On Sunday, I pulled into my driveway and could see three of my neighborhood girls out with their sign. “Pink Lemonade”. I waved at them and said I’ll be right over, and headed to my spouse’s shop to go get him for our trip to their stand. My kids used to have stands on our boulevard too. And of course, the adult neighbors would all make a trip to buy lemonade, or personally drawn pictures or whatever entrepreneurial spirit was going on that week. That is what I enjoy most about Moorhead… our sense of community, our sense of neighbors as extended family.

My kids were 1 and 3 years old when I was brought on board as Treasurer for Moorhead Healthy Community Initiative (MHCI), later MetroYouth Partnership. Ron and I were new parents; my kids were Healthy Community kids because the research and ideals of that group impacted how we parented. MHCI was built on the idea that if certain things were in a kid’s life, they would do more positive things and less negative things. At the time, there was a list of 30 things. One was having 4 or more adults in a kid’s life. Neighbors can be one of those adults, and frankly, they were for my kids. They knew our neighbors, and my neighbors knew them. We can all be that for our own neighborhood kids. It can be as simple as buying pink lemonade, or making them a part of your block party activities. Let’s all be part of a Moorhead youth’s assets.