 Welcome to the 11th annual Roots of Prevention Awards. I'm excited to be with you all here tonight in this new and unusual way for us all to connect and honor some of our amazing people and programs in Burlington. In case you're just joining us, my name is Mariah Sanderson. I'm the Director of the Burlington Partnership for a Healthy Community. And just a few housekeeping issues like I would normally do at events like this. Normally I tell you where to find the bathroom and where the exits are, but instead I'm just gonna say get comfortable, take care of yourself as you need to. I'm gonna do one final refresher of how to change your name on the screen. So it would be wonderful if everyone has the ability to do that for you to list yourself with your name and pronouns, especially when we go into breakout rooms so that people know how you want to be addressed. So this is how you do it. You can go to where it says participants on the bottom of your screen. If you hover your cursor over the screen, it should show up. And then there should be, if you click on participants, there should be an option to rename yourself just to the right of your own name. You can also do it by clicking on the three dots that are next in the top right corner of your screen on some devices, but not all devices will allow that option. And we'll ask that you just try to mute yourself during this time. Thank you so much. So I have been the lucky leader of the Royal Indian Partnership for a healthy community for about 12 years now. And I am just continually impressed by the passion and commitment of the people in Burlington. So many people are doing important work to support health and wellness. Every year when we get nominations, I'm just amazed by all the other little things that I didn't know were happening. I recognized a lot of the folks who registered, but I didn't know some of you. And so I'm sure some of you are familiar with our work, but I'm just gonna explain for those of you who are new and who are here to support some of the amazing awardees a little bit about what we do. So our mission is to address the causes and consequences of substance use in Burlington. If you were on the call earlier, or on the video earlier, you saw some examples of how we do that and maybe also some examples of how others in the community are supporting health and wellness. One of the ways though, and probably one of the ones that shows where we have a lot of the nice pictures from because kids are so great at taking wonderful shots, is that we work with kids to support them to learn the skills and empower them to be leaders for health in their community. We also provide public education and we raise awareness about substance use issues, particularly how to prevent substance use among youth or other and other community members. For example, I mentioned that we have Parent in Burlington, which is a program for parents in Burlington to help with tips and resources to help prevent youth substance use. And there's a lot of different components of that program. So you can sign up for the newsletter to learn more or check out the website or the social media pages. There's a lot of great information there. But I think one of the most impactful things that our work is connected to is challenging the adult behavior and the social norms in our community that support substance use and disproportionately impact vulnerable populations. So it's very important that we have more protective factors in Burlington than risk factors. So those are things that make it easier for people to make healthy choices. On the wall behind me, on this side, I'm not mirroring my screen because then you wouldn't be able to read the words. But we have a sign from last year's event that says, make the healthy choice the easy choice. We made it as an art project during during the Roots of Prevention celebration last year. And one of the things that we want to be able to do is make that true for all community members that every person here, regardless of their age, socioeconomic status, their gender identity, their racial or ethnic backgrounds, they all have the opportunity to make healthy choices and the resources and support should be that. And so I think a lot of the partners that we work with and our organization and even the award winners, each of us are doing a little piece of that. And the real kind of magic of prevention is that when all of that works together, we can create an environment that supports healthy choices. And I cannot stress this enough. And I suspect at some point, maybe Tracy Dolan will say something similar when she talks is that one of the most effective ways to prevent substance misuse is when the healthiest behavior is the easiest and the most accessible to make. So even though our mission is about directly preventing substance misuse, there are lots of folks like the awardees today and organizations that are supporting a healthy and thriving community. And that makes our work focused on substance use much easier because when people are thriving and connected and feel valued in their community, substance use is really. So every year we receive nominations for people and programs doing important work in Burlington. Often they're doing that work without a lot of recognition just because they know that it's needed. And we really, it's just very heartwarming for me every year and for our staff and selection committee to read all the nominations. And it's really hard for us to choose. Right now I suspect that people are feeling a lot more disconnected and isolated from others. And maybe from what's happening in the community and maybe also isolated from what's happening in the community as a way to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 keeping yourself in a kind of a more insulated bubble. But the nominations that we received this year were just kind of a reminder for all of our team that people have a continued capacity to be generous and creative to figure out how to support others during all of this time. And we're just sorry that we can't award everyone who's been nominated this year. But all of those folks, all of those folks are doing great work and we're so honored to be able to give these awards to Parent University and Melissa Cain and Tien Berry and Deborah Anger. Thank you so much for showing up for this community and helping to make it easier for people to make healthy choices and to thrive. Last year we invited Maria Mercedes Avila to be our keynote and she helped us talk about how not everyone in the community feels like the community is always showing up for them and that the stress caused when populations do not feel included or valued or they feel discriminated against can impact their health and wellness. So I do want to kind of acknowledge and say again that not everyone has always has equal access to healthy choices and supports and we're going to continue as an organization to figure out how we can do our job better so that the healthy choice is the easy choice for all of the members of our community and I'm really impressed with the work that some of the individuals here that we're awarding today have been so thoughtful about how to do that as well. So this year we invited Deputy Health Commissioner Tracy Dolan as our keynote to share some perspectives about healthy communities and substance misuse. She has a vast public health experience spanning over 20 years working in a lot of different both in AIDS and HIV prevention as well as now at our Vermont Department of Health. You may recognize her voice. Recently