Columbus, Ohio has a very high infant mortality rate – which means babies are not living to see the age of 1. CelebrateOne was created to reduce the infant mortality rate in Columbus and Franklin County. While infant mortality has no boundaries and can affect anyone, it does negatively impact certain zip codes disproportionately. To help reduce the infant mortality rate, CelebrateOne sends out Community Connectors who engage with pregnant moms in their homes, making sure they have the resources they need to have a healthy pregnancy – because if mom is healthy, then baby has a better chance of being born full term, making it to their first birthday, and then going on to thrive in life.
Going door-to-door is just one tool that CelebrateOne uses to fight infant mortality. They realize that broader outreach is sometimes needed to find new pregnant moms who may be in need of assistance. Paraclete Planning was brought on to assist CelebrateOne in planning and executing its special events for the year, including community baby showers and a huge Community 1st Birthday Party Celebration.
These events not only provide mom and dad with diapers and supplies for their babies, there are resource fairs built into theses events that connect them with community partners offering things like healthcare, educational resources, housing support, childcare, and parenting programs. Meals and treats are provided free of charge to families. Raffle prizes are awarded and activities, costume characters and arts and crafts are available for siblings in attendance.
In 2021, we assisted over 500 families with showers on each side of town, a centrally located 1st birthday party, and a special community drive-in movie. In 2022, we will continue to serve families through these unique event touch points throughout the year. The impact of these events brings visibility and awareness to infant mortality, while providing much needed support and service to families in central Ohio.
“It has truly been an honor and pleasure working with Grace this past summer while she coordinated our CelebrateOne events. She paid close attention to details, communication was effective and consistent. She was very thorough with every detail for the events she coordinated. Each event was so well thought out and not to mention beautiful! Our families really enjoyed attending our events and felt loved appreciated when they left. This truly is critical to our mission and goal of serving our families and providing an amazing experience for them.
Grace was easy to work with, even when the pressure and stress erupted; she maintained her peace and remained polished and professional. Executing events sometimes the inevitable happens, something just doesn’t go as planned; she was able to pivot and execute with excellence. Admirable! She was always accessible and responsive to any request we made of her, even last-minute ideas to improve how we served the families in attendance. I cannot express enough my gratitude for Grace and the entire Paraclete Planning team. I’m elated we have the honor of working with her again this coming spring/summer season. She has a calm, yet dynamic soul which makes her the perfect leader to execute any events.” ~ Amber Jones, Senior Manager, Pregnancy and Perinatal Support, CelebrateOne
Corporate event planning and project management 