5HeimeQ7

06/01/2024

Happening Now! There's still time to head to the Pavilion at the Fairgrounds and complete the Scavenger Hunt for a chance to win a prize.

05/31/2024

Join us! Celebrating 8 years of Pathways at the AIM Coalition/Pathways Scavenger Hunt tomorrow, June 1, 2024!

05/31/2024

Celebrating 8 Years of the Pathways to a Healthy Kansas Initiative in Leoti-Wichita County!

The 8th and final year of Pathways is about to come to a close, but not without recognizing the last 3 grantees awarded Pathways funding in 2024:

The Community Thrift Shoppe, Inc., on behalf of the Wichita County Food Bank, for supporting the emergency food voucher program and increasing access to healthy foods.

The City of Leoti for sidewalk and crosswalk improvements. The new sidewalks along Broadway/K-96 got added onto the Hwy 96 reconstruction project before the pandemic, and as a result of Pathways Phase 1 funding, but that whole project got pushed back several years until just now! So with the total grant funding from Phases 1 and 2, the City of Leoti now has priority crosswalks and additional sidewalk improvements in the works to make walking and biking along and across both highways safer and easier.

And last, but certainly not least...

Agora, Inc. - The Gathering Place, for indoor and outdoor remodeling and safety enhancements. What does that have to do with health? Everything. We are social creatures, and if we have access to places that make it easier to build social connections, we are more likely to live longer, happier lives. The road to Pathways and Agora coming together was a wild, wild ride, full of experiments and trials the past few years. But now the Pathways funded improvements, along with additional generous donations, will make it welcoming, easier and safer to gather in community. Since agora also signifies the center of all the community activity, it is fitting, and not a coincidence at all, that it is the culminating project of all 8 years' efforts.

05/31/2024

The One Where Policies Add Fruits and Veggies, Increase Activity, Minimize Screen Time, and Decrease To***co Use.
2022-2023
The work of A.I.M. through the Pathways to a Healthy Kansas Initiative led to multiple health policies and Memorandums of Understanding. The Grow & Learn Childcare Center and the Wichita County Fairgrounds Pavilion have policies and/or agreements with their respective partners that include health-related language and enhance the sense of place as one that is attractive for families to raise their children. Thanks to these policies and MOU's, both places were able to apply for and implement Pathways to a Healthy Kansas grants that were leveraged with local and state matching funds to increase the impact in the community.

05/30/2024

Pivot...Pivot...PIVOT = The years 2020-2021
We went into 2020 with lots of data collected, great momentum, and plans for a new community wellness and connecting space that might house some childcare spots as well. However, the pandemic plus community focus group feedback halted all that in a hurry. The community members from the focus groups advised don't try to work on two huge projects at once, and the Pathways/AIM members listened and pivoted in a big way. Unfortunately, that meant putting one on the back burner for an unknown amount of time, and it was the community wellness/connection space that had to wait. Childcare was identified as the most urgent and important need.

Focusing on making progress on the lack of childcare would mean multiple pivot points and require that the Pathways Initiative and AIM mission encompass a broader definition of community health than ever before. What makes a healthy community? Is it just active individuals who have better access to healthy food? No. Those are parts of the whole, which also includes social and environmental factors that interact and affect overall well-being.

We didn't know it at the time, but all the years of experience through A.I.M. and the Kansas Leadership Center's training were preparing the community for this shift.

Making progress on one of our toughest community challenges, and in the midst of a pandemic, required the exercise of leadership from individuals, community groups, small businesses, nonprofits, large businesses, government officials, corporations, private foundations, and others. It required patience, trust, and ongoing support from all those mentioned. It required holding to purpose and staying curious every time another barrier threatened to derail the progress made.

Just like when people experience tough times and struggle, AIM has had its share of challenges and learning-lesson-moments over the years. Sometimes even the pivots couldn't save some programs and events. It's all lessons learned, and nothing has gone to waste. This is the nitty gritty, down in the dirt, and sometimes even the mud, kind of stuff that makes the hard work hard and yet worth it. It's also just not the kind of stuff for a social media highlight reel. It may seem like the AIM Coalition and Pathways all but disappeared during these past few years, but the members were just nose-to-the-grindstone focused on making progress and finishing the big thing they started.

