Gorham, Maine 04038
kirkjohnb5@gmail.com
www.aokbasicskills.gratis
January 2, 2024
RE: Healthy Foods for Busy People: How to Save Time and Money with “One-Dish Meals,” Easy Recipes, and Cook-Ahead Prep
Dear Education Director:
I’m a semi-retired ESOL teacher over 65 and lived in Ecuador for more than 10 years until September, 2021. I am now living in the Portland, Maine area in the U.S. I am the director of AOK, which is my retirement project and a charitable educational effort and that was connected to my English school in Quito. Before COVID, AOK received 1,000 positive and anonymous evaluations for its presentations in Ecuador.
AOK is not an organization. It’s a project that specializes in providing overview workshops of basic skills related to learning English, native speaker education, and nutrition for needy immigrants and low-income peoples. The workshops connect to archives of basic skill websites free for public use. After a workshop, the participants continue learning through self-study with the websites provided. In Ecuador it was not unusual to find that someone in an extended family could help members access the digital information if this was a problem.
Welcome to the free course Healthy Foods for Busy People. Throughout N. America apart from SNAP (Food Stamps), there are thousands if not millions of people who can use help in buying and preparing healthy food at a reasonable price. I’ve written the course in both English and Spanish and have tried to make it understandable for people without a post-secondary education. Please feel free to use the workshop in any way that might help your program.
This is the first time I have put a course on my website for people who might not be able to receive an overview workshop. In doing so, I have tried to provide basic instructions for accessing the needed digital information.
Workshop summary
The workshop is made up of a PowerPoint presentation that makes key points about providing a healthy diet for yourself and your family and links into basic websites that explain the points in detail.
It provides individuals and families with information to better understand of how they can take advantage of the internet to improve their diet. The workshop includes information on food budgeting, planning and purchasing; avoiding food waste; making quick, economical and nutritious meals in different ways by cooking; and cooking ahead. The participants will be provided with information to help them prepare a simple but healthy two-week rotating menu for their home that can help them save time and money.
Adult Education programs can distribute Sustainable Development Badges
To learn about possibilities of motivating your students through SDG badges, ask Google Gemini “Can an adult education program distribute the Sustainable Development Logo: Version 2, which does not display the United Nations emblem, to their students to accomplish certain academic tasks?”
The long-term purpose of the workshop
About 12.8% of American households have food insecurity (USDA 2022) and about half of the population in the U.S. has poor diets (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 7/20/2020). The long-term purpose of this workshop is to address these issues with practical answers and in so doing contribute to U.N. Sustainable Development Goal No. 2 – Zero Hunger. I have also recently written a letter with suggestions to the SNAP Program, which can be found the Whole Food Workshops section of my website. The UN hopes to reach their 17 sustainable development goals by 2030.
Sincerely,
John B. Kirk, Director
E: kirkjohnb5@gmail.com