New Way to Engage Your Clients: Set Up a Challenge!
When was the last time you ran a contest?A contest is a perfect way to boost motivation, increase participant engagement, and improve information retention. That's why I want to share an excerpt from my favorite fruit and vegetable resource, the Fruit and Vegetable Challenge Program. This toolkit, available in the Nutrition Education Store, was designed after we got a reader request, and it's chock-full of fuss-free ways to help people eat more fruits and vegetables. It features 5 different weeklong challenges that incorporate the latest research, fun activities, presentation ideas, and even ways to tie in social media. Each challenge comes with a leader guide, new handouts, recipes, and loads of other information. It's a fantastic resource for any nutrition or health educator.And today you can have a sneak peek, for free!Read on for the complete guide to the fourth week's challenge. Today's post features the leader guide alongside a fantastic progress tracking handout. Members can also access a third handout from this challenge, Why Eat Yellow and Orange Fruits and Vegetables? in an expanded post.Are you ready for this?Leader Guide:The Challenge: Feature Yellow or Orange Fruits or Vegetables in Your Daily Snacks
Challenge Details:Participants will need to incorporate a yellow or orange fruit or vegetable into into their daily snacks this week.There only needs to be one snack per day that features an orange or yellow vegetable or fruit, so other snacks can be unaffected by the contest.Bonus points can go to people who try a different yellow or orange fruit or vegetable each day.Social Media Component:Participants can take photos of their orange or yellow fruit or vegetable snacks and share them through social media in order to inspire their classmates and hold themselves accountable for sticking to the challenge.For Pinterest-centric approaches, set up a “What Does Your Snack Look Like?” board and have participants “pin” images of their snacks or links to recipes.For Facebook, we recommend making a “What Does Your Snack Look Like?” page that everyone can use to post their daily snacks.
In both of these cases, there will be a central place that people can go when they want to view, comment on, or share photos. Both Pinterest and Facebook offer the option to “like” a post as well.For Twitter, we recommend that people tweet their snack photos, but add the hashtag #yelloworangesnack or #snackchallenge. That way, participants can search for that hashtag and see everyone’s progress at once.If photos aren’t an option, people can describe the snacks they’re eating each day.Variations and Additions:Do a cooking demonstration that features the winter vegetable soup in this section. Explain that soup can be a great, nutrient-dense snack. Distribute samples of the finished dish and brainstorm other healthful snack ideas with the class as they eat.Prize Distribution:This contest can have more than one winner. A raffle for an exciting prize may be a perfect solution. You could either award tickets at the end of the week, giving those tickets to the people who completed the challenge for all 7 days, or you could give tickets out daily to all the people who met the challenge that day.Free PDF Handouts:Here's a printable PDF copy of the leader guide you see above. It features details about the challenge itself, incorporating social media, ways to adjust the program, and even a note about prizes for the week. Enjoy!
And, just for an extra boost, here's a free PDF of the challenge's tracking sheet for the week. It offers a great spot for people to track and evaluate their fruit and vegetable snacks throughout the challenge.
Like what you see? Get the whole Fruit and Vegetable Challenge today!We're here to help you look your very best, right now, so here are a few more materials from the Nutrition Education Store.
And don't miss another great handout from the same chapter of the challenge! Why Eat Yellow and Orange Fruits and Vegetables? is a fantastic member-exclusive resource.
