This year’s third annual event will be held at the Outdoor Sports Center
Published in the Oct. 1-14, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
Children and their parents will have the opportunity for enjoying fun and free activities together at the upcoming South Valley Kids Fest, the third annual festival celebrating young people which will take place 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday Oct. 5 at Morgan Hill’s Outdoor Sports Center.
The event is put on by Out & About magazine as a fundraiser for nonprofit organization Community Solutions, said Sunday Minnich, organizer of the event.
“Basically, Kids Fest is a festival for kids,” she said. “It has everything to do with kids. It provides parents with resources to make informed choices. It includes games, activities, prizes, attractions like a pony ride and petting zoo, face painting and a giant slide. We have some free crafts and carnival games and different things like that.”
A stage area will showcase performances by Jimbo the Clown and a magician. CalFire will host Smokey the Bear to meet children and tell them about the dangers of fire.
Admission to the event is free but some of the attractions require money to raise funds for Community Solutions’s domestic violence programs, she said.
The first two South Valley Kids Fest events took place at the Cochrane Plaza Center in March 2012 and 2013, but when that indoors facility was no longer available, organizers decided to move it to the OSC.
“Being indoors, we were really limited on the attractions we had for kids,” Minnich said. “But now that we’re outdoors, we’ve expanded the attractions for kids to enjoy, expand the booths for parent resources and kids retails and stuff.”
An information resource center will provide parents with material on school education, summer camp and fall camps, medical and health services such as dentists and chiropractor specialties on kids, and insurance. There will also be vendors specializing in products for children.
A raffle will also be held with the grand prize being a bike from Morgan Hill’s Specialized Bicycles. Other sponsors of the event include Silicon Valley Flex Academy, Stratford School, the Edward “Boss” Prado Foundation, Ponzini Community Garage and Towing, Pinnacle Bank, Recology South Valley, Specialized Bikes, the Morgan Hill Outdoor Sports Center, the Morgan Hill Times, Morgan Hill Life, Commonwealth Central Credit Union, and The Music Tree.
Lulu Lopez, program manager for the domestic violence department at Community Solutions, said she’s grateful that Kids Fest is helping with funding of its operations and help women and children deal with various social challenges.
“It’s a great way for kids to go out and have fun. It’s going to help our services,” she said. “We’re hoping that lots of people will attend so we can continue providing our services.”
Minnich encourages all South Valley families to attend to help improve the quality of their lives.
“All parents are looking for fun things to do with their kids that are cost efficient,” she said. “Not only is it fun for the kids to go but the parents are learning about resources for their children on education, medical, health, activities for kids. It’s a fun, free day for parents and kids.”
