Healthy Parties Vision

To increase hope and healing (as defined as resiliency toward, awareness of, education of, and desire for health and wellness) in low-income, food insecure areas through positive community events and partnerships with local merchants.

Healthy Party is a concept developed under the Community Outreach arm of design and marketing shop, Ripefruit Creative. In early 2013, when Ubanite Magazine was still printing issues and putting out challenges, they presented a challenge around the fairly unknown term “food deserts”. Healthy Parties began as an exploration into these communities. Exoloring the very core premise that “Food Deserts” was based on, we learned from contextual interviews (during the first two events held) that individuals in the community were rather well read in basic healthy habits and the adverse effects of not eating healthy foods. We also learned that fast food and junk food was so readily available, and seemingly supported, that discouragement and disbelief had taken its toll. There was a feeling that maybe healthy eating was mostly hype, that fighting the genetic predisposition to high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, heart disease and cancer is futile, that they were alone or worse that it was just too hard to do this healthy eating thing. Contrasted to this, in the same “Food Desert” area, is the presence of an active organic, healthy eating, “farm to table” community that is vocal, organized and reinvesting in these “Food deserts”. Some are there for reasons ranging from investment to seeking a more affordable cost of living. From our exploration, we concluded that the food deserts, began in the minds of those suffering it’s effects. That is to say a desire to eat healthy needed to be the start before a demand for access could be addressed. From there we took existing relationships with merchants in these food deserts to organize a day of awareness where merchants could see there was a demand, merchants would demonstrate a willingness to provide something other than the salty, sugar ridden alternative foods for health conscious community members and all community members would understand their buying power.