Partners with a role to play in Community Dinners include:

• Participatory Budgeting Delegates (lead)
• Committee for Activity and Nutrition Members (lead & support)
• Smartstart Partnership for Children (support)
• United Way of Henderson County (support)
• Pardee UNC Healthcare (support)
• Henderson County Cooperative Extension (support)
• Mills River Farm Market (support)

Community Dinners were identified by the Committee for Activity and Nutrition (CAN) and the CAN Participatory Delegates as an action, that when combined with other actions in our community, has a reasonable chance of making a difference in physical activity and nutrition in Henderson County. This is a new program in our community.

Through action planning with both CAN as a whole, and the Participatory Budgeting Group, community dinners were identified as a way to build social connections, promote opportunites for healthy eating and active living, decrease social isolation, and share information. Ongoing engagement with diverse community members through purposeful meals is an important way to build a strong base of people who can increase access to healthy foods through mutual aid.

The customers for Community Dinners are all community members with an interest in sharing food together, and the strategy aims to make a difference at the interpersonal and community levels. Implementation will take places in trusted community spaces across the county.

Community Dinners was selected as a new strategy in late 2022 as a way to build social connections, healthy eating opportunities, and information sharing. Grounded in a root analysis, the Committee for Activity and Nutrition focused on the need to build slowly the base of resilient community relationships that make good health possible. Learn more about CAN's Action Planning process, with research evidence for this strategy, HERE.

Kicking off in 2023, there will be three active community dinner groups, one for Latino community members, one for grandparents raising grandchildren (Grand Blessings), and the third a more general group. Performance measure data and Story Behind the Measure will be reported for this strategy throughout the next year, and in the 2023 SOTCH.

Community Dinners began with GrandBlessings, a community group/dinner for grandparents raising grand children, and continued throughout 2023.  Data on these Community Dinners has not been reported back to the Committee for Activity and Nutrition Action Team.