05/30/2024

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Enjoy this journey through the years 2018 and 2019 (years 3 & 4 of Phase 1) of the A.I.M. Coalition's Pathways to a Healthy Kansas Initiative. All 7 Pathways are represented here as either the culmination of years of work for some, or just the beginning stages of work to come for the others. But all in the same spirit of .

05/30/2024

Throwback to exactly 8 years ago in 2016:

Here's a funny story about how the A.I.M. Coalition got started in the to a Healthy Kansas initiative.

We had finished the final report for all the current grants, when our Health Department partner sent an email to the coalition members about this new thing called a Pathways Grant, and said, "I think this might be able to help us out with continuing the Community Garden..."

And the rest, as they say is history!

In 2016, it was announced that the A.I.M. Coalition/Wichita County was awarded one of only 12 Coalitions or counties in the state of Kansas to receive $100,000 in Coordination Funds along with $400,000 in Implementation Grant Funds in support of policy, systems, and environmental changes to remove barriers and make the healthy choices the default choices. The original plan was for a 3-year initiative, which turned into a 4-year one, partially due to there being 7 Pathways within the Pathways Initiative, each of which had their own requirements in order for the community organizations to pass policies and implement them. This type of work takes time and patience and lots of input from community members along the way.

The prior successes of the Preschool Healthy Snack Program and the AIM for the Track project fueled AIM to go from mostly one-time events and individual programs to positively impacting the population's health for the long haul.

In the first two years of Pathways, 2016-2017, the AIM Coalition jumped in feet first and learned all about what it meant to gather data, interpret it, enhance and develop health policies in all seven pathways, and how hard community engagement and transformation are, in order to create long-lasting changes which truly improve quality of life. All of this work behind the scenes isn't often seen, nor is it glamorous, but it's where the foundation for healthy communities in the broadest sense, is laid.

One of the most well-known Pathways-funded programs to come out of this time period is the Simply Produce program. It may be on pause currently, but it has enjoyed years of successfully supporting healthy eating and our small-town locally owned grocery store! What you may not know is all the assessments, data, discussions, planning, writing, editing, and yes, pivoting, which was involved to get to to the program you know and love today.
🥰😁

05/29/2024

Throughout 2014-2016, the AIM Coalition was trucking along helping individuals, school classes, and families add more fruits and veggies, increase activity, and minimize screen time through a few grants and minor health policy work. We had taste tests and activities held at WCES that were ongoing along with the USDA Fresh Fruits and Vegetables tasting program for a time. We added a Community Garden as one of the major quality of life improvements with the help of a Kansas Health Foundation grant, as well as continued work on and finished the WCHS track. A small greenhouse at the school got its start around the same time, and the days of children getting to take home a cherry tomato plant at the end of the school year also began! AIM Fun Walk/Runs also continued annually. How many of you had children who brought home cherry tomato plants on the last day of school?

05/29/2024

The One Where AIM Members Set Out to Build a New Track...We go back to 2013.

From the first meet held on the brand new track in April 2016, to this year's THREE home track meets, this beautiful facility supports general physical activity and sports year round! Thank you again to all the generous donors and supporters from near and far for believing in this project so many years ago.

05/28/2024

Believe it or not, A.I.M. has been around so long that some of the early foundations for its success don't even exist on social media or the internet.

Here is one photo of of the 2012 County Fair Booth celebrating the years of the AIM for Fit Kids Initiative which primarily benefited children ages 0-5. You may still have some photos of your own children who participated in that initiative! It was the beginning of the Preschool Healthy Snack Program which still continues to this day. Those kids are the incoming 2024-25 Seniors and Juniors. How can that be??

Other items funded were focused on the A and the I in AIM - Add fruits and vegetables, and Increase Activity. These included nutrition education and tasting programs for the elementary, the new playground equipment for the younger grades at WCES, and partial funding for the outdoor concrete basketball courts on the playground.

AIM Fit for Kids Booth