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The Rotary Club of Morristown was delighted to host Whitney Myers as their guest speaker on Wednesday.

Myers attended the Rotary luncheon to speak about her community outreach program, Healthy Habits. Healthy Habits is a program for children ages birth to 5 years old that offers different free classes for parents and their children to attend together.

Myers, a Grainger County native, graduated from ETSU and is a Registered Dietitian. Myers has worked in a variety of settings ranging from a prison hospital to being a college professor.

Myers, her husband and two daughters moved back to Morristown in 2022 after living in the Raleigh area where there were many different programs available for her children.

She noticed when they moved back to Morristown that beyond the story times at the library, there wasn’t a whole lot of community programs for children. So, she set out to change that.

“I developed the Healthy Habits program for the Morristown-Hamblen area here in Morristown. I was living in the Raliegh area in North Carolina and we had our first daughter, then our second daughter. There was just so much to do there, and we lived a little county called Harnett County. They had all kinds of free programming there for the kids which I thought was really great, but once I moved back here in 2022 I realized there wasn’t really anything like that, there was kind of a void. We had story time at the library but that was really it.” Myers said.

Once the idea was born, Myers set about to make it happen. She said she approached people in the community to ask for their help and she was overwhelmed by how well she and her idea was received.

Myer’s said, “Everyone in town promoted me. I was surprised at how many people said yes to donating money, because I was just this lady going around saying, ‘Hey I want to do this thing and I want it to be really great but I don’t want to do it out of pocket. I want to do it the right way,’ and so many people said ‘yes’ and I was so humbled by that.

“Tish Jones said ‘yes’ right away when she heard my pitch and Dr. Delay with Healthstar physician gave me a good donation as well, he was so kind.

“I’m not one to ask for money, I don’t like to ask for money. but he was like, ‘How much do you need?’ and he kept increasing the amount and he gave us a good amount of money to really make this nice.”

The Mission Statement of the Healthy Habits program is to provide a free service to parents and toddlers in the community in order to foster community and also promote health and wellness for kids and their families.

The Snack attack class is led by Whitney Myers and is a nutrition class that exposes children to fruits and vegetables that they may not be willing to try at home for their parents. Children create fun, age-appropriate themed snacks themselves. The class is held on the second Monday of each month at 10 a.m.

The Camp Emotions class is led by nationally certified counselor Sarahfaye Sanford and is designed to help little ones identify and cope with big feelings so they can learn and grow and play within the world with confidence and compassion.

The class is held on the first Tuesday of each month at 10 a.m.

Little Artists is taught by Kelsey Parks who has previously worked with Head Start doing tutoring and an art program. The class is held on the fourth Monday of each month at 10 a.m.

Music and Movement is taught by Elizabeth Dalton who has 13 years of band experience and has recently obtained a masters degree in elementary education. The class is held on the fourth Monday of each month at 5 p.m.

For more information on classes and a schedule of events, visit the Morristown-Hamblen Library facebook page.