Story time from Wholesome Wave Georgia Fresh for Less partner, Statesboro Main Street Farmers Market: "One of the Statesboro Farmers Market’s founding beliefs is that food is an essential ingredient for building community and creating connections.

Through in-person outreach and educational videos, we have worked tirelessly to increase access to fresh, healthy, local produce while helping community members feel more confident preparing and enjoying seasonal foods. Thanks to Wholesome Wave Georgia’s Innovation and Cultivation Grant, we produced a series of cooking videos designed to answer a question we often hear from our community: “What can I do with that?” Although we initially planned to produce 12 videos, we ultimately completed 9. We chose to prioritize the quality, clarity, and usefulness of the content rather than risk compromising the project’s purpose with too many videos. Through this project, we learned that producing high-quality videos requires significantly more time, editing, and labor than we originally anticipated. We look forward to continuing this work with those lessons in mind. There’s often anxiety in working with unfamiliar foods. To make trying new ingredients easier, our videos include written instructions, clear step-by-step visuals, and additional information about the ingredients featured in each recipe. While we don’t have a direct way to measure the effectiveness of the cooking videos, we saw a substantial increase in distribution and redemption of Fresh for Less incentives, and an increase in EBT transactions between 2024 and 2025. We believe these numbers reflect the growth of community connections and relationships we’ve developed. We are deeply grateful to Wholesome Wave Georgia for its continued support of our mission and for helping make this project possible! " Thanks for partnering with us, y'all. We love you! @mainstreetfarmersmarket