ABOVE: Ben Kain guides his daughter, Georgia, 17-months-old, in a toy car around the playroom course during a ECFE Family Fun Night event Tuesday evening at Fairmont Elementary School. There were over 220 people in attendance as the Kids Just Want to Have Fun committee partnered with ECFE.
FAIRMONT– The Early Childhood Initiative (ECI) is working on partnering with other like-minded organizations in Fairmont and the surrounding area to offer programming to families with young children. On Tuesday evening Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) partnered with Project 1590’s Kids Just Want to Have Fun Committee to put on a family fun night and over 220 people attended.
Michelle Rosen, Fairmont Elementary Co-Principal and Fairmont ECI Chair said that the idea to partner with other organizations actually stemmed from the annual Family Fun Fair.
In 2019, the Family Fun Fair, which is a joint venture between Fairmont Community Education and Recreation (CER), and ECFE, had its 34th year. The event served as an evening for local agencies that are advocates of families and young children to come together and offer exhibits, information and activities.
Of course in 2020 the March event was cancelled just several weeks before it was scheduled due to the Coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, Rosen said that they were able to turn the Family Fun Fair into an online event.
“Parents could go online and go to different websites to get information about different early childhood events. They could also stop in at CER and pick up a kit of things to do,” Rosen said.
She said that while it went well, a virtual event isn’t ideal. She said in January of this year as they needed to start planning the Family Fun Fair, things were still up in the air on the Covid front.
“We weren’t ready yet to plan that,” Rosen said.
Instead, she and other members of the ECI Board considered all of the organizations in the community that are offering programs for families with young children.
Rosen said that looked at the fact that CER does a great job of having a lot of activities but sometimes people don’t know about about them and that the parent advisory board for ECFE does a monthly family activity and while some families know about it, others don’t.
She also mentioned that the Kids Just Want to Have Fun committee is looking for ways to bring activities for families, such as its annual father-daughter dance. Finally, Rosen said the Fairmont Opera House has also been adding more family events.
“It seems like we have all these different entities trying to do things throughout the year, so we thought if we all worked together, it would have more of a presence for families and kids than the one time Family Fun Night,” Rosen said.
She said that the ECI board sent an email out last month to organizations that have previously been involved in the Family Fun Fair, which total about 30, asking them to reach out and partner up.
“We’re trying to make a calendar for the year and each month highlights where these events are,” Rosen said.
She said they’re also in the process of hiring a Community Communication Coordinator with funds from the ECI account. This person will communicate with all of the different entities, put the events on the calendar and help get the word out.
“What we’d like is other area organizations that are doing early childhood events to team up together with us so we can help promote it with our Community Communication Coordinator,” Rosen said.
While the Community Communication Coordinator is yet to be hired, the first partnership on Tuesday evening went well.
ECFE has hosted a monthly Family Fun Night for parents and children ages 1-3 which includes a light meal, activities and crafts. Rosen said last month they had about 80 people attend. On Tuesday when ECFE partnered with the Kids Just Want to Have Fun committee, which allowed older kids to join, over 220 people attended.
“Hopefully we can keep this going with other resources we have in the community,” Rosen said.
She said maybe in the future they can partner with the Fairmont Police Department when it hosts its annual Fairmont Night Out or connect with 4-H in the summer in order to reach more people throughout year, rather than put all of their effort into a one night event.
However, she said they may do a Family Fun Fair again in the future but that they thought it was worth pursuing this first.
Rosen and the other members of the ECI Board and all those involved encourage any individual or group that is interested to reach out by contacting CER director Stephanie Busiahn at sbusiahn@fairmont.k12.mn.us or Rosen at mrosen@fairmont.k12.mn.us.
