Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival

April 16-17, 2011

The Santa Barbara Chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation celebrated our second year at the Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival.  Many thanks to the Ventura Chapter for jump starting our chapter at last year's festival.  

WAPF SB's booth day 1: with numerous visuals and educational pieces, we were very successful in attracting passerby to the booth all weekend long.  Beautiful people with glowing skin and wide smiles also helped a lot! 

Although the Santa Barbara Chapter has been official for only a few short months, we were able to rally the volunteer base and had two to three volunteers working the booth at any one time throughout the weekend.  They proved instrumental in our efforts to educate, listen and learn from those that visited the booth.  By the end of each day we were all exhausted from all the talking and sharing we had done.  Even as we packed up the booth, people still stopped to ask questions, long after neighboring booths had vacated.  

Relaxing in the shade between the crowds...

On the left side of the booth, we had all our WAPF materials - flyers, bumper stickers, buttons, etc. on foam core poster board setup on easels.  The blue poster had flyers about our meeting in April, Cod Liver Oil talk in May and a chance to enter a drawing to win Nourishing Traditions or The Fourfold Path to Healing.

It was a hot day, but even so, we had an amazingly positive response from those that passed the booth.  Many stopped to listen, ask questions and learn more about the Foundation and our local chapter.

We would lure them into the shade of the booth, where they were greeted by free brochures, flyers, and inexpensive buttons, books and even cod liver oil.

Items for sale

On the right side of the booth, we displayed large, colorful posters outlining topics such as allergies, statin drugs, and pastured eggs alongside WAPF brochures.  Contact us if you would like us to share any of these posters with your chapter.

In front of the poster display was the main attraction: a typical egg vs an organic/free-range egg vs a pastured egg - you could SEE the difference.  Folks of all ages stopped to check out the display.

Gosh...what's with those eggs?

Capire?

Telling a 6 year old the difference between real and fake food....

Are you familiar with the Weston A. Price Foundation?

This type of display and conversation were responsible for at least HALF of the people who stopped at our booth.

It was amazing how many young people understood the difference between the three eggs.  Even more so than the adults!  Hopefully we planted seeds of knowledge and empowerment into the next generation.

Which side would you pick?

All in all, the response was very positive.  We did not experience any negative reactions beyond "I don't eat meat" - which was surprising since we were so bold as to label soy a fake food, which most Earth Day friendly vegetarians/vegans fill their diets with.  

Visitors asked constructive questions and had reasonable doubts about some of our signage, but we were able to provide them with legitimate and sound information in the form of WAPF brochures and our own life experiences, which encouraged them to think outside the box beyond what they thought they knew about health and nutrition.  We also informed people of where to find raw milk, pastured eggs and meat, and other foods they did not know were available in Santa Barbara.

One lady was so excited to see the Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter in Santa Barbara.  She loved us, but like many folks, does not know a lot about the WAPF principles.

She and everyone else who took time to stop and visit our booth were testaments to the fact that as an organization, we need to continue to go out and "teach, teach, teach," if we want to make a difference.


More photos below: