What do a casino night and healthy eating have in common? On March 3, 2017, the community is invited to take part in Casino Night, being sponsored by The Doctor Yum Project, with funds going to support the mission of teaching families to eat healthy. Casino Night will be held at The Old Silk Mill, located at 1707 Princess Anne Street in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The event is from 7 p.m. until 11 p.m. and will feature a variety of fun activities for attendees.
“We are excited to be holding Casino Night,” says Dr. Nimali Fernando, a Fredericksburg, Virginia-based pediatrician who founded The Doctor Yum Project. “This is a great way for the people in the community to have a fun night out, and know that the funds will be put to good use helping to improve the health of our community.”
Casino Night is will be an Indian / Bollywood style event that is unique for the city. Tickets, which are $100 each, include open bar, raffle tickets, play money for casino games, heavy appetizers, music, dancing, and other surprises. It’s a cocktail attire event that will also offer private tables for 8, 10, or 12 people, which will include the tickets, snacks, select wine, and a business can display their logo at the table.
The fun event is a fundraising effort for The Doctor Yum Project, a nonprofit organization that was started in 2011 by Dr. Fernando. The mission of The Doctor Yum Project is to transform the lives of families and communities by providing an understanding of the connection between food and overall health, as well as empowering them with the tools to live a healthy life. The project offers healthy cooking classes, child nutrition classes, cooking camps for kids, hands-on cooking instruction for families, first foods classes, and online tools to help families make healthier meals. As part of the project, they offer a free online Meal Maker Machine which helps parents create healthy meals using the ingredients they already have on hand in their pantry. They simply input the ingredients they have and the system will create a customized healthy recipe for them within seconds.
Dr. Fernando’s pediatric office is unique, offering an instructional kitchen area, where The Doctor Yum Project offers classes for kids and healthy food classes for parents. People attend the classes to get hands on experiences in preparing a variety of fresh seasonal foods, as well as to learn more about gardening in her teaching garden. They offer a preschool nutrition program, with 40 classrooms and almost 600 participating preschoolers
“When you help to teach people about healthy eating habits and why they are so important, especially starting from childhood, it helps the whole community,” Chrissy McDermott, a Board Member of the Doctor Yum Project. “Casino Night is a great way to help make for a healthier community for our children.”
Dr. Fernando, otherwise known as Dr. Yum, is a board-certified pediatrician. She is also the co-author of the book “Raising a Healthy, Happy Eater: A Parent’s Handbook” (The Experiment, October 2015). To learn more about Casino Night, or to purchase tickets to attend, visit the site at: www.doctoryum.org.