I've heard her on the radio a lot lately talking about the health department's COVID-19 efforts or folks like myself might have also found her hilarious in her local stand-up. She's a wealth of experience and talents and we're so excited to have you with us today Tracy. I'm going to invite Tracy to unmute her phone at her phone to unmute herself and to speak to you all for a few minutes from her perspective. Thanks so much, Mariah. It's so nice to be here. Can you hear me? Great. Okay. So good evening and thanks for the introduction. As Mariah said, I'm Tracy Dolan and I'm the Deputy Commissioner of Health. And since February, I have been embedded in our state's response to COVID-19. And as difficult as it has been to see our friends, family, neighbors become ill and in some cases pass away due to this virus. It's also been and continues to be an incredible experience to be part of the most successful response to the pandemic in the country. I believe the lessons that we're learning from COVID-19 right now and the factors that contribute to our success are the same lessons and factors that can be applied and in some cases have already been applied to making Burlington and other communities in Vermont healthy and happy places for Vermonters to thrive. So I'm going to do some back and forth and talk about a couple of different aspects and how it applies. So tonight we're celebrating the people and programs in our community that contribute to the roots of prevention, the upstream work that impacts not just the individuals who are initially touched when you speak or you have a program, but then that impact goes beyond the families to communities, schools, towns, and cities and sometimes the whole state. So all the way from a PE teacher making a difference in the lives of students and her fellow staff, the community organizer that inspires people to reach out to others and assist during COVID-19 to an activist working on policy change through her own lived experience. Clearly a very popular young woman. I'm hearing everybody say that we're excited to have her on this program. And finally to a program that works with parents to become part of the systems that impact their families and communities. So health promotion begins and happens at the individual and family level, but it also happens through policy change at the school and work site and community or the town or city and state level. And you need all of those pieces in order to make change happen. But and tonight, these awardees represent that whole gamut, right? All the way from somebody who touches an individual all the way up to someone who makes a change. And then there's a policy change as well. What I want to speak tonight specifically to is the policy change that makes the healthy choices the easier choices in public health. That's our goal to create an environment where people are healthy, not because of something that they did or didn't do or a choice that they did or didn't make, but instead they're healthy because that's how we've set up our communities, our laws and our policies to support healthy living. I am an accident of my birth. I am here and I am as healthy as I am and I'm as successful as I am, whatever that level of success is. Not because I particularly earned it or because I've done something particularly good. It's just because I got lucky, right? Like maybe a lot of us feel, right? I was born into a family that didn't have a lot of violence or a lot of addiction. I was raised in a trailer park, which I know might sound a little dodgy, but it was a pretty good trailer park. You know, nobody was scaring me in the trailer park. There's like this one lady, but other than her, nobody else was scaring the trailer park. You know, I had a family that loved me, barely intact family. And the color of my skin helped me in my life, right? So I did not face discrimination in the way some other people would. I moved into the middle class. The middle class gives me all kinds of protections. So there's all kinds of things that happen in my life that have nothing to do with my choices. And so the goal of policy change is to try to take some of that luck and guesswork out of it, because it's not fair that some people are simply born luckier than others. And so when we make policy changes, we try to even the playing field so that even those who are in a more vulnerable situation, who are born with more in their backpack, not because they put it there, but because it was already put there, can lighten that load because we make policy change. So before this pandemic began in February, we were facing another epidemic in Vermont and that was the epidemic of substance misuse. And of course we're still facing that substance misuse and abuse. That epidemic hasn't gone away, but hopefully this new pandemic can shed some light on how best to fight it. So preventing substance abuse is a heavy lift, but like preventing the transmission of COVID-19, we have the tools. We're not starting with a blank slate. We actually know what works in many situations. In 2016, our Surgeon General wrote a report and he recommended an invigorated approach to substance abuse prevention. He said, we know what works. We just have to do it more often and more of it with more people. We have evidence-based approaches. All the things we talk about, they may sound soft sometimes in substance abuse. Like when we say connection is the opposite of addiction, that can sound soft, but actually there is science behind connection. You can measure connection, right? You can measure the number of people. You can measure the depth of those relationships. So it's all measurable and therefore it's all doable and replicable. We've seen some recent successes here in Chittenden County and we've seen some of those changes in the city. We've seen some of those changes in the city. We've seen some of those changes in the city. We've seen some of those changes in the city change. So for example, changing the advertising policy. So we prevent the eye catching signage. That's particularly attractive to young people. As a way to promote drugs and alcohol. We limited the kinds of containers that are allowed on the beach. We limit the places people can smoke. So you can't smoke within 25 feet of bleachers or shelters or playgrounds. You can't drink in the park. We've seen a lot of town plans. Jericho Williston asks Junction that put health right in their plans. So they're saying our town isn't just successful. If it's economically prosperous, our town is successful. If people are healthy and thriving and living up to their optimal health. And that's big leverage because that sets the groundwork for people to say, well, if we're committing to health, then what do we want to do differently in our town? What ordinances do we want to change? Let's not leave it up to a high school student to determine, you know, when they're going to start engaging in some behaviors. Let's try to set up an environment so that it's a lot easier for them to stay on a healthy path. So passing healthy policies is great and effective public health. We know it works. If you look at smoking rates about 30 years ago among young people, it was incredibly high, 30% plus. And now we see that if you track that with policy changes, like increasing taxes on cigarettes, you literally see a drop in the graph the next year. That's how clear the impact is. Or when we make changes like saying you can't smoke in many public places, we see another drop. It absolutely works. We know it works. And so policy change is important. With our COVID