Summer Harvest Festival Community Event

[healthysolutions]

Greetings all,

Healthy Solutions and some of our partners, including, Washington Parks and People are hosting a Summer Harvest Festival on Saturday July 10, 2010. The event is being held at Washington Parks and People Riverside Center / Marvin Gaye Park in Ward 7, DC (5200 Foote Street NE, Washington DC 20019).

Our theme is: Let's Move! Our Future, Our Food, and Our Health.

Events and informational booths:

•Farmers Market

•Our first annual Ultimate Salad Competition (will team youth together to create the Ultimate Salad - with judges and prizes)

•Walking trail to health (with food and health tips down the WPP bike trail)

•Food Tasting

•Cooking demos

•"Healthy snacks for healthy futures" demos

•How to shop healthy on a budget demos

•A dedication to George Washington Carver (as his birthday is the 12th of July) to teach youth about the history of agriculture and food in the African American community

•How to start a container garden hands on demonstration booth

•Let's Move! toolkits and how to's for community based and faith based organizations

•How to access healthy affordable food east of the river demos

•Managing our health demos

•Health screenings

•And much, much more

However, we experiencing some setbacks. A partner who was to be a large financial contributor (to make the event run smoothly with staff, manpower, media, print material, website, rewards, health related booths and many other things) will not be able to make that investment at this time.

The Summer Harvest Festival will still take place for our community members! So I am asking for anyone with time, and resources of all kind to help! If you know anyone who can help the day of, or the day before, bring supplies, or help in any capacity- even sponsor become a sponsor - that is what we need. Contact us ASAP!

We are looking for people to help with booths, and volunteer to keep things running smoothly. We need tents, tables, and chairs. We need healthy food options for samples, water, cups, plates, utensils, napkins. We need professionals: chefs, physical fitness instructors, sound and AV technicians, and health professionals. We need materials for the booths, such as container gardening equipment, soil, organic seeds, and we also need materials printed. For our Ultimate Salad Competition we need things like shirts of various colors to divide the teams, rewards for all the youth, ways to advertise the "winning salad", platters for presentation to the judges, and bowls and utensils to build the salads. We are also looking for farm animals and equipment so that our youth can see things from farms.We need assistance before the event: getting the word out, writing press releases, putting it in the community section of all newspapers, passing out flyers, and getting radio stations out to the even. Even if it's not listed we still need it!

Our overall goal is to give our community the hands-on tools they need to help themselves and put themselves on a path to better health, now!

So if anyone can help, email me or call me. No assistance is too small - we need it all!

If anyone is interested in hosting booths, let us know too!

Feel free to forward!

Thanks and let's move- for our community!

Tanikka