Pride Marianas Youth holds health fair at NMC

The health fair hosted by Pride Marianas Youth, Pride Marianas, and The Marianas T-Project at the Northern Marianas College campus last June 8 drew close to 100 community members for an afternoon of free health screenings, free Zumba by Fitbeat, music, raffles, free gym membership sign-ups, healthy eating demonstrations, and outreach booths.

Called “Summer Lovin’, Love Yourself, Love Everybody Health Fair,” the event at the at the NMC Mango Terrace also featured Pride Marianas and Tyler’s Gelatte Stone, along with educational and community outreach vendors from different health care providers and non-profit organizations, included Commonwealth Healthcare Corp.’s Noncommunicable Disease Bureau, CHCC STD/HIV Program, CNMI Suicide Prevention, Haligi Aware/Public School System Mental Health, Run Saipan, Latte Built Fitness, and Body by Jerry Athletics, NMC CREES, 500 Sails, and Project Proa.

“We wanted to do an intimate health fair that just empowered the community to be more inclusive as far as healthcare is concerned,” said Dan Brown, vice president of Pride Marianas Youth.

Statistically, the LGBTQ+ population are at high risk for a lot of health and wellness barriers or barriers to health care, “so we just wanted to invite different agencies and organizations to kind of show support for Pride Month and also to talk about promoting overall wellness for the community at large,” he added.

Brown said the turnout was “surprisingly good” considering that it was a Wednesday.

“What really made me feel like we made an impact is just seeing the youth participate and just creating a safe space for them to see that there’s a community of support for them, so that was really inspiring. I spoke to NMC and they’re really glad that we decided to use their space, because they’re still waiting for their campus to start building again but this is a really good area for a small kind of event like this and they’re just happy that we decided to partner with them to bring something for Pride,” said Brown.

One of the outreach booths, Latte Built Gym signed up about 40 new members during the event and about 70 overall with their free gym membership promotion during the whole month of June for Pride Month. 

Latte Built Gym operations manager Seiji Sonoda said: “I’m very impressed with how Pride Marianas, Pride Marianas Youth, and the T-Project have really pulled together this year. I’ve been here for a couple of the other years but this year was exceptional. I know they have a whole calendar of events for the whole month of June. They’ve garnered so much support from the community and you see it everywhere.”

Another outreach booth was Body by Jerry Athletics who held a “mindful minute” breathing technique that was participated by 42 people at the event.