pandemic, we can see how the inequities in our state play out. In the number of cases that we have among black, indigenous and other people of color in Vermont, we have four times the rate of COVID among black Vermonters compared to non-Hispanic white Vermonters. When we look more closely, we see that some of that is related to chronic health conditions, which are also higher among black Vermonters. Similarly, we see these inequities in the world of substance misuse. Our youth risk behavior survey from 2019. That's just, we're just going to soon put it out countywide, but right now it's statewide. It shows that our LGBTQ youth and youth of color are more likely to engage in binge drinking, tobacco use, and prescription drug misuse. And we've got LGBTQ youth almost double in some of those categories. But then when we look more closely at another layer down, we see that LGBT students are nearly two and a half times more likely than heterosexual students to feel so sad or hopeless during the past year that they stopped doing some activities. Students of color are significantly more likely than white students to have made a suicide plan in the last year. Our LGBTQ students are four times as likely than heterosexual students to have made a suicide plan in the past year, four times more likely. They are living in different worlds and they're experiencing life differently. It's these inequities. They're not just disparities. They're not just differences. They're inequities, which means they're actually driven because we have a problem that's much deeper than just a biological problem here. It's about the imbalance of power, right? So these are health inequities. They're tied to the imbalance of power to homophobia, racism, white supremacy, and systems that are designed to serve some of us very well and designed to serve others of us not very well at all. So prevention, the upstream work that we do and celebrate tonight is important and policy is one of our greatest weapons in our preventive efforts. And when we think about prevention, we have to go deeper. And here at the health department, we have to do that too. It's more than an intervention. It's who are you involving in the decision making about that intervention? You know, those kinds of things are important as well. So I want to just briefly talk about the factors and lessons we learned from COVID-19 and how we apply them to this. So what are the factors and lessons that we can take from COVID and our success here in Vermont? Not to brag, but we've been quite successful. It's a little bit of a brag, but we've been pretty successful. Fauci said we're the best one and he's a big guy. So how can we put those toward substance misuse improvement? Leadership, I would say, is one of our key lessons. We're successful in Vermont because our governor is listening and learning from the science. There are a lot of states where that is not happening. It's happening in this state. So let's take that renewed energy around listening and paying attention to the science and reapply that to what we know works in prevention. In an infectious disease outbreak, CDC arrives at your door in hazmat suits and they take it seriously. And their goal is to immediately stop the outbreak and stop the spread. Imagine if we treated the loss that we've suffered as a result of substance misuse like we did an infectious disease outbreak, right? That urgency, the resources, the desire to stop it before it goes too far. What could we accomplish? And there's some leadership involved there. How do we keep the urgency and how do we make leadership pay attention so that they are taking something that happens over a longer period just as seriously as they're taking something that happens over a shorter period? So policy is another lesson learned here. For example, we passed a mask mandate and we're hearing from retailers that it's working. It doesn't work among the small percentage of people who push back, but that's the case with everything. But when we talked to retailers, they said the day after the mask mandate, and by the way, there's no enforcement on that, right? Nobody's scared that the police are going to come and like Portland show up and pull him into a van, right? Nobody's worried about that. But just the fact that there was a governor that made a mandate and then we had that positive peer pressure, that is enough to make a difference. Retailers say now that people are coming in with masks, you've probably seen it where you are. Occasionally somebody will push back, but it's rare. So a state policy is a powerful tool. So the lesson there is to continue to invest in policy and focus on it. It's hard because it takes a longer time to achieve and it doesn't always feel as gratifying. When you're working on the ground, sometimes it feels better to work one-on-one. And there's a lot of value in that, but don't give up on the policy because when it happens, it can make really long lasting change. Third lesson here is working upstream. So early in COVID, we shut down many of our institutions early in order to avoid the spread of COVID. So let's continue to invest in upstream prevention, especially with opioid misuse, but other parts of substance abuse too. It can be very tempting to put the money in treatment in the recovery because that's where you see the most obvious impact. And sometimes you can see an obvious gain in that. And it can feel costly to do prevention in comparison, but we know that it will save lives. And every dollar you spend in substance abuse prevention saves $58 in other parts of the system, healthcare, judicial and other parts of the system. Gaining buy-in was another important lesson. This idea that we move it, we move it from it's their problem to it's our problem. The former governor, Shumlin, when he announced that substance misuse was a public health issue, he really helped to shine a light and destigmatize. And he made it something that was important to everyone because everybody generally cares about public health. Public health is usually not very controversial, you know, like eat your vegetables, exercise, people can get behind that. And so making it something that everybody can relate to is very helpful. So we have cooperation and buy-in from Bremontres about COVID because they feel directly impacted, right? It's easy to other the impact of substance misuse. It's easy to tell ourselves that that's about some other people and that it's not happening to us. But it is happening to us. It's happening to our children and our neighbors. And so any change we make impacts everyone. And we need to remind ourselves of that. And finally, I would say the last lesson, which to me has been just miraculous. And I'm sure you guys have had moments. Have you had moments when you're driving along and you see like everyone in your mask and you're like, holy shit, like what happened? How did we get everybody to wear a mask? Like what? Like just a few months ago, this wasn't even a thing. And now we're like giving each other space all the time as though it's second nature. It's crazy. It's wholesale culture change. And it's something that we tell ourselves when we're working on initiatives that can't be done. We can't do that. We can't do that. We can't do that. We can't do that. We can't go really slow. We say, let's ease people into it. But we actually know now that you can change behavior of an entire population really fast. If you make it something compelling and urgent. And something that they feel they're really impacted by. So the entire country has radically