Your child on hugs

Campaign seeks to

encorage parents to reach out to their kids

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

SPRINGFIELD -- Newer, less common advertising signs have joined the familiar billboards along Highway 14 that advertize anything from law offices to fast-food restaurants, Ford trucks to school bus safety.

The new signs, outside Springfield, Sleepy Eye and New Ulm, carry a little deeper message than the typical billboard.

The billboards are sponsored by the Brown County Partnership for Youth, and feature two pictures of a child in two different moods -- a sad child in black and white and another in happy color. The slogan below the pictures reads, 'This is your kid. This is your kid on hugs.'

"The billboards are designed to encourage parents to pay more attention to their children," said Anita Hoffmann, director of the Brown County Public Health Department. "The purpose is to say 'See? Look what you can do when you reach out to your child'."

The slogan and design are purely local. Public Health Educator Laura Trebesch said the idea of billboards was one the partnership kicked around for a while. The slogan came courtesy of a Brown County Family Services employee. The designs are the work of a New Ulm Public High School freshman named Joey Warta.

"We were sold on the slogan when we heard it," Trebesch said.

The billboards are the partnership's latest effort to address teen health concerns in Brown County.

The group is made up of about 40 people from around the county and includes business people, city and county officials, law enforcement officers, employees of the Public Health and Probation departments and teenagers from Sleepy Eye and New Ulm.

It was formed in July 2000 using Brown County's share of the state's 1999 tobacco settlement. The ads on the billboards cost about $1,500 and will run until mid-November.

The partnership's first project was a survey published in July that found a difference in the attitudes that teenagers and their parents take towards teen health issues.

The partnership is hoping motorists on Highway 14 will see the billboards and take time to look at the relationships they have with their children. While the aim is to get parents to either congratulate themselves for giving positive guidance to their children or to think about making changes to their relationships, there is really no way to measure the campaign's effect.

"With something like this, you're not going to know," Trebesch said. "It's just something to get out there and get people thinking about it."

Trebesch and Hoffman both said the partnership would like to work more with billboards later in the future, but those plans will depend its budget.

"For right now, this is it," Hoffmann said. "We will look ahead to next year, but for now this is it."