By Joseph DiCristofaro
The Ironton Tribune

Impact Prevention is hosting its final Party in the Parks event with this one focused on providing local youth with back-to-school supplies on Tuesday at the Proctorville Fairgrounds.
“We’re going to be doing some school supply giveaways,” said Eddie Neel of Impact Prevention. “That’s a hardship for some families with inflation and the rise in the price of groceries and supplies.”
The event will resemble all of the previous events of the summer with many youth-centered activities such as face painting, free food and Kona Ice, first responder engagement and a dunk tank.
“We’re going to culminate everything on Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the upper barn of the Proctorville Fairgrounds,” Neel said. “It’s a nice area that the fair board allows us to use.”
The ‘Back to School BASH’ will provide youth in the area with much-needed school supplies as the summer comes to an end and the beginning of the school year draws closer.
“We want to take a burden off of some of the families and offer some school supplies,” Neel said. “We’ve been contacting the schools to get specific items that the kids would use and we’ll give them out on Tuesday.”
As the final Party in the Parks event nears its end Neel said that the turnout for the events has been great and the engagement with first responders has been one of the important goals.
“We had a lot of really good first responder engagement,” Neel said. “A big part of the event is the community engagement of getting youth, families, first responders and youth-serving agencies coming together.”
Neel also said that the events take many helping hands to coordinate and run. He said community engagement has been a main factor in providing these events for the children.
“We’ve had good relationships throughout the years with our first responders, local child-serving agencies and the commissioners,” Neel said. “They’re bought into the work we’re doing towards prevention and come out to support it and we’re thankful for it.”