changed the way they live in just a few months, which is amazing. So to come together for the common good like that, that's the key. That's the key. That's the key. That's the key. That's the key. That's the key. That's the key. That's the key. Everyone believe in the common good and how they're involved in it. I have always believed that almost anything is possible. But this is so unprecedented. The things we now do on a day to day basis without any thought. Right. The hand washing. I mean, people have a little cough. They're staying home. And they're not even thinking twice about it. If they go out, they feel like a bad person for going out and coughing. Like the shame, you know, unbelievable. That's what we do. And I believe love. I know this sounds a little mushy, but I actually believe love is the answer to almost every problem we have. And I think we have enough love. To go around. I think that. I think that love. Love of one another and love of community can actually drive change can drive policy and and and can you know make our make our communities more healthy. And I wanted to thank you for listening to me tonight and for all that you're doing. And I hope some of those lessons can apply as we move forward on the work on substance abuse and also the work on improving your communities. Thank you so much for all you do. Thank you so much, Tracy. The applause is much quieter right now. You can show on your screen the applause. Thank you so much for your time with us tonight. I know that you're taking time away from family and other responsibilities to be here with us and we really appreciate it. Thank you for being here to all he said, honestly, I am so excited to hear us thinking about this, this example of coven and how it can, we can help to use it to think more proactively about issues and prepare for and prevent things like this, or other health, health problems that we have in our society and hopefully it'll help in our community as tell the story of what prevention could look like. It's a new way. Thank you. Thank you so much. Now to give everyone on the screen a chance for everyone that's here today a chance to think about what Tracy said and how we could apply it to our community. We wanted to give another chance for folks to connect a little bit more. So here a video that we created at the Burlington partnership with the help of some partners and some kids in the community. Last year, or might have even been like a year and a half ago that we used for a community dialogue night that we hosted. We thought it would be a good way to kind of show again some of the things that are happening in Burlington some of the really different sectors are thinking about it and help stimulate a conversation so after the video will take will go into breakout rooms where you'll have a small group of people that you can chat with about what you've heard from Tracy and myself and video, or about the awardees and a few minutes to network and talk. I just wanted to end by saying we had a lot of nice conversation thinking about Tracy's presentation and how we can think about how to use the example of COVID-19 and how our status come together and in particular come together as communities to think about how to support one another and get each other resources and wear masks for each other and use that sense of community and connection and urgency around an issue for other issues in the community that we want to address. So hopefully we'll continue to use this as an example of how we can address problems that we see in the community. So I'm going to just because there isn't a chance for us to really take feedback from the groups. I'm going to do one final poll for folks, which is, here you go. What are your takeaways from your breakout session. Did you enjoy talking with people. I know this can be tricky as some people are able to share video and some aren't. It can be hard at this late at night to come to want to come to converse with other people after some of you may have been attending a lot of zoom meetings or virtual meetings already all day. For any youth we have I know it's awesome of our high schoolers on the phone they might have around the line they might have also been attending classes today so appreciate you being here and doing another screen. I'll give you a chance to answer, and then I'll share your results. Okay, we're going to share the results. So it looks like people are just enjoying the time to connect. But a few of us also thought about things in a new way and learn new things from each other so I appreciate you taking the time to connect with each other and think about this. And think about substance use and healthy communities because that's what I do. Most of my day and it's great to have a room full of people doing it with me I'm excited about it. I hope you all saw the results yeah give me a thumbs up if you saw the results. Okay, something weird happened and then it stops so. Okay, so we're going to take a quick little stretch break for everyone. Before we start talking about our awesome awardees. So, everyone who feels up to it you can raise your arms high and stretch all the way from top we can see our, our healthy folks are already reaching for the top and stretch all the way down. And move yourself around a little bit I'm going to give you a few minutes I'm going to pop a. little break slide on the screen and then we will. And then we will take a five minute break and then come back together and we'll start talking about our awardee. Okay, thank you all. So we're just going again. We're going to start off by. We're going to start off by coming back together and talking about some roots of prevention awardees. So I put on the comfortable shoes and switched. I'm ready to stand here for a while and really get into talking about some very deserving people in our community. So I'm going to start us off by sharing a little bit about Burlington just to get us in the mood. And I say this every year but I think that our real success in Burlington to help us prevent substance use and help people thrive around healthy choices is to enhance our positive factors in the community. So 30% of the people who develop a substance use disorder will start using substances before they turn 18. So what that means is that delaying use and helping you find other ways to cope and connect and feel valued are some of the most important things we can do for that. And there are people and programs in Burlington doing well work that kind of helps create a layer of protection that prevents substance use problems and other barriers. To achieve positive outcomes. So one of the reasons that we hold this event is because we think it's really important to acknowledge those strengths that we have in the community. We need to be aware of what we're doing right so we can keep doing it. And parent university and their engaged staff and Melissa Cain and Tien Berry and Deborah are all nominated by folks in the community as examples of our strengths. Those passionate people and organizations are helping to make the community a better place. Sometimes like Melissa Cain they're doing it by recognizing a problem in the community and not waiting for someone else to fix it but stepping up to do what is needed in that moment. Sometimes like parent university they make sure that all members of the community can access the same information and opportunities regardless of income or language barriers. And then there are people like Tien Berry and Deborah who are passionate and engaged advocates for health who dedicate their