The PlantPure Communities Oasis Jumpstart Program
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PROGRAM OVERVIEW
The PlantPure Oasis Jumpstart Program offers healthy meals and nutrition education in low-income communities, food deserts, and other underserved neighborhoods to people who otherwise would not have access and/or could not afford it. The Program offers participants the opportunity to learn about the benefits of a plant-based diet, while enabling them to experience firsthand the powerful health impacts. The 2016 Pilot Oasis Pilots are modeled on the Jumpstarts conducted in Mebane, North Carolina, that were documented in the film PlantPure Nation. The Jumpstart program has been fully validated — the majority of participants in the Mebane Jumpstart who were on prescription drugs were able to reduce or discontinue those medications after just 10 days, and many people with diabetes, high lipids, arthritis and other chronic conditions found relief by the end of the program.
Through the Oasis Program, PlantPure Communities (PPC) is working with faith-based groups, food banks, businesses, government entities, health systems, and local nonprofits to carry out neighborhood-wide Jumpstarts that are affordable and can be cross-subsidized. PPC is also working to establish a system that allows people to use SNAP benefits (aka food stamps) to pay for the food. Also underway are efforts to establish programmatic sources for financial support that will flow from external resources to provide long-term support for the Oasis neighborhoods.
An underlying tenet of the Oasis Program is to use the 10-day Jumpstart as the catalyst to attract and deliver a large, cooperative set of activities all working synergistically to achieve lasting change in the health and well-being of the participants and community. While it is anticipated that participants will be inspired to make changes when they see the biometric data that proves the powerful benefits of eating plant-based in just 10 days, other elements are also being built into the Oasis Program that will improve the likelihood of success in the short-term and lasting change over the long-term. We have identified the following supplemental programmatic activities and services as being potentially important to the participants and their communities:
- Training in urban farming/gardening
- Providing access to farmers markets
- Instruction in mindfulness-based stress reduction
- Access to whole food, plant-based (WFPB) school meals
- Whole food, plant-based (WFPB) nutrition classes, cooking demos, and grocery shopping tours
- WFPB lifestyle support groups
- Workshops on goal-setting and financial literacy
- Effective Communications and Human Relations Workshop
- Physical fitness/movement
PPC is working to implement these activities with an eye toward replicability in order to build stronger, healthier, and more sustainable communities in neighborhoods across America. Find out more about PPC, the Oasis Program, and how you can help us deliver the health message to those who need it most by visiting plantpurecommunities.org.
Doc date: November 2016