VOTE TODAY for the Little Red Wagon!

[Lucia Leone]

Voting closes today!  Vote for this UNC student-led project to bring fruits and veggies to underserved neighborhoods.  CNP hopes to work with this group in the future to help make their idea sustainable.

 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Linden Elder <linde...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 12:43 PM
Subject: VOTE NOW for the Little Red Wagon!
To:


Hello to all of you (please pass it on to EVERYONE you can)!

 

The Little Red Wagon (LRW) is a UNC-CH student-led project that needs your votes and support all week long as we vie for the $5000 prize from the Institute of Emerging Issues. The challenge to student teams is to design a sustainable, replicable program that combats the rising rates of childhood obesity here in North Carolina. We made it through the first round - help send us to the top by casting your vote at http://www.ncsu.edu/iei/?page_id=842. The winner will be announced at the "26th Annual Forum: An Idea Exchange for Healthcare" on Tuesday February 8th (guests include NC Governor Bev Perdue and CNN's Sanja Gupta). You can vote all week long so start now and spread the word!

 

For more information on our project, see below.

 

Cheers

The Little Red Wagon Team

UNC - Chapel Hill

 

 

The Little Red Wagon

Four months of planning culminated in the design for a mobile market that brings delicious fresh produce at affordable prices to food deserts and other communities with few resources and limited access to food.  Myriad problems underlie the childhood obesity epidemic, but low fruit and vegetable consumption is directly correlated with increased weight in children. The truck sources produce from farmers, the Carrboro Farmers Market, and other grocery stores and local produce suppliers to provide a steady stream of produce to families and kids who need it most. The market staff are volunteers to keep overhead costs down - staff provide taste testing and recipe demonstrations to engage neighbors in healthy cooking; in exchange, volunteers gain valuable experience in local food production, distribution, and business.

 

In addition, our mobile market rolls in with music, sports equipment, and a games director to engage children in physical activity and fun movement while their parents shop and visit. Physical inactivity is another key contributor to childhood overweight and obesity - our market seeks to take on the epidemic with diet and exercise change simultaneously because we understand that unhealthy food and inactivity are both adding inches to our waistlines.

 

The LRW will begin as a simple hitch attached to a standard non-commercial vehicle, pulling in every Saturday afternoon to our pilot site in Rogers Road. The families in this community are already excited about the prospect of accessible, affordable healthy food - their children even helped us make our YouTube pitch! But we do not plan to stop there: we are applying for larger grants so that we can purchase a truck to expand our capacity to serve other communities and larger evaluation projects. The market includes biannual evaluation to improve on our community service here at the local level, and beyond. 

 

By year two, we also hope to provide EBT access through a partnership with the local farmers market.

There are no easy answers, no simple solutions to the childhood obesity problem here in North Carolina. But the combined effects of many grassroots efforts can have far-reaching consequences for our communities.

 

Thanks for your support! If you have questions about the project, want to see the full grant proposal, or are just excited about the idea, feel free to email linde...@gmail.com.

 

--
Linden M. Elder

Doctoral Student, Intervention and Policy, UNC-CH

email: linde...@gmail.com
mobile: 301.461.7838

The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.
~Japanese Proverb