ESTEVAN — The Estevan Early Years Family Resource Centre (EEYFRC) welcomed over 300 attendees to its second annual Family Expo at Spruce Ridge School on March 8. The event provided families with a range of activities, entertainment and access to local resources tailored for young children.
"We just had entertainment this year," said Misty Pennington, EEYFRC’s director of programs and community engagement. "Last year we did professional talks, and we found that it was really hard for parents to interact with the talks, so we just did all children's entertainment this year."
The expo featured 12 booths showcasing local professionals and nonprofit organizations offering programs for children aged zero to five.
"We wanted to promote those," Pennington said. "And then we had a full entertainment agenda, just to encourage people to come and visit us all and see all the resources that we have to offer."
Among the highlights were appearances by Chase and Skye from Paw Patrol, a face-painting station and dance classes. A new addition this year was a babysitter meet-and-greet, where local student babysitters connected with parents.
"It was like speed dating, but just a meet-and-greet with babysitters," Pennington explained. "So that was really great to connect the community."
Parents responded positively to the initiative.
"Parents were like, 'That's such a great idea, thanks for having that,'" Pennington said. "So it's something we would definitely include again in the future."
A hot dog lunch, served on site and provided by Â鶹´«Ã½AVern Plains Co-op, helped support the EEYFRC’s ongoing programming.
"All the proceeds from that go directly back to us at the family centre, allowing us to keep family events like this free for everybody," said Pennington.
Pennington noted that after the success of the first expo last year they had feedback from participants, who said the expo helped linking families to vital services.
"We have our early learning coach as one of the booths, and she received multiple referrals for her services specifically from this event," Pennington noted. "A lot of our vendors and programs get referrals and clientele or new participants to their programs just from connecting here at this event."
Looking ahead, the EEYFRC is committed to making the Family Expo an annual tradition.
"We definitely plan to keep the Family Expo an annual event," Pennington confirmed.
