Jackson Free Press

LaDaryl Watkins says she's always been active and loves people, and wanted to combine the two. She is currently a co-coordinator in The Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi's health and wellness department.

Watkins attended Carthage High School, where she played basketball and did track and cheerleading. She received a bachelor's degree in sociology from Tougaloo College in 2012, and then got a master's of public health degree from Jackson State University in 2014.

Before becoming a co-coordinator at The Partnership in June 2016, Watkins worked for nonprofit organization My Brother's Keeper, doing policy work around food access, physical activity and access to clinical care. But she wanted to be more hands-on with the community, and The Partnership was looking for a person to help with the Just Have a Ball program.

"I just thought that it would be a really good mix," Watkins says, "because it's a lot of activity, dealing with kids."

The Just Have a Ball program, which is for elementary-aged children, gives the children a piece of playground equipment, usually a ball, nutrition information and information about how to be active with their playground equipment. She is responsible for going around and doing awareness presentations for the program.

On working with kids, she says: "Kids ... absorb a lot of information that you give them," she says. "I think that's the generation where you kind of want to catch them so that they can learn early and then apply it throughout the rest of their lives and create healthy families from that generation."

Another bonus? Kids are honest, she says.

"If the program doesn't work, of course they're going to tell you," Watkins says.

"With adults, sometimes we kind of try to spare everybody's feelings, but kids are really blunt and honest. Some of the best evaluation tools you get come from kids."

Though her primary work is with Just Have a Ball, she says she also helps LaCiana McIntyre, who is the other co-coordinator for The Partnership's health and wellness division, in going to health fairs and similar events with information to get adults to have a healthier lifestyle.

When she isn't at The Partnership, she says she likes to run at places such as Friendship Park or Mirror Lake in Flowood, hang out with friends and attend Pilates.

Watkins says that what she likes most about living in Jackson are the street festivals such as Fondren's First Thursday and Final Fridays in Midtown.

"(They're) really cool places to hang out at the end of the work day, ... where you catch up with friends and not have to be dressed up or anything like that," she says. "(They're) ... places where you can meet people in the streets (and) lots of fun, and you kind of know everybody that's around. You never meet a stranger."