lives and their talents to drawing attention to and improving outcomes rather. So I just want to thank you all very much for all that you've done for Burlington. And we have a theme. We call it Roots of Prevention because we like to think that our awardees are helping to plant seeds, prevent little prevention seedlings in the community. And each of them is an individual tree that's supporting the limbs and the leaves that they contain. They're connected to but for them and for all of us as there are more and more trees that are supporting the healthy individuals and the policies and the practices in the community, the gaps between our trees are getting smaller. And together as a forest we're stronger than any one individual tree. We can provide an environment in which everyone can flourish. So I'm hoping that you'll join me in a little round of applause or on your screen or by waving or clapping for awardees today and all that they've done for our community. So I want to start off by acknowledging our Outstanding Program Award which is parent university a program of the Burlington School District. There's a lot of dedicated staff that are involved in that. And I hope that some of you have taken the time to check out the program which outlines a few of the staff members. But they're really it really is a collaboration of different entities within the district who can make that program work. And I'd love to hear Miriam talk a little bit about the program and the work that you've done in Burlington. Thank you very much Mariah. I've been struggling to try to get the lighting just right and my face and hair just right and my voice just right and none of that's going to work so I'm just going to jump in. I thought a little bit about how to describe parent university briefly in a way that wouldn't bore everybody or make the zoom just deadly, but also in a way that would be broad enough to capture what it's all about. And sorry if this is hokey but the best word I could come up with was magic. It's magic because it was a tiny little idea that's turned into something remarkable. Talking about roots parent university initially had no roots, meaning it had no one particular owner it had no funding source, it had no, I don't know no backing per se no reason really to survive. It was the brainchild of the visionary city councilman Ali Deng before he was city council member Ali Deng when he was just thinking that it would be a great idea. If all parents could be engaged, connected, and empowered to participate as full partners in their, in their children's education sounds like a really simple idea, and you might ask yourself well why doesn't everybody do that all the time. I'm perfectly honest, while we have traditional structures in American schooling, like PTOs and the like, many of those are not accessible and I would venture to say they're not even friendly, not by design, but they're not really friendly to all families and to all people who have a stake in their children's education. So I saw a need. And he started to reach out to a few people individuals and groups and agencies in Burlington. And I think that's where the magic started, because it turned out that there was more than one person more than one entity who wanted to support parents. In fact, there were lots. And over the years there have the parents have numbered well above 30, excuse me, the partners have numbered well above 30 different agencies individuals and groups come forward on a regular basis we don't have to do a lot of arm twisting to say, we believe in your mission, and we want to help. The people who are instructors and the partners and the supporters of parent university are not paid. They come to engage with parents, because they believe that empowering parents and giving voice to their concerns all parents will make a difference in the community, and that will be right. So I can't say enough about the partners. I don't have time anywhere near enough time to list all of the partners who've made parent university be real. But Burlington partnership for all the communities with one of them, and we're so proud to partner with you. We've partnered with the Flynn, we've partnered with Burlington Parks and Rec. We've partnered with technology for tomorrow. We have partnered with, I could go on and on and on and on and on. We're right now we're partnering with USCRI and with ALV and the kinds of offerings that we have have been able to provide to parents in the community have trained from cooking healthy foods. I see you Susan Edwards to how to create a Google account to how to monitor your children's computer use and support them with their homework, even if you can't access the homework in the language that they're completing it in. So this tiny little seed grew big roots and has become something that remarkably has engaged groups of parents who come back. One that we've usually said one and done. Now, if you've been here before. Sorry, we'll want to reach out to other people. Parents have come forward and said you know I've made friends here. I really like these conversations. I recognize by power as a parent. I learn about my children's education and I learn about my own potential. Just as a human being by being in parent university, I want to come back. And so we have folks who return. I hope I need to really acknowledge and thank our liaisons multilingual liaisons and two of the three who are working with us now, now we're parent university students. They graduated from parent university and found that connection that magic to be so substantial and important in their lives that they wanted to continue, and they now work for us, providing access to all of the ideas that are shared in parent university in their native languages to their friends and community members. Finally, I have to say, and this is not really finally that the structure this little skeleton of a structure that was really an idea in Ali's head has also grown and turned into a staff Ali how now has a position which allows him to be the manager of parent university. We have an assistant manager Sydney Hinckley, who to tell the truth. Right now, she is she won't make makes parent university go, and she, she's the heart of the whole thing. Someone wrote something about Sydney delivering food in the rain. I don't know when I read it but it's not unusual that Sydney, she's going to find a way to get it done no matter what. And her connections with people are authentic and real and and they're there at the heart of what we do. We have Ali, we have Sydney, and we have me. My role is a bureaucratic one. I go get money. I make noise. I try to help people recognize how important this is. And to keep it going. It's a dirty little secret. No, it's a lovely little secret. I'm a bureaucrat with a really complicated and stressful job. The best part of my job is parent university. When I walk into parent university to teach, or simply to be with the parents and parent university, my shoulders relax, I start to smile, and, and incredible things happen. I think the reason for that is that parent university is a place where school and parents and the parent, the kids all come together in parent university very often the parents are actually with us. I don't know if anybody got a chance to see Isnino tonight holding her six week old son, who is literally with us, talk about a dedicated parent. She's an amazing person. So the kids are with us. And even if they're not physically with us, they're in our minds all the time everybody's aware that we are there for those kids. And we