Peoria Food and Wine Festival

Proceeds of the 2024 Peoria Food + Wine Festival will benefit:

Trillium Place Young Minds Center, An Affiliate of Carle Health
With this fall's opening of Trillium Place Young Minds Center, an affiliate of Carle Health, in West Peoria, access to mental health services for children and adolescents is being forever transformed in our region.

The Young Minds Center offers a comfortable, therapeutic environment exclusively for youth and their families. The new center will house comprehensive care options - all in one location - including counseling, psychiatry, crisis services and inpatient mental health services. These specialty services represent a major advancement in innovative care for the kids in our community.

This year, Peoria Food + Wine Festival aims to shine a light on how smartphones are changing childhood. Children are facing more obstacles than ever in the mental health space, and technology has complicated that landscape. These devices have proven to be addictive and an academic distraction. Research has shown that excessive screen time and smartphone use is altering children's brains, impairing sleep, and impacting behavior. Smartphones have shown to interfere with relationships, increase the risk for anxiety and depression, and put children at risk for cyber bullying.

At this year's Peoria Food + Wine Festival we ask patrons to consider joining the Wait Until 8th pledge (https://www.waituntil8th.org)  -  a national movement specifically targeting grades K-8 to delay giving children smartphones until the end of 8th grade.  The goal is to band together as parents/teachers/adults and commit to this pledge together to decrease the pressure to put these devices in children's hands before they have the knowledge, maturity, and sense of self to use them properly.

Proceeds from the 2024 Peoria Food + Wine Festival will make a direct impact to help reshape the mental healthcare landscape and create a brighter future for our children with all donations staying right here in central Illinois at the Young Minds Center.