05/08/03

There are so many reasons for the Weller Health Education Center to celebrate this May. One million reasons, in fact.

On Tuesday, May 22, the Weller Center will serve its one-millionth student. The visitor will be among 46 second grade students from Western Salisbury Elementary School in Allentown. The students are scheduled to visit the Center as part of their spring class trip and will participate in a general health program called Come to Your Senses from 9:30 – 10:30 a.m.

The Center plans to honor all 46 students after their program during a press conference beginning at 10:30 a.m. at the Weller Center, 325 Northampton Street in Easton. County Executive Glenn Reibman, Weller Center founder Nancy Smith Davis, and board president Steve Ferretti will address the crowd and pose for photos with the children. Members of Northampton County Council, legislators for districts in Lehigh and Northampton counties and other dignitaries are also invited to participate. 

The students will receive certificates of recognition and gift bags filled with items from the Weller Center’s gift shop.

The Weller Center was founded in 1982 and has been celebrating its 20th anniversary throughout the 2002-2003 school year. It was the first nonprofit health-promotion, disease-prevention education facility of its kind in Pennsylvania and remains one of just 33 health education centers in the nation.

The Weller Center’s mission is to measurably improve lives by giving children the tools they need to make informed and healthy life choices. Still this region’s only not-for-profit health education center, the Center partners with more than 250 school districts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to provide supplementary health, life science and character education for students grades K – 12. 

The Weller Center was originally founded to serve school districts in and around the Lehigh Valley. Last year alone, 32,000 of the 62,000 students served were from Lehigh and Northampton counties. Today, the Center also serves schools from as far west as Williamsport, as far north as Scranton, as far south as Philadelphia and all of New Jersey. 

Offering more than 30 programs in general health, character education, drug abuse prevention, growth and development and nutrition, the Weller Center is home to four multimedia classrooms with floor-to-ceiling audiovisual exhibits. The Center also features an interactive museum for students with exhibits including a 672-square-foot walk-through brain, a kid-size grocery store and a giant sneezing nose. 

For schools that cannot travel to the Center, the Weller Center also offers many of its programs as in-school assemblies.

The media are invited and encouraged to attend the one-millionth visitor press conference on Thursday, May 22 from 10:30 – 11 a.m.