cement those bonds so that school becomes accessible to parents. Parents help us understand what to do for their kids and kids get the benefit of parents who are fully engaged with their education. I got to call it magic. I got to call it love borrowing from Tracy who by the way man what an amazing talk that was that was so gorgeous parent university is all about love. I couldn't be prouder. I think we are making a difference. I believe that with all my heart. And even during the kind of time of coven when none of us could figure out how to connect. Guess what's happening parents and parent university are showing up online. We're having times a week to talk to one another. We're having English classes online. We're having computer classes, and under pressure we're offering those in person, because people believe this work is important. You know, I could talk all day, but if you haven't visited parent university. When it's possible to do so in person. Come join us. Before that, check out our website. There's a video that I know Ali was hoping we would show Moran I'm not sure whether or not there'll be time for that, but it gives a little bit of that spirit. When you meet them. Please acknowledge and congratulate our three wonderful multilingual liaisons are skeleton but very dedicated staff are incredible network of community partners, and most especially the parents who we don't do this to them. We don't do this for them. We do this with them. Thank you very much for recognizing something that that we're so incredibly proud of. Thank you so much Miriam and everyone else and Sidney who I see on the phone for on today and Ali and Alicia and Gita and yes mean. I saw a couple of and of the participants thank you all for the work that you're doing in Burlington we're very excited to present them with our outstanding program award, which I know I would like to be able to give to you in person at this moment it would be much more exciting, but we will. I will drop this off for you later next week. So, folks who come and visit the amazing work that you're doing and that it is being recognized in the community thank you for offering this work. So I'm going to next up is that we have Mohammed Jafar is going to tell us a little bit about Melissa Cain and the work that she has been doing to support our community members where we've wanted to recognize her with our youth and families award because it is so important that she's getting that she and others in the community have are protecting families and kids in this way. I just wanted to say that in reading about this nomination. I was just impressed by how quickly Melissa and others recognized a need and came together to address it, and really have been. I know that the hours involved in putting all of this together to support our non English became community members with the resources needed to protect themselves from COVID and others. I'm just so impressed and I would love to hear Mohammed tell us a little bit more about Melissa. Hi, everyone. Thank you for having thank everyone for having me. I see, excuse me, see a lot of familiar faces. I'm very, I'm really happy to be here. Yes, I'm seeing a lot of teachers of mine past teachers of mine. So it's good to see everyone. I met Melissa only a couple years ago but we embarked on probably a million different missions and projects. One of the most notable being the new American website, which new American is the term actually that we're looking to get rid of someone said something very provocative to me a while back. And they asked me how long I've lived in the United States and I said 17 years I came here when I was about seven years old, and they asked, Well, are you a new American and I said, Well, no, I guess not. And I've been in discussion with other folks, you know around the community and I think that the term that we're hoping to adopt is former refugees and immigrants which is a little bit more inclusive so I just wanted to plug that in real quick. I've known this only for a couple years but we have definitely jumped on a bunch of projects together again specifically this the website. I called Melissa and panic after the pandemic broke out. And I was like, Melissa, I'm really scared. We all know how these things go we already know what the disparities are going to look like. And, you know, we just started brainstorming and the idea for a website came up in which we would have an all inclusive website with information about where to get food resources about health information, translated material whatever. And so Melissa goes, let me let me think let me go see what we can do and I will get back to you. I think literally within the same day. Melissa had come up with a draft of a website and had already begun creating again the template and putting stuff up and I was like, Wow. And so that's that's probably one of the most memorable things about Melissa for me was just how quickly she jumped onto that. And there are two things that I specifically admire about her and the first being the amount of resources that she has, she is connected to again that website. You know, being put up within days she added completed and I you know I, she calls me a partner in this but I admittedly did not do not nearly as much work as she did. And so it's really important for me to recognize that. And so, for starters, thank you Melissa for for everything that you've done that, you know that website has turned into a real resource, a resource that the state government is using as well. So graphics again resources about food resources about health and how to how to maintain, you know, the, the, the safety, how to how to follow the safety procedures that we need. And then, you know, months later Melissa's texting me hey I've just made hundreds of masks. Well you know how can I help you know we're delivering masks how can I help. And again going back to that compassionate piece. I remember even more specifically when talks about potential legal measures that the government might take and kind of addressing the coven 19 pandemic came about. I just remember a shared moment of stress in a phone call with her, in which both of us were just, you know, in a moment of just being afraid and scared because we all know. Oftentimes laws criminalize those that are poor those that are less knowledgeable about them. And that often turns out to be people of color, BIPOC communities, and again poor people so that again is a very memorable moment for me just again and that shared stress so tonight, having the honor of, of, you know, saying a few words about you. I mean, having you be the receiver of this award is more than it's, it's, it's more than right. It's more than fitting. And I just, again, I want to thank you for everything that you've done and everything that you continue to do. I just want to thank you for the tasks that you've made for me I love again, the amount of time, you know, Mariah I appreciate that you had mentioned early on, took a lot of time, not paid a lot of you know, effort, a lot of work, a lot of research. Going back to that point of I didn't do too much work, even though I wanted to. I really, really did appreciate that you took it and ran away with it and really showed just the love that you have for your community and I think compassion is one of the most important characteristics a human being should have. And you are rich with it so hopefully the rest of us can get to that point at some point as well. So thank you again. Thank you so much, Mohammed. So it was with great honor. I see that we have Melissa is