Railbelt Mental Health & Addictions

Nenana Wellness Coalition
MINUTES
February 26, 2008

The Nenana Wellness Coalition is an alliance of representatives from various organizations, government agencies, community groups and individuals that meets weekly to discuss, evaluate, coordinate, consolidate and help implement plans for improving the wellness and quality of life in Nenana Alaska.

There were six people in attendance at WIN today including: Tim Horn, Bonnie Reed, Laura Vance, Miles Martin, Kat McElroy and Connie Taylor (who sat in briefly while running an errand at NSLC). We enjoyed a lunch of brown rice with pine nuts, asparagus, green beans, onions and chicken, pecans and raisins ands sliced apples.

WELCOME and READING OF MISSION STATEMENT: By this week’s chairperson, Tim Horn.

PRAYER: Was lead by Miles Martin

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIENCE: Lead by Bonnie Reed.

PRESENTATION OF AGENDA AND CALL FOR MODIFICATIONS: There were several items added to our agenda.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Miles will check to see if he emailed minutes from last week; Kat said she has not received them.

INTRODUCTION OF GUESTS: No guests today

SPEAKERS/TOPICS

Health Fair Planning – Tim Horn reported that the Ice Classic gave us 500 dollars last night. Our initial request of them had been $250.00; all agreed this was very generous of the board. A big thank you is shouted out to Endil Moore for his suggestion to the board to double our request amount. Doyon has donated a check for 300 dollars. Discussion ensued regarding how to run this money through the RMHA account. Laura will check on procedure. Our next health fair planning meeting will be Thursday, 01-28 at 11 A.M. at Tim’s house. Tim has posted flyers around town. Kat will let Robin Campbell and Keri-Rose Burke know. The Meth Lady, Rita Macgee, has indicated that she wants 48 cents per mile for the round trip from Kenai; discussion ensued. This would be almost five hundred dollars, a budget breaker. We thought to counter offer her a flat-fee of 250 dollars. Another possibility would be having her come up some other time to do a community-wide presentation. The village pride/community safety meeting was suggested as a possible venue for this. Kat will contact Robin to see if this would be feasible. Laura indicated Railbelt might have money in alternative activities to help defray expenses if we did this. Tim says Louisa Hisamoto has been doing groups at Women and Children’s treatment program in Fairbanks on grief, depression, culture and other related issues. Tim agreed to ask if she would be willing to have a table at the Health Fair. Laura agreed to contact Marylou Canney at Resource Center for Parents and Children to see if she would be willing to do a table on FAS/FAE.

Tripod Days – Kat McElroy passed around the schedule of events for the weekend. Some of the highlights include a poker tournament Friday night, a weight pull, sled dog races, snow-machine races, a big fireworks display on Saturday and Tae Kwan Doh, the big tug-o-war and the raising of the tripod on Sunday. There will be the usual Sourdough Breakfast, vendors, games and contests as well as the basketball tournament during both days.

Added Agenda Items:
ABC Board: Tim has been playing phone tag but has been unable to speak directly to the person who would know about liquor licenses. Kat went on their web site yesterday and looked at some of the many regulations that pertain to liquor licenses. The information is pretty dense, but “interesting reading,” she says. Tim will continue calling just out of curiosity as to what the actual process is for obtaining a liquor license.
Early Head Start parenting videos from Tling’it/Haida council; apparently the council already has DVD’s made of the videos and would not be amenable to our copying them. Tim got the number of the man she would need to talk to get further information but has been unable to get through to him. Meanwhile, we will set up a viewing station at the Health Fair to allow the public to see them and we continue exploring options for getting the information out into the community.
Nita Marks contacted Kat and indicated that apparently we have youth in town picking up cigarette butts from around town. Nita would like WIN to make and post some flyers around town to alert the public to this issue. The goal would be to call upon people to be responsible smokers and dispose of butts in ways that would keep them out of the hands of our youth. “Strip Those Butts,” “Pick Up Your Own Butts,” and “No Butts About It,” have been suggested as themes or slogans. Kat will ask Maryellen Kanayurak to make up some flyers. This fits in well with the tobacco education goals for Railbelt.
Lastly we discussed increasing participation in WIN. We have tried flyers and posters for PR purposes. We brainstormed other approaches we could take. We agreed to personally invite people. Laura said Keri-Rose should be attending weekly as she is tasked with doing tobacco education. Kat will let Robin and Keri-Rose know each week when we have meetings. Miles will ask the new magistrate. Tim suggested we ask him to come on a specific date and tell us about himself. Then we can let others know when this will happen so they can come and meet and greet our new magistrate. It was suggested we ask Nita to come and do a presentation on ICWA and her role as an ICWA worker. Miles said he felt it would be important to make positive efforts, “negativism spreads and needs to be countered with positivism,” instead of passively waiting for others to gain interest in our wellness efforts.

