Baxter Elementary Third Grade Students Surprised With Awards From Crow Wing Energized

This past summer, Crow Wing Energized launched its One Vegetable One Community campaign to encourage locals to eat more vegetables and fruits. To help come up with the campaign logo, the organization created a coloring competition that included over 300 participants from all over the Brainerd Lakes Area. A special guest made an appearance at Baxter Elementary School to announce the grand prize winner.

“300 students submitted art for the logo for Crow Wing County Vegetable of the Year and three of the winners were from here at Baxter Elementary, so I came here as Vegetable of the Year to honor those students,” said One Vegetable One Community Vegetable of the Year winner Molly Raske, who visited the school dressed as a giant carrot.

Baxter’s Takiya Riley, Eli Franke, and Emme Murray all placed in the top five of the competition, with Murray winning the grand prize.

“She’s going to be the featured logo throughout 2020, so any of our marketing materials anything that is One Vegetable One Community will have Emme’s coloring on it and her logo design,” said Crow Wing Energized Community Health Member Kalsey Stults.

The most important aspect of this competition was to make sure the children knew what Crow Wing Energized is all about.

“Healthy behaviors begin when we’re young and it’s easy to have those behaviors go throughput the whole lifespan, so we really want to talk to the youth about eating vegetables right off the bat,” said Stults.

Of course, it’s always a good day when the Crow Wing Energized Vegetable of the Year can get out and spread the good news about carrots.

“It feels really good to be back in the carrot suit and just honoring their Vegetable of the Year, I got to give all these students baby carrots, and so everyone got to have a carrot today,” said Raske.

In continuing their One Vegetable One Community campaign, Crow Wing Energized plans on hosting several events in the spring, including a day in which they hand out over 20,000 carrot seeds to the community.