in the same room with our other awardee we just spoke about Sydney Hinkley which shows the good people stick together. It's a great honor that I gave Melissa came our youth and families award, and then I'll drop this off for you later on the week as well. This is all these awards were were made by a local artist Terry Ziegman. And we're just so appreciative to have people like you and Mohammed as well who are stepping up to make sure that everyone's getting connected to the support that they need. Thank you so much. So, and if I could say it's the one mask initiative has provided over 5000 volunteer made masks. I do not make the masks because I cannot so. And I've also distributed additional 15,000 masks. Over 20,000 masks have been distributed to folks who wouldn't otherwise be able to access them. And I would say let's think about access and with our state programs and our city programs of how people access and with all these programs. How are they being presented to folks and how are people able to get the information and how are they able to access masks and information. Thank you and make small. Thank you so much. I'm going to transition us to talking about our outstanding individual awardee TN Barry. TN has been an advocate for substance misuse prevention and healthy communities for a very long time. I had the pleasure of knowing her as a middle school I think we met in middle school and she got engaged in youth prevention efforts. 2010 Mariah 2010. I guess you've known her for a long time and we wrote about some of the, I, you know, I wrote a little bit in the program about her and her great work, both in middle school and high school and since. But I think what I just wanted to highlight for a quick second before Angela speaks about scan for a moment is just her compassion for the community but also for the people that she feels connected to. And she just is one of the few volunteers who continues to stop in over the years and say hi to our staff to remain connected and to, you know, drop off little treats or our little presence for staff it just shows that she is passionate about this work, and about supporting the people that are doing the work so I really appreciate you and I'm very excited to have Angela Halstead who's our student assistant professional at Edmunds middle school talk about TN. Hi everyone, what an evening. Oh my goodness talk about spreading the love and good vibes. Congratulations to all. Yes, my name is Angela Halstead and I am the SAP counselor at Edmunds middle school. I am honored to recognize TN very this evening for her amazing accomplishments in the field of prevention. Back in 2011, I had the pleasure of meeting TN. At the time I was the Vermont kids against tobacco advisor at Edmunds, and she was a first year student I think I'm doing the math right I hope I am at Burlington High School, where TN was highly involved with a prevention program called above the influence. In the next four years our paths crossed multiple times as we brought these two prevention programs together to celebrate and honor student voice with the admired support from the Burlington partnership. Whether we were at a conference in Montpelier prevention event or ice skating party, TN always puts herself out there to welcome our students from Edmunds. Public personality and positive spirit always created great vibes all around. TN's confidence and passion around making healthy choices and speaking out in favor of smoke free places, let her to be heard at Burlington City Council meetings, which led to be a much celebrated smoke free church street in December of 2014. In June, TN graduated from BHS. What a feeling to be able to watch such awesome efforts turn into positive action and outcome. TN paved the way for many young people to stand up, be heard and express their wants and wishes regarding prevention, health and wellness in our community and in our state. Since then, TN has continued to embrace her passion for prevention by volunteering for agencies in our Burlington community, such as the Burlington partnership spectrum and Edmunds to name a few. TN is currently putting lots of her amazing energy into her well admired and supportive role at Pathways Vermont. It is here where she helps people regain their strength, hope and courage in finding positive new beginnings. For her love of hiking, adventure and passion for helping others, TN's strength and resilience has inspired me to write a poem for her. Now talk about feeling vulnerable because I've only written about 10 poems in my entire life, but I thought to myself TN is such an inspiration for so many people. I just, yeah, so TN kind of brought this on as she doesn't even realize she did. So here we go. Sheared up, laced up and ready for the trek ahead, mind and heart filled with a special energy where the body will effortlessly follow on the climb. A spirited vibe of confidence and positivity lies within. Climbing over rocks and roots faced with challenges, only to continue with a solid mindset, letting nothing stand in her way. Many times to the summit you have reached, taking in the awe, the beauty, big deep breaths and that feeling of self satisfaction. More exploration awaits as you begin your climb down to start another trek again sometime soon. Honoring a constant strength that you have always had within, such obstacles build more strength, making for a better understanding with each step. Celebrating the beautiful you that you are in the beautiful you that lies ahead. Where this beauty is explored, adventure awaits a you that is honored this evening and always TN you have joined many in the apex of prevention. And for this we celebrate you with heartfelt congratulations. Thank you. We're very proud of you TN. We are excited to honor you with our outstanding individual award for this year. It's been many years coming and we hope you continue to do great work in Burlington. Thank you, Angela that was beautiful. Airhugs. I would love to quickly share my screen. So you'll see that I, there's lots of things that we, with all the things going on for the awards celebration today I had made a special slide for each of the awardees with pictures of them and a little quote, and then of course I forgot to show it. I just wanted to next move us on to our DG weaver award. So we we give the DG weaver award in honor of the late assistant principal from Burlington High School. We usually look for individuals for this award who are associated with the Burlington schools who like Mr. Weaver was a positive role model and go above and beyond to support healthy opportunities and activities for kids and parents, either as a staff or a volunteer within the school. I never had the pleasure of meeting DG but when we started organizing this awards celebration. Many years ago community members at the time came to us and talked about the dedication he had to supporting the kids of the district and creating healthy opportunities for them. So we're so grateful to his family that they, many of whom have also worked in the district and live in the area, who allow us to honor his memory in this way. And we're very excited this year to be able to give that award to Devon Jay, who retired this past spring from the Burlington school district after 28 years. And we've invited Gail Vitello is going to say a few words about that and her work in the district. Hi, good evening. So my name is Gail. And I've had the pleasure to of knowing Deb for the last 18 years I've been in the school of Burlington school district. Deb recently tired after being there for 28 