On Tuesday evenings, people from across the City of Philadelphia gather in the name of one thing: nutrition. They exchange stories of sharing recipes with family members and preparing the week’s featured meal. The room erupts into collective delight as one member shares pictures of last night’s dinner.
This is a scene from Episcopal Community Services’ (ECS) Feed Your Potential 365 Club (FYP365), a nutritional health and wellness group where members develop skills towards building a healthy and happy life. The club meets once a week and typically features lessons about fueling the body, facts about various health topics, and recipe demonstrations.
“Food opens up discussion.” - Yessy Maldonado
The facilitator of the FYP365 Club is Yessy Maldonado, a community health and wellness professional who guides the weekly program through presentations and conversations. She is on a quest to build communities around nourishing foods and sustainable exercise.
Yessy started her career as a Food Stamp Specialist with the Coalition Against Hunger and quickly discovered her passion for community and education. She calls ECS one of her homes because of the caring and thoughtful people that it brings together.
Yessy’s Quick Tips for a Healthier Life
- Prepare your meals in advance of the week. It will help you stay on track and save you a lot of money.
- Flavor is a learned behavior. Try new things and discover what you like.
- Read the labels. The extra seconds will help you make better decisions about the food you prepare.
- Reduce what you do not need. Cut extra salt and sugar and instead add herbs and spices.
The FYP365 curriculum includes lessons on mindfulness, exercise, and nourishment in an accessible way for all participants. Every FYP365 session starts with conversation. Yessy loves to talk with participants and discover their passions for food. She says that it helps her to tailor the program to the people in the room and maximize impact.
The seasonal program culminates in a Cook Off competition between participants. Members from the club come together at ECS’ St. Barnabas Community Resource Center to prepare the best dish with a set of predetermined ingredients. The food from this event is donated to the community, and the competition winners receive prizes.
The most recent champion of the FYP365 Cook Off is Sheila Cunningham, a Mount Airy resident who came to the program from ECS’ Parent Connection series. Sheila loves to cook and when she heard there was a program dedicated to healthy eating and living, she could not resist. She finds that FYP365 is an environment where she can openly express herself and her love of health and wellness.
Sheila’s winning dish was a salad topped with fruit and a fresh vinaigrette on the side. While she started the competition just to have fun, she quickly found herself wanting to win and present the best food that she could. She put extra effort into making sure that the dish was beautiful as well as delicious.
“Good food must be as pleasing to the eye as it is to the palate.” - Sheila Cunningham
The hard work paid off. When she is not dazzling the judges with her culinary prowess, Sheila spends her time gardening. She loves to grow fresh fruits and vegetables to use in her FYP365 recipes. She often has too much and finds herself gifting much of her harvest to friends and neighbors.
The goal of FYP365 is to create communities around healthy and joyful living. Through education, conversation, and demonstration, FYP365 challenges the effects that intergenerational poverty has on health and wellness one recipe at a time.
The FYP365 Club is a part of ECS’ Health and Wellness Program, spearheaded by Pamela Egleston, Director of Health and Wellness Programming. To get involved, sign up here.