Food security & access to adequate amounts of healthy food is a real issue for many Wapello County residents.  At fourteen percent, Wapello County has the second highest food insecurity rate in the state.  Because more than 60% of our children are eligible for free or reduced lunches and over 50% of them admit that they eat only 1 serving of vegetables per day; the challenge of food security is calling for our attention. 

 

Growing Wapello Together is an initiative to improve food security.  The effort is currently lead by 14 working members of the Wapello County Food Security Consortium.  There are 66 individuals on the Food Security  Consortium which began meeting in April of 2013. The consortium has moved from learning about the issue to preparing for action! 

 

The Wapello County Food Security Consortium is committed to finding a productive way to address concerns surrounding the issue. To do this, community conversations have been going on during the month of May.  These conversations are led by two trained community members with groups of roughly 6-12 Wapello residents.  The conversations are helping to create awareness, educate and gain input from everyone. Each conversation group meets for a total of 8 hours of conversation time.  At the last meeting the group selects action items to be presented at the Action Summit June 5^th. During the Action Summit the attendees will select the top three items from the 7 group’s presented ideas.  The process is community driven and will determines priorities based on community input. 

The public is invited to attend the Action Summit on June 5th on the Indian Hills College Campus.  This meeting has been designed to integrate all of the Wapello County Community Conversations into action items that we can work on together.  Click here for a printable invitation: June 5th Flyer

 

WHO:                   Wapello County Food Security Consortium – Growing Wapello Together

WHAT:                 Growing Wapello Together Dinner & Action Summit

WHERE:               Rural Health Education Center at Indian Hills Community College                                                               655 Indian Hills Drive

WHEN:                 Thursday, June 5th, 2014 from 5:30 – 8:30 P.M

 

Please RSVP by June 4th if you are interested in attending.  You may register or direct questions to 641-680-6876 or by email at growingwapellotogether@gmail.com.