Returning to Our Story
It’s been a while since I wrote the last segment of our story; we’ve been busy, and I’ve also taken some time to reflect on our strategy for 2024.
Today, I’d like to talk a little more about the next iteration of our immersion program. As many of you know, we’ve done immersions in diverse communities, including rural towns in North Carolina, a small Cajun community in the swamp country of southwest Louisiana, a rural town on the plains of northern Indiana, and a bustling Dominican immigrant community in New York City. All of this led us to the live-in immersion in Greensboro, NC that we documented in our award-winning film, From Food to Freedom.
As you may have heard, we’re now planning an in-person, 4-day immersion in March at Lake Junaluska, NC (CampbellRetreats.com). This event is intended to put people on a path to healing, which they can continue to travel when they return home, hopefully with the support of a partner.
In From Food to Freedom, we demonstrated the dramatic healing power of plant-based nutrition, but also showed the difficulties people face as they transition to this new lifestyle. We’ve found one of the most effective keys to success is the support of others. And for this reason, we’re encouraging people who attend our immersion to come with another person who can provide support and accountability when they return home.
Our intention is to offer these immersions regularly, and to use them in a strategic way. For example, most employers don’t know that they can slash their health insurance costs by introducing their employees to plant-based nutrition, and then providing financial, food, and social support to employees wanting to make this change. We’d love to introduce decision-makers at employer organizations to this idea by engaging them in our immersion program so they can witness and experience the healing power of a plant-based diet. We also could create inspiring examples to sow seeds of change in any organization providing a plant-based wellness program by inviting employees with chronic conditions to participate in our programs at Lake Junaluska.
Another potential strategic use of the immersion program involves a novel strategy for penetrating our healthcare system with a food-as-medicine clinical model. This is an idea I’ll share in our next newsletter.
In the meantime, if you’ve not done so already, I encourage you to check out our upcoming immersion at CampbellRetreats.com. And as a footnote, we’re donating all income from this next event to our nonprofit PlantPure Communities.
Nelson