Last year, Billy, Kathleen and I launched the Blog for Family Dinner project with the idea that we would create a platform to celebrate the benefits of family dinner, while being honest about its challenges. We invited a wide array of bloggers, educators, parents, public health researchers and good food advocates to share stories and insights about family dinner. By presenting personal stories, empathetic advice and easy, but delicious recipes that could be accomplished on a weeknight (!), we hoped to inspire more families to make family dinner a priority in their busy lives.
The support and enthusiasm we received was, and continues to be, amazing. We first expected to publish only a few posts a week in the fall of 2011, as a way to celebrate and bookend the Family Day and Food Day events. As the entries to Blog for Family Dinner came flooding in, we had the wonderful problem of so much great material to work with! We selected posts for everyday of the week through our Month of Family Dinners 2011, even posting on Saturday and Sunday! We kept publishing new stories and perspectives around themes, like Kids in the Kitchen and All Kinds of Families, through the rest of the year and into the early summer of 2012. Overall, we had close to 100 posts from almost as many bloggers. You can see our hit-parade of great participants here. It has been a lot of fun to hear so many different voices in the choir for family dinner. Most importantly, we have learned from each other ways to make family dinner “work” without the unnecessary demand of trying to be “perfect.”
This month Kathleen, Billy and I have reflected on some of the most resonant lessons from our B4FD posts. We want to continue to support this great community as well as move forward with our own projects, be they centered around the dinner table or families and their well-being more broadly. Going forward, we will be communicating mostly through our Blog for Family Dinner Facebook page. We will continue this blog for special events and notices that require more in-depth writing or discussion. Thank you so much for your support this past year. We hope you will join us on Facebook and help us keep the family dinner conversation going!
From the Blog for Family Dinner Founders:
Grace R. Freedman, Eatdinner.org, Facebook, Twitter @eatdinner
Billy Mawhiney, Time at the Table, Facebook, Twitter @timeatthetable
Kathleen Cuneo, Dinner Together, Facebook, Twitter @dinnertogether
The Blog for Family Dinner Facebook community can be found here or follow us on Twitter @blog4famdinner
Please be sure to like the Blog for Family Dinner Facebook page and to also follow each of our individual organizations as we will keep you posted about family dinner news and other relevant information about kids, healthy eating and related issues.
