Sue Krahe, board and staff of Our Family (top) happily accepted a check and showed off the new van at Catalina Rotary's Derby Day event May 7.

New van helping Our Family build a stronger community 

Thanks to support from the Catalina Rotary, Our Family has a new 15-passenger van helping children, families and seniors take part in our prevention programs in Pima County.

The $14,500 grant -- raised through the club's annual Kentucky Derby Day fundraiser -- fulfilled our fundraising goal and made the van purchase possible. 

Our Family's prevention programs help children, families and seniors live healthier, safer lives. The van has already been used to take children and families on field trips to art museums, to the Community Food Bank, on swimming outings, and to the University of Arizona Poetry Center. The van is also used to transport low-income South Tucson seniors on grocery shopping trips and to nutrition and socialization programs that help them stay active and healthy.

"This van is an incredible gift," says Margaret Palmer, manager of our prevention programs. "Adding field trips to our programming has helped broaden our clients' horizons because we can take them places they have never been."

Among our prevention programs is La Escuelita, held three afternoons a week at the House of Neighborly Service in South Tucson. Each year we serve up to 60 children whose families need additional tools to help their kids do well in school, build skills and self-esteem, and make healthy life choices.

One student, Alicia, is a 5-year-old kindergartener who enrolled in La Escuelita midway through the school year. She had limited letter recognition and no understanding of phonetics. After six months in our program, which reinforces the information she gets at school, Alicia is reading at her age and grade level.

Alicia is very proud of herself and says reading time is her favorite part of the day. Her mother, who has multiple learning disabilities and was unable to help her daughter learn to read, is thrilled and thankful Our Family is here to help Alicia succeed.

Thanks to the support of partners like Catalina Rotary, our prevention programs are building a stronger community, one child at a time.