Congratulations to Children First in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, who recently won (For the fourth time!) the 100 Best Communities for Young People Award, given by America’s Promise Alliance.
This year’s award was a unique one— a giant orange pushpin trophy, symbolizing the 100 best communities who are “putting their cities on the map”.
While Children First should be commended for continuing to build assets and creating strong and healthy communities, we also want to commend them for the innovative way they’ve chosen to live out the honor awarded to them by the Promise Alliance. We recently spoke with St. Louis Park High School Senior and active member of Children First, Leigha Sledge. She shared with us the story behind how she and her colleague, Jackie Adelmann, also a Senior at St. Louis Park and member of the alliance, came up with a creative way to celebrate the award.
The girls brought the award to life as Perrie P. Push Pin! The idea of animating the trophy came to the students after a short brainstorming session. They wanted to be able to celebrate the unique award in a creative way that would make an impact.
Photo Credit: Jackie Adelmann
“We thought it [would be] great to have the pushpin take pictures at well-known places in [our community] and then have people try to guess where he/she is,” said Sledge. “We also had to give him/her a great name. We chose the name Perrie P. Push Pin, not only because of the alliteration or because it’s funny, but also because it’s a gender neutral name.”
Sidenote: Leigha also informed us that the name Perrie is a diminutive of the name Peregrine, Latin for foreigner; stranger; pilgrim; traveler; wanderer.
The name Perrie certainly suits the namesake. Perrie is a community “wanderer” who spreads the asset message around the community. Children First staff members even came up with the idea of having Perrie distribute seed packets around the community to “spread” his Asset message.
Download an image of Perrie’s “Perrie Winkle” Seed Packet >
“We had to come up with ways to get Perrie out into the public,” said Sledge. “We also made him/her a public Facebook profile, to post photos of his/her ‘wanderings’ and invite people to guess his whereabouts.”
Watch the video below (around the 8:40 mark) to witness Perrie’s first public appearance!
