2025 marks the fifteenth anniversary of The Family Dinner Project, and while we’re celebrating our anniversary, so is one of our community partners! The Purdue Center for Families spent the last year honoring their 30th anniversary with an in-depth, multi-faceted statewide initiative promoting family dinners. While we can’t possibly capture every detail of their extraordinary work here, we wanted to recognize some of the highlights. You can read more about their efforts at these links:
- The Purdue Center for Families Indiana Family Dinner Project
- Center for Families Celebrates 30th Anniversary One Family Dinner Table at a Time
- Indian Creek Teacher Transforms Classroom One Grant at a Time
The Community
The Center for Families worked to bring information and programming around the research-backed benefits of family meals to two different audiences: Their internal community of Purdue faculty, staff, and students; and the broader external community of families across the state of Indiana. The model they created echoes some other statewide initiatives that have benefited from The Family Dinner Project’s partnership and resources over the years, including projects in Massachusetts, Montana, and Idaho. However, Purdue’s project is unique in its sustained scope and plans for future expansion.
The Project
Collaborating with both The Family Dinner Project and the Purdue Cooperative Extension in Health and Human Sciences – a critical partner for the external statewide approach – the Center for Families created a focus group to craft an outreach strategy that would help their family dinner efforts reach all 92 counties in the state of Indiana. To maximize their reach and efficacy, the Center’s outreach focused on a “train the trainers” program, promoted to educators across the state in the fields of Health and Human sciences, Family and Consumer Sciences, and SNAP education. The program was also marketed to Homemakers clubs, community wellness coordinators, and Expanded Food and Nutrition Advisors. Every program participant had access to training materials and support from The Family Dinner Project, including a keynote address by Dr. Anne Fishel entitled “Building Connection One Table at a Time: How and Why Professionals Who Work with Families Can Harness the Benefits of Family Dinners.”
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(L-R) Dr.Melissa Franks, CFF Director; Joyce Beery Miles, Center for Families Advisory Council Chair; and an Indiana FCS teacher (name unknown).
Through outreach and promotional efforts at 4 state conferences for these professional communities, the Center for Families was able to reach 500-600 potential participants and track their signups. As of this writing, 82 of the 92 counties in the state of Indiana have participants in the Center’s efforts to promote family meals to their communities. 111 individual participants in those counties have started a wide variety of unique initiatives, reaching families via food pantries, demonstration programs, parent and family programming such as Parents Forever co-parenting classes, newsletters, and other communication and resource-sharing projects.
Meanwhile, on the Purdue campus, the Center for Families crafted a “Building Belonging – One Table at a Time” campaign. Through campus-wide collaborations with Student Life, University Residences Dining and Catering, Parent/Family Connections, student leadership, and the Fraternity, Sorority, and Cooperative Life membership, the campaign offered resources such as expansive conversation starters and table tents promoting connection at shared meals. The goal was to support and encourage participation in eating together as a community, highlighting the benefits of shared meals and making them fun and rewarding.
The Takeaways
The Center for Families and their statewide partners have begun collecting survey data and measuring community responses to the project. Educators and participants across the state agree that they are enjoying The Family Dinner Project resources, especially conversation starters. Extension educators also report that The Family Dinner Project materials have increased family engagement and enhanced their community relationships. Those who have used the resources in programming directly with children and teens say that the participating students have a greater awareness of the importance of family dinners and are sharing the information with others. “I really enjoyed hearing the kids talk and engage during our family meal (event),” one educator remarked. Another participant praised the materials, saying,
“These are wonderful, high-quality resources I don’t have to vet, seek, or create myself.”
The Next Steps
The Center for Families isn’t done with their Family Dinner Project yet! They’re seeking ways to continue to measure their impact and build on their many successes. Currently, students from the Student Life group are working on a research project that will measure the campus-wide impacts of the shared meals programming on community wellbeing. The Center for Families and their partners at the Purdue Cooperative Extension are also seeking expanded opportunities to bring the program to more partners across the state, as well as to share the model with organizations in other states who could potentially replicate the project in their own communities.
Would you like to learn more about the Purdue Center for Families initiative, or other ways you might be able to bring The Family Dinner Project to your community? Contact us.