An Open Invitation to Engage in CHIP Food Security Work

Good afternoon Buncombe County Food Security Leaders, 

Over the past two years there has been a convening of organizations under the CHIP umbrella leading efforts to eliminate food insecurity within our communities.  We are nearing the end of this CHIP 3-year cycle and, for the first time, our CHIP process is intentionally addressing how to ensure work around current CHIP priorities can continue regardless of what is prioritized for this next cycle.  

A part of this shift, the YMCA of Western North Carolina and ABIPA in partnership with MAHEC and Buncombe County have been tasked with championing efforts moving forward to address diabetes, with the YMCA taking lead on the convening of the Food Security group. With CHIP priorities potentially shifting (deemed CHIP 2.0) this has presented the opportunity to also reconfigure our Food Security Workgroup moving forward while honoring and building upon previous efforts where it makes sense. 

In conversation with several partners, we thought it best to first take a step back from large group meetings to formulate a small Thought Group of community champions to help drive strategic goals, priorities, and structure for our work moving forward. This group began to meet in July and has met several times since to help draft the strategic framework before calling a large, community meeting to present this vision.

After these conversations, we are now ready to re-convene and share what our Thought Group has created as a template moving forward. We will be hosting a work session on January 8th from 9-11 am at MAHEC in the “Blue Ridge B” room within their education building. And yes, there have been several previous dates that have been canceled due to weather and other factors.  

Prior to the meeting we will also be hosting a quick networking and coffee session starting at 8:30am. This will serve as an opportunity to ask any questions from the documents from past work and get settled for our time as a collective group. 

Please RSVP by January 4th to Cory Jackson to ensure that we have an accurate head count. 

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out.

To set the stage for our time next week, HERE are some important documents pertaining to the CHIP work within Food Security over the past few years. We will use this as a starting point for our discussions but we wanted to ensure that everyone had a chance to review prior the meeting. The main page breaks down the history of the work and at the bottom you will find another link connecting to supporting documents. 

As always, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out. 

This is an open invite for anyone who is currently working within food security related work in Buncombe County, please feel free to share with your partners as you see fit but please limit the number of representatives from each agency to 2

Cory Jackson

Director of Nutrition Services