2022 State Nutrition Education Program Advisor (NEPA) of the Year: Wanda Ocasio Nelson

Wanda Ocasio Nelson was recently named the 2022 State NEPA of the Year. She was nominated by her teammates because she is encouraging, inspiring, helpful, kind, and generous with her time, wisdom, and resources. If you need it, Wanda will find a way to make it happen. (In fact, one of her many nominators shared a story about leaving a phone in a locked office over the weekend. Somehow, Wanda found out about the missing phone, managed to retrieve it, and delivered it to her team mate’s home the next day!) She brings that same passion to her students. It was one of the many reasons we are honored to have her representing NEP.

In what areas/counties do you serve?

I work in mainly Marion County; I worked in Hamilton county for at least a year before COVID-19.

What age groups do you most often work with?

Since I started back in 2016, my target age group was and still is young mothers (18+) with small children.

What is your favorite part about being a NEPA?

My favorite part of being a NEPA is that every day I get to do what I’ve a passion for: connecting with my Latinos and sharing with them my knowledge of nutrition and physical activity. I’m very grateful for my job with the Purdue Extension Nutrition Education Program.

Do you have a success story you would like to share?

Wanda has been teaching at Indianapolis’ Community Alliance of the Far East (CAFE) for five years. In addition to offering resources and assistance to the immigrant community, it offers English as a second language classes to adults and hosts Wanda’s NEP classes. Usually Wanda teaches Hispanic students. But this time, in
addition to Hispanic participants, Haitian immigrants signed up. “This was teamwork between me, the teacher Mrs. Elva Phillips, and the students. They wanted to learn and we wanted to help them,” Wanda said. “I am used to doing more talking, but I used more visuals to help illustrate what I was trying to say. I would dramatize the class. And their faces were very expressive. When they understood, I could see it on their faces. After a few classes, when I would say saturated fat and hold up a visual, they would say, ‘Oh, not good. Not good. Not good.’ It was so funny, but it was wonderful because I knew they were learning.”

Wanda also built her class around common themes everyone enjoyed. Physical activity was Latin dancing, which everyone loved and embraced enthusiastically. Since all of the cultures used plantains as part of their regular diets, Wanda showed her students how to prepare them in the oven instead of frying. Her
baked plantains with a little brown sugar and cinnamon proved to be a welcomed treat. But the greatest surprise was her use of black beans. Since black beans are part of many Caribbean and Hispanic cultures, all of her students were familiar with them. But her Black Bean Brownies caught them off guard. “They loved that! They love black beans, but they did not know you could make something sweet with them.”

What are some of your personal interests?

My personal interests are many but two of them are the ones I still have a passion for. The first one is that I love going every week to a free clinic and work as a medical interpreter. I’ve been doing it for the past 11 years. Again, I love working with my Hispanic community. My second interest involves physical activity. I’ve always being very physically active. After going through a really difficult divorce, I decided to challenge myself and learn how to swim so I could become a triathlete. At age 48, I participated in my first triathlon, and at age 50, my first Half-Ironman. I still swim, bike and walk just for health! I love telling my participants that age is only a number and that is never too late to become physically active.