Alliance For Youth is encouraging people to get out and spread good cheer (while maintaining the proper six-foot "social distance") by asking people to write positive messages in chalk on their driveway or in front of a high-traffic area.
Kristy Pontet Stroop, executive director of Alliance For Youth , says they want to encourage others during this time of COVID-19 restrictions with a " Chalk Your Walk " event.
“We are worried about the morale of our community and we want to just instill hope and let everyone know that we are all in this together even if it is six feet apart,” says Stroop.
Participating in something like this is no different than the non-profit's other activities. “We have done messaging of hope a couple of different times throughout the year. Last year and even at the beginning of this year doing messages of hope throughout our city has something we have always been passionate about. Because one of our areas of focus that we want to do help promote and bring down the stigma around suicide and anxiety and depression and mental health awareness,” says Stroop.
Stroop says, “We are supposed to be starting it off encouraging homes and people to get involved tomorrow (Sunday) to kind of do their own cross walk or sidewalk.”
They even tried it out on their own and had great success. She added, “Yesterday when we were in town just decided to take it a little bit further you know kinda get a jump start in knowing that the shelter in place came into play we decided we would do it in front of some locations that some people would still be going to which are grocery stories and along busy driving paths.”
“it was actually heartwarming to see already how that was helping so people were stopping you know to read the message and tell us thank you felt encouraged by it and then some people jumped in and helped us. You know can I have some chalk and helped us do it.”
“It was encouraging and we just want to continue to spread that because these are uncertain times but we can always hold on to hope and we just want to increase that and definitely encourage people to reach out encourage creative ways to encourage others.”
Organizers of the event also said if you’re unable to draw outside, writing in your windows or your car windows is a great alternative.
