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Harvest Against Hunger Capacity VISTA Rachel Ryan serves at Northwest Harvest, an independent state-wide hunger relief organization with headquarters in Seattle, WA. Northwest Harvest delivers free food to more than 360 food bank and meal programs across the state, 70% of which is fruits and veggies. In an effort to expand the amount and the variety of fresh produce food programs receive, Northwest Harvest launched their Growing Connections program. Now in its third year, Growing Connections has reached over ten counties across the state, helping to provide the necessary tools and resources to assist communities with launching their own ‘Farm-to-Food Program’ (F2FP) initiatives.

The Growing Connections team, in partnership with WSU Extension King County, visited Port Angeles on November 9th to present a train-the-trainer workshop to members of the Clallam County community. Clallam has been one of Growing Connections’ focus regions for the past eight months, and this was the third workshop that the Team has organized in the region. Clallam is also the home of the Peninsula Food Coalition, another Harvest Against Hunger VISTA (Juliann Finn), and an innovative WSU Extension office. The Peninsula Food Coalition, founded in 2016, works to increase healthy food access across Clallam County, where most residents live in food deserts. One of the areas the Coalition and previous Growing Connections workshop attendees are focusing on is increasing the knowledge of and access to fresh fruits and vegetables at community food banks – something with which the Growing Connections team was able to assist!

One benefit of Growing Connections’ partnerships across Washington is the ability of the program to collect and pass along best practices, innovative ideas, and new resources to interested partners. One of the recent developments they’d been following was an exciting new workshop being developed by the South King County Food Coalition and WSU Extension King County. This workshop focuses specifically on arming community volunteers with the information they need to get a food demonstration program started at their local food banks. 12 participants attended the November 9th workshop, including food bank staff and volunteers, WSU Extension staff, and staff from various civic-minded community organizations.

The training was dynamic and involved two recipe tastings: a green smoothie and a three-bean salad, both of which were received well by the group. Since the workshop last week, Juliann Finn, the Harvest Against Hunger VISTA stationed in Clallam, has reported that volunteers from two of the participating food banks are moving on the momentum of the workshop to start their own food demonstration programs. This is welcome news, especially considering workshop attendees will be receiving free demonstration starter kits in December from Growing Connections. The Growing Connections team has their fingers crossed that Clallam food bank clients will be ringing in the holidays Grinch-style with green smoothies while they shop at their neighborhood pantries!