Summer 2026 Issue

Building a Culture of Abundance Through Family Outreach Workshops
By Michelle Vandepol
Social Work Today
Vol. 26 No. 3 P. 22

Community workshops offering food, entertainment, and more help fill gaps in services for families.

As an educator engaged in supporting food security and community development, I have found the biggest need when addressing community poverty and lack of equity between student experiences, especially during school closure periods, is to address the morale of students and their families to keep up learning and engagement in these periods of additional stressors. Community workshops with a learning focus that includes food access are a helpful and welcome response to this need.

Background: Rural Community School Closure Period Needs in Western Canada
For many families who rely on school food programs, school closure periods both put additional stress on the family resources as well as highlight the student engagement needs that also are additional demands on the family. Free community workshops held in parks, libraries, and community centers create a sense of community abundance through programming, resources, and connection that can keep students engaged, and families supported over school holiday closures.

By making themselves familiar with programs that serve their families in the community and in schools, social workers can help families connect by taking the guesswork out of what food programs are available at the school and community level. Often families are unsure whether they qualify and feel reluctant to reach out and confirm this. They may have also had previous bad experiences with program access, and the social worker can serve as an advocate and support for their inclusion.

The Problems Facing Students During School Closures
During the school year, there are both formal school food programs in place as well as informal school food connectors such as counsellors, school secretaries, and educational aides. As Cohen et al note, nutritious school meals have positive impacts on everything from school attendance to school performance.1

Winter holidays, spring breaks, and summer holidays all stretch out into an intimidating calendar for families who are unsure of where their next meal, tank of gas, or activity will come from. In this context, families are often living in a day-to-day mindset with a heightened nervous system. Building relationships based on consistent connection and small and steady resources helps meet families where they are at and reassure them with a feeling of abundance and belonging, even in uncertain times.

Students and their families face additional behavioral and sleep challenges when they are hungry, bored, and sometimes relying heavily on digital entertainment to address the long hours of school closure periods without an entertainment budget.

As Besharov and Laumann make the connection, interrupting the pressures of poverty can also work as a child abuse and neglect prevention method for families facing these circumstances.2 Lee goes further and calls on professionals to design interventions that reduce these poverty family impacts for these vulnerable children and their families.3 When resources accompany family visits by social workers and school staff or school or community events, it creates a feeling of safety and incentivizes future engagement.

The social workers I work with often check with their families to see if they can connect them via email to opportunities that arise. In this way, families have received art class bursaries for their children, clothing and sports equipment, grad formalwear, rec center passes, school supplies, winter coats and boots, youth programming, toiletries, take-home food bags, gift cards, and family workshop spots at local libraries, museums, and parks.

Social workers can help by forwarding families information via social media posts, screenshots, and photos of posters of timely resources. This information helps families access resources without missing the distribution window. It also strengthens their own personal resource gathering. Practically speaking, once a family is following community nonprofits on social media or has clicked on their links, they are much more likely to be shown ads and posts that are helpful and relevant to them providing future resources. In day-to-day online life, this will feel organic and increase personal autonomy.

School District Partnership Strategies to Meet Community Educational Needs
Because of the varied needs of the students and their families, and the reduced staffing of the school district over school closures, it is key to connect with community partners also interested in addressing local family needs. A natural first connection is the local public library.

When we host families at free workshops that have a fun and educational component, I send text reminders on the day of to join us and mention the items that would make their day easier: the fun activity planned, the free grocery-filled bag and small gift card. When I post the same information on local family social media bulletin boards, I include pictures of the freebies to be had and engaging descriptions of the workshop activities. Frequently, these events are also attended by families who are not in an economically disadvantaged position, which reduces stigma for families attending who desperately need the resources.

Students attending with classmates across varying socio-economic circumstances benefit from a sustained social life that would otherwise be enjoyed only through paid local activities such as swimming lessons and day camp. Harris points out that because socio-economic context affects children so profoundly, this is an effective area of intervention.4

In working with a wide range of service providers in the community that include counsellors, social workers, dietitians, and youth workers, and offering a variety of workshops, we can be creative to ensure that all students are invited to experience an intellectually and emotionally stimulating school break. As Howard connects, having both school and home join to support children helps them thrive.5 As part of their ongoing relationship, social workers also let students know about these activities and provide resources to them in the form of take-home bags throughout the school break.

Personal Experiences and Approaches
In my frequent interactions with families, I see the anxieties of students and their families reduce with each additional meeting. Having fun activities throughout the week makes school break something to enjoy and not just get through. Through these community partnership introductions, students are more likely to engage in other programming that would be beneficial, such as the summer reading club at the library and the weekly youth group activities of a local nonprofit that supports at-risk families.

My approach is to extend invitations without expectation. Whoever is meant to come will be there. Personal autonomy, choice, and boundary setting are things we want to encourage in our students and their families, even when it comes to working with us as professionals in the community.

Workshop Approach
My workshop approach focuses on welcoming aesthetics. I set up freebies in a shoppinglike atmosphere and encourage attendees to grab a basket, bin, or bag upon arriving and gather the things that appeal to them. Sitting next to a basket of abundance while completing the activity in the workshop provides both a feeling of excitement and celebration and ensures no one is rushing through the workshop just to get to the freebie segment. Front loading the workshops with the giveaways also encourages on-time attendance and also attracts drop-in attendees who happen to be at the venue.