WELLNESS THOUGHT
Every day, in every way, we are getting better and better.
Anonymous

UPDATES/ANNOUNCEMENTS
Bonnie announced that there will be a spaghetti feed tomorrow (Wednesday) night, 02-27-08, at the student living center. It will cost five dollars a head, and will begin at 5 P.M. the money raised will go towards defraying travel expenses for the Fry Bread Shaker dancers.
Tim announced the Nenana Baha’is’ annual Ayyam-I-Ha party which will be at noon on Saturday, March 1st, at Virginia Young’s place, M.P. 311.8 Park’s Highway. Further information: call Virginia at 832-5236 or Tim at 832-1047. There will be games and food for all ages. There will also be devotions Wednesday, 7 P.M. at Bonnie Reed’s.

ADJOURNMENT: 1:30 P.M.

Reconstructed minutes for Feb 19th 2008

Minutes taken by Miles chaired by Bonnie

Meeting started at 12:15

Present Bonnie Reed. Miles Martin

Food provided by Kat who was not present due to illness

There was prayer and a pledge

Bonnie reviewed the senior center board election. There was a good turnout of voters. Two members terms were up and filled.

Miles reviewed his successful trip to Tucson to the gem fossil show. One interesting aspect was that some vendors from other countries were not anxious to receive American dollars, and wanted Uros. The US economy indirectly effects even Nenana.

Meeting ended at 1:00

Nenana Wellness Coalition MINUTES

February 5, 2008

The Nenana Wellness Coalition is an alliance of representatives from various organizations, government agencies, community groups and individuals that meets weekly to discuss, evaluate, coordinate, consolidate and help implement plans for improving the wellness and quality of life in Nenana Alaska.

There were four in attendance today including: Tim Horn, Bonnie Reed and Kat McElroy, Susan Thomason. We had chicken and pasta casserole with sliced apples and nuts and raisins for lunch.

WELCOME followed by the READING OF MISSION STATEMENT: By this week’s chairperson, Bonnie Reed

PRAYER: was sung by Tim Horn, Blessed Is The Place. This was followed by the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIENCE.

 

PRESENTATION OF AGENDA AND CALL FOR MODIFICATIONS. There was no formal agenda presented.

 

APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Minutes submitted electronically to the WIN e-list, posted to WIN web site: http://railbelt.com/?page_id=7

 

INTRODUCTION OF GUESTS: No one new this week.

SPEAKERS/TOPICS

Health Fair Planning – Tim Horn reported that we had no health fair planning meeting this week due to extreme cold. Everything is moving along well. Kat and Tim did health fair surveys this Saturday at Coghills and Kat tallied them out. High scoring topics of interest were alcohol/drug abuse, depression, smoking/tobacco, weight control, exercise and fitness, and diabetes. Training is still scheduled for Friday but temperature cut-off for travel is 30 below and it doesn’t look like the weather is going to break before then. Vicky Moyles has volunteered to do an informational table on Sexually Transmitted Diseases but needs hand-outs. Public Health Nurse would be the go-to contact for that.

Smoke & Mirrors - Extreme cold weather was noted (50 below) and it was decided to post-pone showing the DVD Smoke & Mirrors until next week. We will ask Maryellen Kanayurak to make new flyers to post around town to let people know about this change in schedule.

WELLNESS THOUGHT

We move towards and become like that which we think.
–Don Coyhis, White Bison

UPDATES/ANNOUNCEMENTS

Susan Thomason volunteered to help with the Health Fair. She also announced that there will be an art class held at the Nenana Student Living Center. There are ten students signed up; the class size is limited to 20. The instructor’s name is Peg Birkenbuel who has taught in many Alaskan communities. She will supply sketch pads and materials. The class will start Feb 7^th at 4 P.M. and will run for six weeks. Susan also announced that Keith Seig has already begun recruiting students for next year.

Bonnie (or was it Tim?) noted that there is no school on Friday, Feb. 15^th for Parent/Teacher conferences nor Friday Feb. 22 due to in-service training for teachers.

Tuesday, Feb. 12^th is Community Dinner night at NSLC beginning at 5 P.M.

The Harlem All Stars demonstration at the school will be rescheduled; new time/date has yet to be announced. Reason for reschedule is unknown.

Tim announced that the annual Bahai’i gift-giving celebration is approaching. Bonnie has been making do-nuts. There will be devotions at her house Wed. Feb. 27^th with gift of prayer and singing. A party is scheduled for Sat. March 1^st at 2 P.M. which will feature a piñata and games.

Susan began a short discussion about several instances of NSLC students being verbally harassed and/or invited to drink alcohol locally. The staff has made several areas of town off limits to the students. She wonders what other proactive efforts might be made to help protect our youth and empower them.

OPEN FLOOR FOR COMMENTS/QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION: None

 

NEXT WELLNESS MEETING DATE/TIME/CHAIRPERSON/GUEST SPEAKERS/SUBJECTS Will show the DVD Smoke & Mirrors, (A History of Denial), Part One.

ADJOURNMENT at 2:00 P.M.