We have been very lucky this summer to have some wonderful help from community members! The camp would not be the same without them and we appreciate them so much! To show our appreciation we are going to give some of them a big shout out in this post!

First, we have Alice Ammerman who joined us on the last day of Strong Home Camp to help us learn and cook local foods.  Alice is a nutritionist and professor at the School of Public Health at UNC and well known advocate for local foods and the importance of a nutrient rich diet.  We explored the colors of the rainbow in the fascinating food “show-n-tell” that Alice brought, including purple sweet potatoes, stripped beets, and purple cabbage.  The girls learned how to make their very own pesto with fresh basil, olive oil, cheese, and the money saving ingredients – walnuts! Our pesto was eaten with pasta, diced baked potatoes, and a cabbage and local sausage dish.  The meal was finished with some local cantaloupe for dessert.  We were very grateful to have Alice join us and we hope to keep her as a close partner in the future!

We have also had some other wonderful and outstanding volunteers, many who have been with us for more than one day at the camp! Hopefully no one will be left of the list, but we would like to thank Joel, John, Emily, Amanda, Katie, Joe, Rebekah, Jane, Kaleb (and anyone else who has helped the camp run smoothly!).  These volunteers have helped us do activities with the girls including screen printing and upcycling (a wonderful activity where old possessions are dazzled up to make them look like cool, new, possessions that can be reused). We are truly grateful to all these people! THANK YOU! We hope to see many more new volunteer faces next week and at the Strong Neighbor Camp in August!