Fran Alloway, R.D., a nutrition and health educator from the Penn State Cooperative Extension of Delaware County, is the head organizer for the Annual Delaware County Hunger Conference. Today she shares with us a guest blog on this year's conference!
On March 1, 2011, The Challenge of Feeding our Diverse Communities in Delaware County was held at Widener University. For the third year, a group of agency staff and individuals organized a conference to give those working with low income clients the tools to address many of the issues faced by those seeking food, food stamps and related services. Our speakers addressed the self sufficiency standard, health literacy, food related health issues faced across the lifespan, ethnic barriers and provided a template to help each client gain access to healthy food.
Many participants reported that it was the best conference yet and I agree. The next morning I was thinking about Captain Jose Santiago’s (Chester Salvation Army) comments about coming to New England in winter from Puerto Rico where life was bustling, food was spicy and church was noisy to a town where no one was seen after the sun went down. I also marveled when Lynn Kugel from PathwaysPA told us that a woman with one child needs to earn over $60,000 to live comfortably. No wonder many of our working poor struggle.
Dr. Mary Powell from Neumann talked about how only 10% of adults read proficiently at a 10th grade level. Many of our handouts and instructions need to account for the lower 30% who have basic or less than basic skills and have difficulty with charts, detailed instructions and too much information. As a health educator, this was important to hear.
A wonderful panel of two medical doctors, a PhD and Outreach director gave us information on nutrition over the lifespan from low birth weight and premature babies to the elderly. Anne Ayella from Nutrition Development Services talked about how the Archdiocese of Philadelphia started offering school lunches, after school snacks and now administers the summer meal program.
Amanda Archibald, who is a food consultant (Field to Plate) gave us a roadmap template to look at our clients (or groups of clients) and assess food resources they possess and what is missing to better meet their needs. This activity challenged our thinking about food resources. Many of our clients need more than a handout of food, although this helps. Can we teach them to mix those canned green beans into a casserole with the pasta and soup? Can we help our ethnic clients to keep the healthy items in their native diet when they adopt an American way of eating?
A good conference makes you think and challenges you to take action. 76% of our attendees listed an action that they plan to take as a result of the conference and 96% said that they would share the information with others. If you didn’t get to the Hunger conference this year, we’ll be sponsoring a 4th annual conference next March.
March is National Nutrition Month – celebrate how good food creates healthy bodies. Let’s help those with limited access to food eat healthy too. A food resource guide can be found at http://www.co.delaware.pa.us/humanservices/emgfood.html
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