The North Sanpete Cares Coalition met March 3 at Mt. Pleasant City Hall with 15 members present. Chaired by Jan Reese and facilitated by Jocie Rojas, the meeting was dominated by planning for the upcoming Community Night Out / Health Fair, but also covered school family engagement programming, QPR training in local middle schools, and a round of community resource updates that reflect both what’s available and what’s still needed in north Sanpete County.
Community Night Out Is Coming — and They’re Thinking Big
The coalition’s headline item was planning for the Community Night Out / Health Fair, set for Monday, April 27, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. at the Field House. The previous event drew more than 600 attendees. The goal this time is 1,000.
Activities discussed include community resource tables, youth performances, health screenings, safety giveaways including gun safes and helmets, CPR demonstrations, and family activities. Food will likely be provided through hospital partners. Coalition members will begin contacting vendors and community partners once the date is confirmed.
This is also the event Sanpete Serves has identified as its official public launch date.
Family Nights Are Working
Paula Tippetts shared updates on elementary school family nights happening in Fairview and Fountain Green. The events are designed around family connection and communication, using game-show style activities and conversation prompts to get families engaging with each other. Families receive meals to take home and share together, reinforcing the value of family dinner and discussion.
The numbers back it up: a recent event served 164 participants, and 33 families completed a home connection challenge afterward. For small-community elementary schools, those are strong turnout numbers — and the take-home component extends the impact beyond the event itself.
QPR Training Reaches Middle Schoolers
Jocie reported that she taught QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) suicide prevention training to the entire North Sanpete Middle School, as well as other middle schools in the area. She also trained teachers at Ensign Peak Academy on anxiety and social-emotional learning strategies for remote classrooms. This is the same QPR work the Gunnison Valley coalition credited as a factor in improving help-seeking behavior among students in the latest SHARP survey data.
Community Events on the Calendar
The city concert series continues with the next concert scheduled for March 28. The first concert in the series drew 520 people. Snow College Pride Club hosts its annual Pride event on March 19 at 5:30 p.m., with dinner at Roy’s Pizza followed by the play Bright Star. A community youth cardboard boat event is scheduled for May 2.
Resource Updates: Who’s Doing What
Several community partners shared updates during the resource roundtable:
Jennifer Whetton from Skyline Counseling introduced herself and expressed interest in collaborating with community partners. Sleep in Heavenly Peace continues providing free beds for children ages 3–17 in Sanpete County. The Sanpete Family Resource Center offers a rideshare program for residents who need transportation to appointments and services. Region 6 shared updates on foster grandparent and senior companionship programs, free tax preparation services for qualifying residents, and an upcoming Veterans event on April 22.
On the health side, the University of Utah Mobile Dental Clinic will be in Manti April 6–10, providing exams, cleanings, sealants, and other services. Community partners will also be providing personal hygiene education at Fairview Elementary.
Why It Matters
The Community Night Out planning is worth watching for scale alone. Going from 600 to a target of 1,000 in a county where the total population is around 28,000 means the coalition is aiming to put a significant share of north Sanpete residents in one room with resource providers, health screenings, and safety equipment. Events like this work because they remove the barriers that keep people from connecting with services — no appointments, no paperwork, no stigma. You show up, you eat, your kids perform, and you walk past a table that happens to have the thing you didn’t know was available.
The family night programming in Fairview and Fountain Green is a quieter story but an important one. Thirty-three families completing a take-home challenge after a school event is the kind of outcome prevention coalitions are designed to produce. It’s not dramatic. It’s a family sitting down to dinner and talking to each other because someone handed them a conversation prompt and a meal. That’s the work.
The QPR training reaching entire middle schools is also significant. When every student in a building has been trained to recognize warning signs and know how to respond, it changes the culture of that school — not just for the students who might be struggling, but for the ones around them.
What Comes Next
Community Night Out / Health Fair planning will ramp up over the next several weeks as vendors and community partners are contacted and the date is finalized. Coalition members interested in hosting a table or contributing should connect with the coalition directly.
The next North Sanpete Cares Coalition meeting is Tuesday, April 7, at 12:00 p.m. at Mt. Pleasant City Hall. The meetings are open and the coalition welcomes community participation.
Sourcing: This recap is based on the official North Sanpete Cares Coalition meeting minutes from March 3, 2026, taken by Jocie Rojas, Behavioral Health Prevention Specialist at Central Utah Counseling Center. For corrections, email info@sanpeteserves.com.
