Sears

Bob's Pizza
Eat’n Park
Giant Eagle
Reschini Group

Benamati's Creekside Store

Community Guidance Center

Evergreen Insurance Associates, LLC.

First Commonwealth Bank

Grand Beginnings Children's Center

Hoss's Steak & Sea House

Indiana County Community Action

Indiana First Bank

Indiana Regional Medical Center

Lowe’s

Luigi’s Ristorante

Martin’s

McDonald’s

Ponderosa Steakhouse

Renda Broadcasting

YMCA

The Community Guidance Center

Julie Ruzbacki accepting the award

Eat’n Park

Evergreen Boys & Girls Club

Giant Eagle

Indiana County Head Start, Inc.

Indiana County Community Action

Indiana Gazette

Armstrong-Indiana Drug & Alcohol Commission

Indiana Regional Medical Center

Lowe’s

Martin’s

The Reschini Group

Tri-County Workforce Investment Board, Inc

Eat 'n Park

Matt Smilen accepting the award

Burger King

CiCi's

Commonplace Coffee House

Cozumel’s

Dingbats

Donatello's

Fire Mountain

Hot Dog John’s

King Buffet

Luigi's Ristorante

Ruby Tuesday

The Coney

Valley Dairy

Giant  Eagle

Bon Ton
Cafe 701
Gatti Pharmacy
Hot Dog John's
Indiana Mall
Indiana Free Library
Lucy Rae
Martin's
Michael's

Old Navy
Pittsburgh Sports Connection
Reeger’s Farm
Romeo's
Sanso's
Sears
Wal Mart Blairsville
Thunder Mountain Lenape Nation Festival

.Background:

A small committee was formed to develop the criteria for the awards and the process- we basically started from scratch. We had questions.

What do parents do in Indiana County?  Many are raising young children. Many work. They all shop and many, if not all of them, dine out. And, often they are taking their children with them. So what do they look for? What criteria keeps them coming back?

Who are the businesses, for-profit and non-profit, that Indiana County residents think of when the term “Family Favorite Business” is used?

We researched this topic and came up with five categories and criteria for each. The categories are listed above– Favorite Family Friendly Places to SHOP, DINE, and WORK. Also: Favorite Place that Welcomes Nursing Moms and Favorite Place that Gives Back to the Community.

We developed a nomination survey via the online Survey Monkey site and it went live in January, 2011.  For each of the categories the survey asked essentially the same open ended question: What is the name of your Favorite Family Friendly place to…

It’s important to note that these were open ended questions – we did not have a list and ask people to “pick one”.  For each category we also asked “Which Criteria helped in your decision to nominate this business” and the respondents were also asked to describe their experiences with the establishment.

The nomination survey was publicized in many different ways – the Indiana Gazette,  Renda Broadcasting, via the Department of Human Services e-news, via Community Engagement’s parent e-newsletter and on the Family Fun Fest publicity postcard that went out to 6000 elementary and preschool children.  People also had the option of calling to get a hard copy of the survey if they did not want to use the internet.

As you can see in the list of nominees and honorable mentions there was a good variety within the responses.

The process to select the nominees was based on total number of nominations. We took the top three in each category, more if there was a tie. The winners were selected based on number of nominations, criteria that the respondents used in their decision, and the open ended responses.

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