Within recent weeks, a three-county nonprofit largely based in Wallowa County was awarded a $48,500-per-year, two-year capacity-building grant from Meyer Memorial Trust.

At about the same time, that nonprofit Building Healthy Families was awarded renewal of a $70,000 grant from the Oregon Parenting Education Collaborative and renewed a substantial contract with the Oregon Department of Health Services to provide specialized services for that state agency.

The bottom line for that 14-year-old entity, as it has been since day one, is to better prepare parents to strengthen family units.

In 1999, a group of individuals merged forces to hire a woman named Angie Lunde to promote family education and support.

Five years later Ann Gill was added to the payroll and a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization was formed.

That group, since given the name Building Healthy Families (BHF), has grown every year and before the current 2013 fiscal year is complete its projected the lives of 450 families will be touched.

Although some BHF efforts do reach into Baker and Union counties, 15 of the nonprofits 18 full-time-equivalent employees work out of Wallowa County and much of the units budget that just reached $850,000 this year is spent locally.

Amy Johnson became executive director of the BHF team in 2006 and remains a staunch advocate today.

She says, Parent education is for everyone in the life of a child.

Although BHF emphasizes the importance of educating parents, classes and services offered out of the nonprofits 4,200-square-foot facility at 103 Highway 82, in Enterprise, address the needs of people of all ages from 1-year-old kids to great-grandparents.

BHFs Learning Center for Children focuses on emotional development, math skills, literacy, and overall development.

We offer no programs here, says Johnson, simply services that are outcome-based.

Unlike what might be popularly thought, Johnson says Building Healthy Families is nearly unique nationwide and regularly gets contacted by other agencies interested in duplicating the successes BHF has had.

Johnson unabashedly attributes that success to the passion of the people of Wallowa County who strongly support the community driven nature of BHF.

Much has changed since the days of Lunde and Gill.

One major expansion in the outreach of BHF comes through renewed efforts to connect families with public services. BHF workers not only act as bridges to connect school programs with individual students and families, but coordinate and teach after-school programs, tutor and mentor students, and draft summer activities for local school districts.

Too, Building Healthy Families works closely with the Wallowa County sheriff and Wallowa County district attorney. BHF also works closely with persons recently released from jail.

Not only are employees from this wide-ranging not-for-profit group contracted to help past inmates prepare for GED exams, find housing and avenues of medical support, and drive formerly incarcerated persons to jobs, but they also try to promote social interaction that might help the recently released to merge seamlessly back into communities.

Johnson insists that BHF, although it does provide employee benefits, is a lean organization that offers salaries that are comparable to other wages in the county.

Johnson works with a team of three or four grant writers and says, overall, that Building Healthy Families has 28 different funding sources. Although an estimated two-thirds of the budget does come from grants roughly ranging in size between $1,000 and $90,000, the executive director speaks of contracts with other entities such as arms of the Oregon Department of Human Services and Wallowa County.

Johnson explains that Wallowa County receives more BHF services than Baker and Union counties because the latter two counties, with their greater populations, already have other entities furnishing some of the services BHF could provide.

Amy Johnson says much adult education is based on stress reduction, a catalyst to helping parents become more in tune with needs of their children.