YAY!!!! If you know me you know how much I love to eat & I love outdoor community festivals. Combine them into a FOOD FESTIVAL and you’ve won my heart. One of my FAVORITE outdoor festivals is next weekend – the World Food Festival!
There’s great entertainment, cooking demos and you can learn about non-profit groups and buy some nifty things. But the main thing is the food. Ohhhh the food! It’s amazing. You can eat & eat & eat & eat and still have things left to try! See photos from last year.
It’s free to get in so you MUST wander and enjoy the smells, sounds and sights! Dr. Mortensen in phys/pharm recommends the injira bread with lentils & chicken at the Ethiopian stand. I have a hard time narrowing down my favorite.
If you’ve been before, what is your favorite? If you haven’t been, take a look at the menu & post what you are going to try!
The food festival is actually one part, more of the general public portion, of a much larger annual event, the World Food Prize (WFP) celebration. As a partner to the WFP, DMU has several great things going on along with the celebration you should know about…
1. The great global health conference on campus Oct. 14. This is an annual DMU event; this year we are putting it on with our Heartland Global Health Consortium partners. It’s free to DMU peeps and only $25 to the public. Don’t forget to RSVP!
2. At the World Food Prize events you will be able to snag a copy of Abaton. Abaton is the DMU literary journal. This year’s issue is a specially-crafted global health issue! By the way, you should note that my very first published poem EVER is in this issue. Do not get your hopes up; it’s my first. But everything else in this issue is awe-inspiring, gorgeous & though-provoking — it even contains work by Ambassador Kenneth Quinn from the World Food Prize and Dr. Mario Merialdi, coordinator for maternal and child health at the WHO department of reproductive health and research.
3. To coordinate with the timing of the World Food Prize festivities, DMU has arranged to bring Art 4 Health (A4H) to Iowa. A4H is a traveling art exhibit launched by the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland to increase awareness of global women’s health issues and promote the message that underprivileged women everywhere can work to overcome their circumstances. The exhibit includes paintings of women from around the world. It has been seen in Brazil, Chile, France, India, Ireland, Malaysia, Namibia, South Africa, Switzerland, Tanzania and the United Kingdom. This is the first exhibition showing in the midwest.
The public is invited to view this meaningful art display, split into two groupings, at these locations around Iowa:
• Central College, Oct. 15-20 (1/2 exhibit)
• Drake University, Oct. 15-20 (1/2 exhibit)
• University of Iowa, Oct. 21-29 (1/2 exhibit)
• Simpson College, Oct. 21-29 (1/2 exhibit)
• Iowa State University, Oct. 29-Nov. 3 (1/2 exhibit)
• Des Moines University Library, 3300 Grand Ave., Oct. 29-Nov. 4 (1/2 exhibit)
• Iowa capitol building, Nov. 5 until Nov. 12 at noon (full exhibit)
• Des Moines University Library, Nov. 12 at noon-16 at noon (full exhibit)
Women shouldn’t be dying so often in normal childbirth because they live in a Third World country. Let’s raise awareness of these health issues and work toward empowering all women/
4. Last, but not least, DMU is privileged to host about 115 amazing high school students chosen for the World Food Prize’s Global Youth Institute.The Youth Institute is an annual program for carefully selected students. Eighty percent are from Iowa; five percent are from outside the United States. Students will tour the simulation labs and anatomy lab, hear presentations on global health, medical research and nutrition. Dr. Patrick Kelly of the Institute of Medicine will give the global health presentation.
Photos above were taken by Zink Photography and Randy.
