Hi @FirstName

Thank you for your interest about the fun with food sensitivities social group. As a casual social group, you can attend all sessions or just some. But I hope you’ll keep coming.

My motivations for initiating this group are that I live with a range of (annoying) food sensitivities and that my love of learning and sense of humour helped/s me through challenges. Hence, I hope to learn from other people’s experiences, and we might as well have fun doing it. I am doing this as a volunteer. I am not a dietitian or health practitioner.

This is the first time that I am organising something like this, so apologies in advance for any mistakes, delays and fumblings! I am learning to figure out how this platform works and I hope you'll get this message. I know that this email is short notice for this Sunday so see how you go with bringing food and exploring teh personnality tests. I am sure we will figure out things as we go.

I am writing to give you a bit more information about how this session will run. Ideally, the group will come up with their own activities and discussion topics but to get started the following run through is suggested.

à Introduction: Acknowledgement of Country, group agreement including time allocation, quick ice breaker game. (No, we won’t go at length about everybody’s food quirks, just a quick game to discover some similarities and differences.)
à Discussion:
- What personal strengths do you or can you use (and how) when dealing with your food challenges? You can just think of what personal traits you could utilise, or you can explore if you wish with for example https://www.viacharacter.org/ (Either read or do the free survey that requires an email. They will send occasional emails but you can unsubscribe) or for a more detailed (free and no email) personality test: https://personalitymax.com/
- If you were to try something new about your food sensitivity in the coming month (like trying a new ingredient or starting one small new routine), what would that be? Yes, you can report back next month if you wish. I hope that discussing it in a group will help me try out new things and stick to it 😊
- Brainstorm future topics
à Safe for me Food Parade: Each present the food/dish they brought in if any (homemade or packaged but ingredients clearly listed); it does not have to be something special, just something that is safe for you to eat. If suitable, you can share with others … or eat it all up. Necchi has a kitchen with fridge, small freezer, cooktop, oven and microwave if you need to use any of these to store or reheat.

NB: For next sessions we can either do another food parade or figure out if there are quick snacks we could make together, and who would bring what ingredients. (For example, making a range of small biscuits or pancakes using various gluten free flours and a sandwich maker. Open to suggestions of course.)

à Social eating time and chatting.
à Fun skill sharing: We all have talents and passions so to finish off we could do a quick activity (5-15 minutes) with someone demonstrating a skill or talking about a topic. For this first session, I will invite you to start a sunflower from seed (all materials provided), because Sunflowers can bring so much joy. Plants are my thing 😊

Points to consider:

Do we want to have an in-between outing? (It could be movies, walk …)

Remember to ‘come as you are’, no strong perfumes that could trigger chemical sensitivities. Same for strong spices.

I look forward meeting you on this Sunday 24/9 at 2 pm @Necchi Newlands

You can email if you have any queries, I will check tonite, tomorrow and Sunday am

Pascale

Contact the host of Food Sensitivities Support Group - September