
Community-Facing Products
In collaboration with our community members and partners, we have created a variety of products to inform, educate, and report on project progress and accomplishments!
Learning about healthy eating
In partnership with student interns from the Child Hunger Initiative, our team developed a short nutrition booklet to introduce the importance of nutrition for the growth, development, and overall health of young adults. The booklet also contains example low resource recipes that young adults can try!
"Our hope is that you have enough information to make the best, healthiest choices with what you have available. We hope you prioritize yourself, and your health and do your best to follow a healthy eating pattern because you are worth it!"

Participatory Grantmaking (PGM)
2023 Partner Updates
In an effort to keep everyone who participated in the PGM process during the 2023-2024 inaugural cohort connected and updated on the progress of the garden partners, we out together short summaries of each of the 8 garden partner's work during the growing season. Updates includes points of progress, upcoming plans, quotes from partners, and photos taken during site visits! This new PGM program, which is an effort to shift funding and decision-making power to our community partners, has been a huge learning process for the FFORC team as well as our partners. We look forward to continuing to learn and grow together as partners in our upcoming.

*Check out PGM project page for more information HERE
Photo Voice with
Fairview Youth in Action

In 2024, the FFORC team involved Fairview Youth in Action interns in a participatory research method called "Photo Voice." Through photography, the interns documented their lived experiences and unique perspectives on opportunities and barriers to physical activity in their neighborhood. Their photos and observations were compiled into a booklet to be shared with neighbors, local organizations, and city government officials. This effort aims to advocate for changes needed to create a healthier, safer, and more active Fairview community.
*Check out the Communities on the Move project page for more information HERE
Community Voice
Centering community voice is an equity imperative when partnering and implementing community-based programs, especially for those communities most affected by systemic inequities. In an effort to learn about the experiences of partners and participants working engaged in local programs, during the summer of 2023, the FFORC Team adapted two Community-based participatory research (CBPR) qualitative approaches, Most Significant Change and the Sort and Sift, Think and Shift qualitative data analysis, with the objective to understand the most significant or meaningful aspects of the programs personally and in their communities. The following projects participated, and links to the findings are provided in English & Spanish.

Activate! : Fairview Active Living Plan 2022-2027
In the Fairview Youth in Action program, a program sponsored by the Fairview Community Watch (FCW), the UNC Food, Fitness and Opportunity Research Collaborative (UNC FFORC), Habitat for Humanity of Orange County (Habitat), and with support from Mobycon, have worked to promote active living in their neighborhood. Over the past four summers, high-schooled-aged Fairview residents assessed neighborhood barriers to healthier lifestyles through a series of mapping and assessment exercises, interviewed community stakeholders, and gained input from the wider community through outreach and advocacy events. The Fairview Youth in Action interns applied what they learned to create the Activate: Fairview Active Living Plan 2022-2027 (“Activate”). This youth-driven, community-engaged plan outlines goals, objectives, and recommendations to improve the neighborhood.
Orange County Food Council
This Community Food Access Report summarizes an assessment process that began late in 2021 and finished in July 2022. The purpose of this assessment was to focus on the expertise and experiences of those most impacted by food insecurity. We intentionally avoided more traditional assessment practices such as surveys or an over-reliance on quantitative data. Instead, our focus was on listening to the community and honoring their experiences as subject-matter expertise.
In 2021, the Orange County Board of County Commissioners requested a more data-informed policy to address food insecurity in the area, leading to a collaborative report between the FFORC team and the Orange County Food Council. The report involved consulting with community experts, those with lived experience of food insecurity, and it provides policy recommendations such as improved language translation services, more options for food delivery, and deeper economic investments to end hunger in the local community. The Orange County Community Food Access Assessment was completed in September 2022 and presented to the Board of County Commissioners.
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Unfortunately, after presenting the report, The Orange County Board of Commissioners defunded the Food Council in Orange County in December 2022.