Lentil Festival receives top honors

The 2018 National Lentil Festival at Pullman received six awards at the 2019 Washington Festival & Event Association’s Summit Awards in Bellevue, Wash., on April 4.

The festival was awarded first place awards for best rack card, PR/media campaign, t-shirt design, radio programming, volunteer program and community outreach program.

The programming award acknowledged the work of Backyard Harvest, Community Action Center and the WSU Center for Civic Engagement in partnership with the National Lentil Festival to recover leftover lentil chili.

In 2018, 895 pounds of lentil chili was recovered and repackaged into approximately 3,500 servings for Whitman County families in need. To date, a combined 2,138 pounds of lentil chili has been recovered.

“I was unable to attend the conference this year, so when I received the email and learned we had been honored with these awards I was immediately excited for our community,” said Britnee Christen, festival director.

The National Lentil Festival will be celebrating 31 years Aug. 16-17, 2019.