A Community Conversation event took place at the Paisley Community Center on Monday, April 18 to discuss food accessibilities and various ways for improvement, with eight citizens attending from Paisley and one from Summer Lake.
Sharon Thornberry, the rural community liaison from Oregon Food Bank who developed the Food, Education, Agriculture Solutions Together (FEAST) event, which was the model of the evening, was present to help facilitate with Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) worker Emmie Harcourt and Community Health Improvement Partnership (CHIP) Dir. Meera Norris.
The meeting started with a mapping exercise as participants showed the places they get food on a map of the Paisley area. These included places like stores, restaurants, gardens, neighbors who they share with, hunting among others.
Norris asked a few questions about healthy eating for a Community Health Assessment. Participants gave consensus that it can be expensive to eat healthy in the area. They also noted that there is a lack of education about how to go about it. Harcourt asked question about challenges and opportunities in the local food system. They continued with what most affects people’s abilities to get food and what kinds of programs or resources they would like to see in the area. Responses included the cost, distance, fixed and season incomes and transportation as the most significant challenges. It was also said the biggest opportunities were the number of people who produce their own food and the sharing/helping neighbors occurs in the community.
A strength discussed was the Paisley School lunch program. This is a volunteer run program that is not part of the federal school lunch program. The program’s cook, Sheila Stephens, said she was able to increase the amount of vegetables students eat and has received a lot of community support.
Thornberry mentioned the lunch program in Paisley may be used by Oregon Food Bank as a model for other rural schools without lunch programs across the state. There was also interest in increasing education opportunities for cooking, preserving, gardening, and nutrition. They also want to create a Facebook group where people could share excess garden produce/ask questions about gardening. Plus getting more people involved in the garden which was recently started at the forest service facility.
For more information, contact Harcourt at 541-947-2114.
Originally Published in Lake County Examiner
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