In June, we set a goal to complete a Honors in Action (HiA) project as a regional team. As we were researching key issues, we discovered a common thread on our campuses and others identified through national studies to be inadequate access to nutritious food. According to our research, this thread appeared to stem from lack of financial resources, nutritional education, and time, causing more people to turn to cheap, fast food. To resolve this problem, we determined what resources were already available to students on campuses across the Minn-Kota Region. Our last step is to share these underutilized resources to the region.

Minn-Kota Region: Food Resources

Additionally, we developed a nutrition awareness kit called the Apple Box, which we successfully ran at Normandale Community College. The kit consisted of handing out apples, and a pamphlet, that contains simple, everyday recipes using apples, to not only provide students with a healthy snack in their day, but a way to start transforming their diet without spending a lot of money, without wasting time, and without needing to search online to find healthy meal choices. We encourage the use of this idea at all your campuses within college guidelines.

Apple Box Pamphlet

Although we ran into obstacles along the way and were unable to enact certain portions of our plan, we would like to continue to challenge each of your chapters. Use the Apple Box kit at your campus and share the results of the project with us or develop a program on your campus that addresses the three reasons we identified as preventing community college students from accessing healthy food. You do not have to create a brand-new program if that is out of your reach, so we would highly suggest partnering with an existing organization as an alternative. We would love to learn more about your experiences with HiA too, so please feel free to share with us.

Thank you for your support and participation in this project!