Wallis Boram
She/Her
McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center
Concord, New Hampshire
Dialogue & Deliberation Fellowship
Wallis Boram is an Education Specialist at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center where she works with high school students around the state to create traveling museum exhibits about human physiology in space and planetary geology.
Through her work in informal education, Wallis wants to make science accessible—and fun!—for people of all ages and backgrounds.
Community Partner
Overcomers Refugee Services is a resource center for Concord-area refugees and immigrants. It provides ongoing practical support, education, and cultural orientation for New Americans, primarily from countries in South Central Africa and Bhutan.
Overcomers also works with the refugee community to facilitate conciliation and healing, supporting those who have experienced severe trauma in their home countries and creating connections with the receiving community.
Project Description
This project topic, food and nutrition, was selected based on feedback from the local community of New Americans.
For many New Americans, resettling changes their relationship with food: some traditional foods become difficult to access and it can be a struggle to find food that supports their health and honors their traditions.
The project team brought together almost 40 participants from Concord’s New American community, along with a team of interpreters and table facilitators, to have small-group informational sessions to learn how to read food and nutrition labels and understand the correlation between sugar consumption and physical health and wellbeing.
During the second half of the event, the focus shifted to a large group discussion about what it means to participants to “eat well” and how to acclimate to the challenges associated with the change in diet in America. They identified actions to take, such as developing community-sourced information to support new refugees, developing an outreach plan for new refugees, and creating gardening options in the local community.