We wanted to share this great summary of the season from MaineHealth, one of our Bumper Crop employers. This year they found creative ways to incorporate Bumper Crop into their wider work culture and mission. Read on for some great ideas! Thanks to the MaineHealth team for taking the time to share the impact of Bumper Crop with us!
Hi Jimmy,
Here are some examples around how our team went about utilizing the Bumper Crops this year.
- There were two separate initiatives but the HEAL team was behind both!
- First initiative: We obtained Bumper Crops through MaineHealth Works on Wellness to promote specific opportunities for staff to join at the Market in hopes redemption would happen in the moment. You can see below the offering we promoted for Biddeford. It was a lot of fun and we asked folks to come back to the table and show us what they bought- it was a fun way to engage in additional conversation and catch great photos! At our table we offered general resources from our Community Health Team around healthy eating, active living, and tobacco cessation as well as worksite wellness specific resources for MaineHealth employees and the opportunity to check in at our table to receive their Bumper Crops. We didn’t know what to expect for a turnout rate and it wasn’t crazy high but we were very pleased. Our tobacco team had also worked with the market to adopt a smoke free policy.
MaineHealth employees with their produce purchases!
- We still had several hundred dollars leftover so I used them myself one Saturday in Sanford to support a variety of farmers and purchased items to them bring with me to the Sanford MaineHealth Cafe for a wellness promotion event (photos below) during the lunch hours when staff were coming through. Works on Wellness was promoting a new Espresa app for employees to download and utilize- we decided to attach free produce as an incentive for downloading or showing us their downloaded app. This event was very well received by staff and lots of fun!
- We then used the remaining funds to purchase honey (something that didn’t expire quickly to allow time and capacity for distribution) from the market and those were offered at MaineHealth Biddeford for care team members that also downloaded the Espresa app.
The second Bumper Crop initiative: was through York County Food Council funds.
- We took the same approach as above excpet the target for this was community rather than employees.
- We partnered with various community programs (MaineHealth- HEAL and Tobacco teams, The Basics Sanford, YouthFul Maine, etc.) to be at farmers markets around York County to offer/provide Bumper Crops to community members.
Here’s an example (below) of one of the events I helped plan- I partnered with The Sanford School Department and The Basics program- we had a summer playgroup series we held at various locations over the summer to help promote the free Sanford Summer Meals offerings. One playgroup we held at the Sanford Farmers Market to promote the market, provide resources, taste testing, POP tokens, and Bumper Crops. It was tons of fun with amazing participation from over 40 children and families.
Here’s the recap we had on our Facebook page with photos from the event – feel free to “like” our page if you have not and you can view all of these there as well.
This was another example through the York County Food Council initiative with Reegan and Kelly- this market was a little less populated, but they still had tons of fun. Reegan offered a Boot Camp class, and participants received Bumper Crops to use at the market. Kelly shared healthy eating resources, taste tests, and distributed Bumper Crops to those at the market.
All in all, we had a blast this past year with very successful collaborations and use of Bumper Crops. Our key takeaways:
- We (HEAL team) are planning to create a success story to share with the CDC/Maine Prevention Network.
- We have been in discussion with the WOW Council (I’m the chair) with plans to offer similar things next season.
- We have shared our success with the Works on Wellness Councils at the Corporate level. The other local WOW Council leaders really liked how we offered fresh produce in the café during lunch hours as a way to promote Espresa utilization and how we used an already planned event offering to offer something fun and in person with the music in the park.
- The York County Food Council will review redemptions, successes, challenges, etc and plan discussions for this next season (Kelly chairs that group).
Enjoy the recap- we’re happy to answer any other questions as well as ideas for next season
Thanks for all you do and your support!