It is not uncommon for attendees to exclaim about the specialness of the giveaways and the overall experience. This is the outcome we are hoping for—encouraging students and their families to come out to community events and explore what great things can be gained from doing so. Both the going out and coming home with additional resources in hand are beneficial for families experiencing poverty. It builds confidence and increases the resilience of the home. Employment and Social Development Canada refers to food access interventions such as these as “nourishing Canada’s future.”6

Workshop Process
As the workshop is meant to meet the needs of all ages of attendees, we typically vary themes and content matter as well as take home resources. I have learned it is mostly the way you give a free workshop and distribute free items in the community that determines whether it is experienced in a stigmatized way or not. If you use the example of a birthday party or a baby shower, for example, people attending are likely to be fed and entertained and sent away with loot bags or party favors, but they don’t see it as a favor you are doing them. In fact, they are thanked for their attendance. This is the process by which we host the community as well.

When families are welcomed to pop-up children’s farmers’ markets (where kids can select produce into their child-size shopping bins) or invited to a community farm scavenger hunt, they are experiencing summer and community without barrier and anxiety about hidden expenses for their parents. In our parameters around including community events on our school district communications promotion, we set the expectation to be that the events included will be free of charge and open to the public. As noted in the work of Cohen, when children are faced with healthy options, they will choose and enjoy these.7 Normalizing these choices builds a positive and healthy identity for these children who might not otherwise have access to do so.

Summer Workshop Examples
In welcoming families, we benefit from great community member engagement including older adults bringing their grandparent vibes to the events, retired teachers reading the community stories, and local music teachers leading songs and dance in the park. We often see the summer school program and daycares walk over in lines, and family friends gather to sit and chat with one another while the kids are engaged with the community entertainment.

To these welcoming environments, it is easy to text and invite families who could use a grocery gift card or youth living independently who could use some toiletries to join us and visit my table to get the resources they need. Even if families feel nervous initially, experiencing coming to pick up items in a welcoming crowd of others also normalizing the bringing and taking of resources and attending free community events means it is likely to feel more confident doing so next time and to encourage neighbors to do the same. McNaughton and Brooks note the struggle for schools to communicate their value of parents in the education process.8 This relationship building in off-school months continues to assist both school and families in the school months as well.

Spring Break Workshop Examples
In spring break programming this past year, we expanded our programming to include a local museum. Attending families registered online for free and made their way around the stations to learn about agricultural and Indigenous knowledge history of food in the area, as well as complete a fun craft that complemented their learning and select a cloth bag of their preference prefilled with a variety of groceries. We always encourage attendees to look through them, take the bag that most appeals to them, and then take out the items they don’t think they’d use and replace those with others from the table. This increases family confidence and dignity as well as reduces waste.

Winter Break Workshop Examples
In winter break programming this past holiday closure, we hosted a family ceramic painting workshop in partnership with the local public library. At the event, we had three stations set up. At first, participants picked up their ceramic piece of choice and headed over to paint it at the nearby tables. This provided a fun social opportunity for children and their families and was a fun way to exercise autonomy and individuality as each of the ceramic pieces sourced were unique. This is especially important for families who are facing less choice in other areas of their life such as accepting hand me down clothes and food bank hampers to meet their daily needs.

Saunders, in discussion of the experiences of poverty on families, outlines in particular the power of this agency.9 At the second grocery bag station, the bags also varied in composition and look, allowing for extra choice. The third station, as a party favor, had a large stack of assorted wrapped gifts. These gifts were for a variety of ages, which is a fun approach we noticed worked well in other community events. Even if the gift opened isn’t to the age or taste of the individual opening it, it gives an opportunity for regifting, and many times people exclaim right away who they are going to give it to. The bespoke nature of these family events makes each one a special, nonstigmatizing event, and creates demand for the next one as it arrives on the calendar and is discussed within the community.

Final Reflections
As depicted in the graph below, the bulk of my engagement for the last two years has been with families through both workshops and resource tables throughout the year, but with special focus in the school closure months. I believe it is this work of frequent occasion-based engagement that has built the trusting relationships seen in our communities and which allow families to reach out with both their needs and their celebrations throughout the year.

Social workers who are interested in this type of outreach can get involved by familiarizing themselves with the resources in the community by following nonprofit and school social media accounts as well as local free/no-buy Facebook groups, signing up for community partner networks and committees via local health units and service provider events, and offering to put on family workshops in partnership with schools. They can offer professional development workshops for school staff, forward grant opportunities to community nonprofits, and book one-on-one meetings with school counsellors and school food coordinators to explore partnership opportunities. The more familiar they are with the other caring adults in the community who are making a difference in families’ lives locally, the faster the connections and referrals will be, and the less likely families will be falling through the gaps in services. Even by noticing gaps, local committees can work together to contribute in-kind resources and apply for small local community service group funds to meet needs as they arise. It is the frequent and caring connections that allow families to go from surviving to thriving. Normalizing access to community programs helps families connect to the broader community and experience some margin in their everyday lives which will reduce daily stress and allow for longer term planning.

— Michelle Vandepol serves as the manager of food security and community development for Fraser Cascade School District in British Columbia’s eastern Fraser Valley. The school district is geographically large and rural and covers mountainous terrain and communities located in food deserts and with reduced access to transportation. Her work focuses on community strength building and partnership building for collective impact. Connect with her on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/michellevandepol.