WANDA Partners with DC Greens for Community Nutrition Wellness Series

Last month, WANDA: Women Advancing Nutrition Dietetics & Agriculture and DC Greens launched its partnership to deliver the Community Nutrition WELLness series. Together they are providing online and in-person hour-long educational and interactive sessions. Interested registrants can sign up for free.

"Providing cultural nutrition education to our communities is vital to reducing diet-related diseases," said WANDA's Nutrition Advisor, Franciel Ikeji, MS, RDN, LDN.

Supported by nutritionists of color, the sessions cover budget-friendly healthy grocery shopping tips, cooking for your health, and preventing and managing chronic diseases on a budget. Each session is held on the third Saturday of the month from 10:00 am to 11:00 am ET. Priority goes to DC residents, especially in Wards 7 and 8, and participants in the Produce Prescription program using the Fresh Connect cards, which provide monthly monetary allotment for fresh produce at participating grocery stores like Giant.

"We value mission-aligned partnerships to make a collective impact in creating and sustaining healthy communities," said Tambra Stevenson, WANDA's CEO.

"DC Greens is excited to partner with WANDA in providing a Food as Medicine fellow to support the Children and Families Produce Prescription program. This partnership will provide cultural nutrition education programming to families all across the district," Luisa Furstenberg-Beckman, Produce Prescription Program Manager of DC Greens.

The past two monthly sessions covered DASH Diet to address hypertension and faith-based nutrition. Future sessions will be held at The Well in Ward 8 as the weather warms up. Sessions will be recorded and published on DC Green's website.

"Strategic partnerships are critical to high-quality nutrition equity programs. About Fresh is grateful to be tapping into the expertise of WANDA to incorporate cultural nutrition education into the delivery of Fresh Connect alongside DC Greens as we collectively strive to affect a generational shift in health outcomes," said Josh Trautwein, CEO of About Fresh.

Free to register at https://iamwanda.typeform.com/to/V6JKzpF7