Connecting with Community – new video and toolkit released
Hear it best from your fellow food councils in this short video below:
NC Food Councils 2017 Public Forums
Food councils are creating cross-sector dialogue around health, jobs, and land preservation all through connections to food. They are using public forums as a way to bring people together, have these conversations, and get input from the broader community. These forums increase community buy-in, help raise awareness of the food council, and get new volunteers or members. Many new food councils use community or public forums as an outreach opportunity to launch their new food council. We’re releasing two new resources to help councils think creatively and strategically about using community forums as an opportunity to connect with the community.
This video highlights experiences from three food councils that hosted public forums in the spring of 2017. Each of these food councils decided to host multiple events in different parts of their community to encourage more participation and input.
- Capital Area Food Network hosted multiple public forums to get input on the Wake County Food Security Plan.
- Orange County Food Council hosted two public forums to encourage community members to apply for three open seats on their food council and to encourage new participation and direction on their action circles, Food Access and Local Food Economy.
- Pitt County Farm & Food Council used their public forums to raise awareness of their newly launched food council and encourage community members to apply to join the council.
Here’s a printable version of this piece.
Public forum Toolkit
Community Food Strategies also created a public forum toolkit to support food councils with logistics and promotion of these events. The toolkit provides an outline of the actions and timeline a planning team needs to manage in order to coordinate a successful event, including promotion, budget, volunteers, and follow up tasks.
If you have questions or need support hosting a community forum for your food council, feel free to contact us at communityfoodstrategies@gmail.com.