Wiisinaadaa: Let's Eat
Wiisinadaa: Let's Eat! is a community-based and Indigenous-specific diabetes prevention program that seeks to improve health outcomes for urban Indigenous people of all ages by increasing access, knowledge and skills related to healthy eating, preparing nutritious and traditional foods, and Indigenous ways of knowing.
Program Objectives
• To provide and increase access to nutritious and traditional foods that contribute to improved health outcomes in Friendship Centre communities;
• To address food insecurity through the establishment of long-term, self-sustaining food practices and partnerships in Friendship Centre communities;
• To build skills, knowledge, attitudes and values around healthy eating, diabetes and chronic disease prevention and management, and local Indigenous food systems within the Friendship Centre and community;
• To promote cultural revitalization and preservation through enduring access to traditional and nutritious food sources for urban Indigenous people; and, To increase Indigenous control over the design, development, delivery and evaluation of programing that impacts incidence of diabetes and chronic diseases for Indigenous people.
Program Activities
The Wiisinadaa: Let's Eat! program is delivered through a combination of direct-service user activities, participant-based activities, and coordination activities.
• Food/meal provision through food banks, food boxes, community meal programs, food vouchers, etcetera with an educational component and emphasis on healthful choices
• Life skills activities like cooking classes, budgeting classes, nutrition classes, canning, drying and preserving, etcetera that empower direct-service users to lead healthy lifetyles that are sustainable;
• Land-based activities (i.e. hunting, fishing, trapping, berry picking, gardening, harvesting, etcetera) and related traditional teachings; and,
• One-to-one system navigation supports.
