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Participate in White House Challenge to End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities: Host a Discussion
As an individual you can host a neighborhood meeting or talk about hunger and health at a Parent Teacher Association meeting. State or local elected officials or Members of Congress can organize a town hall or panel discussion at a local community center, library, or place of worship to hear from their constituents.
Tips to Consider:
- Pull together information or statistics about hunger and diet-related diseases in your local area and share stories of how these issues have impacted individuals within your own community.
Check out some of these resources:
- USDA’s Food Security Key Statistics & Graphics
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CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s Open Data Portal
- CDC’s Nutrition Data & Statistics
- Identify issues such as the safety and accessibility of parks, walking trails, or public greenspaces that might impact opportunities for physical activity and ask the audience to discuss possible solutions.
- Invite panelists and audience members with lived experience and expertise.
- Include representation from different sectors such as academia, State, local, and Tribal government, non-profit, and faith-based organizations to include a broad range of perspectives.
- Select a strong moderator. A strong moderator will bring out invaluable discussion from your guest(s) and will encourage audience participation.
- Incorporate questions from the audience to maximizes engagement and allow the speakers to connect with everyone in the room.
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Ask participants to share stories about programs or ideas that are working well in your community and what things they would like to see improved.
Hosting a discussion can raise awareness of the impact of hunger and diet-related diseases in your community, foster insightful discussion, and, potentially, prompt participation in the White House Challenge. Having an informal conversation with your friends, neighbors, and community members is also a good way to get others involved in thinking about how we can reach the important goal of eliminating hunger and increasing healthy eating and physical activity.
HINT: Perhaps working with another community organization to host a discussion could be less overwhelming and provide for partnership opportunities now and in the future. When possible, be sure to use social media to share pictures and stories of how you are participating in the White House Challenge by using the following tag #WHConfHungerHealth and tagging @WhiteHouse.
View more in the complete White House Challenge to End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities toolkit.
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