years. Deb am I correct with that 28 years. And she spent yes that's correct. Yeah. Okay, perfect. And she spent her entire career one school hunts middle school. So I just want to pause for a second and think about this Dev taught middle school students for 28 years to put this in perspective, I taught one year at Frederick title middle school in South Burlington, and I quickly moved after one year to a high school, and Deb was able to And I was only teaching phys ed. Deb was able to teach for 28 years health and visit at the middle school. So that's quite accomplishment on its own. Deb has been a valuable member of the Burlington school district for the entire 20 years she's been with us. Her, she spent her entire career teaching and working with hunt middle school and several capacities working with students. She started out as a PE teacher. And then she taught family consumer science. And I think it was right around the time that I started 18 years ago. Deb realized the importance of health education. And topics such as self esteem and substance abuse and prevention, healthy relationships and just name a few and Deb then created a health curriculum for the middle school. That really went along with the traditional family consumer science content. So she was really the forefront to include health topics in a traditional consumer science class family science class at the middle school level. And Deb worked really hard she advocated I remember for resources and as a result, she was able to build a robust middle school health curriculum in the Burlington school district that actually is still used today. Deb is also a wellness advocate for the hunt community. She's always been a be high building leader is this the wellness initiative for teachers faculty and staff. And she recently took the leadership role for the entire Burlington school district. So this includes roles such as supporting other building leaders throughout the district, creating wellness events, advocating for wellness policies, representing any school at any V high conferences. So, and also she was involved in wellness policies for Burlington school district in the community so she's an original member of the Burlington school district coordinated school health team, which really supports policy and improves wellness for all students faculty and staff. And the Burlington community. And I'm glad it was I'm so happy to see the picture of DG because I just wanted to circle back to DG weaver and the ward. And I had the pleasure of knowing we're working with DG for eight years. And I cannot think of a better recipient of this award than Deb DG dedicated his life to the Burlington community. He was truly advocate for the school but he really had in his heart and his mind or focus of wellness and athletics. And he cared about people. And that caring and kindness was demonstrated all he that he did. And this is Deb, this is who Deb is Deb truly cares about people, the community, the ability to provide wellness opportunities accessible to everyone. Deb is dedicated her career to wellness and the Burlington students and faculty and staff, we are just appreciative of everything that she's done throughout her career to provide and promote health, physical activity and wellness so Deb congratulations. I'm so very happy that you are receiving this for tonight. Thank you so much, Gail. Who's also by the way a previous award winner. So it's with great honor Deb that we present you with our DG weaver award for your years of support for health and wellness in the Burlington school district. Thank you so much for all you've done. And I know that Deb has been out and about helping her family around the area so I don't know if you're back in the area now but I'll get this to you as soon as soon as you're back. So thank you all so much for joining us tonight to celebrate the these amazing people who are doing great work in our community. We will continue to host this award celebration every year and I hope that next time we'll be able to do it together in a room together and then truly give people a round of applause that they deserve. Thank you so much Deb for, because we can't do that today for all of you who are able to share your video. If you are able to give a round of applause in the video or a wave to everyone to say, we'll do a virtual wave. And we'll take a picture we have some staff we're going to take some screenshots of that so we can have a picture of everyone waving for our, for our awardees. So that's what you're doing for the community in Burlington. One of the things that our organization started at the beginning of COVID was what we call the BTV wave, which we hoped was a way to connect the community and show people that we're paying attention that we see each other that you're being seen even though we can't be connected as much as we were before. So if you want you can download the BTV wave it's just our hands from our logo that you can put up around the community and show that we're all here together in a connected community. Or some some folks have just drawn their own hands we had kids in our youth groups who drew and made little art projects out of hands. So, so we all just did the BTV wave together and hopefully we'll keep doing it for each other. I wanted to say that in addition to the awardees and all the work that they're doing to support health in the community. I, I also know that supporting prevention can come in a lot of different forms and supporting each other can come in a lot of different forms one of those forms is through some organizations who help to sponsor this event and help us to host things like this. Usually we're able to host stuff like this freeze to allow and anyone who wants to attend, attend and partially that's because we have donations from folks like blue cross blue shield who is our presenting sponsor for today. And sorry, I'm going to just lost my train of thought as I'm trying to put things up on the screen. So I, you know, I think that for years now blue cross blue shield has been supporting our work and this event with a large donation. And their support of health and wellness in this way really helps us to provide more resources for the community so I want to invite our board chair, Megan peak who's from blue cross blue shield. To talk a little bit for a moment and share with you a little bit about why she's engaged in and some of the other folks who are sponsoring this. Thank you Megan. Okay, so what you want me to talk about why blue crosses offering their support. Okay. So, um, so part of my work I do community relations at blue cross and blue shield and we, we work on a lot of issues and we're very focused on prevent it prevention in all aspects of health. And when I, you know, I get asked to be on on a lot of boards that are health related, certainly, but this board drew me because of the work of BPHC and the fact that the focus on youth in terms of prevention is really important to us. And the community collaboration. I'm also part of the Burlington community so it was really good fit for me personally, and my kids are in the school system here so um, so we're just proud to be part of it we're excited to continue supporting the work and just look to continue. Great work, and thank you to all of the awardees for the creative work that you do I think I continue to be just floored year after year by the, the creativity, and sort of, sort of large view of what prevention can be, and how we take care of ourselves and each other. So, thank you. Happy to be part of this. Thank you Megan.