Challenge yourself to eat only locally grown food for the World Food Day weekend or, if you’re feeling more ambitious, the week leading up to World Food Day. Get your friends and family involved. Get together to plan your meals, do your shopping, and support your local economy.

Blog, tweet, and post about the farmers who grew your food, the food you grew yourself, and the recipes you used for the challenge. Describe the unexpected joys and obstacles you encountered along the way.

Ask friends and family members to sponsor you per meal or per day to stick to the challenge and donate the proceeds to your local food bank or community gardening network.

Investigate joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program for next year.

Checklist

• Electronic promotional materials: use Facebook, email, listservs, Twitter, and other forms of social media to promote your event.
• Information on Food Bank or Community Garden: to explain why people should donate.
• Task Checklist: to make sure you did everything you needed to do (You might want to print this page).

Timeline

5 weeks before the event:

• Contact the organization you may wish to support to find out what kind of help they need.
• Decide on a day and location for your action/event.

4 weeks before the event:

• Locate your farmers markets and contact local farmers to let them know and begin researching seasonal recipes that will take advantage of the local fare.

3 weeks before the event:

• Encourage friends and family members who have already expressed an interest in getting more people on board to participate.
• Set up your blog site (or use facebook) and tell your friends via social media about your plans and ask for suggestions.

2 weeks before the event:

• Get your participants excited about the challenge they are participating in.
• Call all your partner organizations and check in about your plans for the next week.
• Begin blogging, tweeting, and posting about what you expect eating locally for the length of the challenge will be like.

Week of the event/action:

• Confirm with all attendees their participation in the challenge and what is expected of them.
• Blog, Tweet, and Post your event.

Week after the event/action:

• Contact the organization you were supporting and ask for feedback.
• Thank all participants and ask them for their stories (we want to hear about it too).
• Thank all sponsors and ask them what they thought of the action/event.

Share your thoughts about the event and moving forward on your blog, facebook, or twitter account.