YNDC Awarded $788,673 for Healthful Foods Initiative
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Not that long ago, Presley Gillespie recalls, it was easier to buy drugs in some neighborhoods than a fresh tomato.
But the tide is turning, declared Gillespie, executive director of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., as he announced Thursday the receipt of a $788,673 federal grant to help enhance an urban farm on the South Side and launch a kitchen incubator on the North Side.
"This award, we believe, is a game-changer for our food-based entrepreneurial system and community and economic-development system in Youngstown," Gillespie stated. "We were one of only 13 organizations across the country to receive such a very competitive award."
The grant is funded through the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, an effort by the White House that pools the resources of the U.S. departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture and Treasury to provide access to nutritious foods in underserved communities.
Gillespie said about half of the grant money would be used to improve the Iron Roots Urban Farm, a 1.7-acre working farm and training center on the South Side. YNDC wants to renovate a 3,000-square-foot building on the property and convert it into community and training space.
"We're going to also build a small kitchen that will be a production center and food demonstration site," he said.
The remainder of the grant would be directed to Common Wealth Inc.'s Kitchen Incubator on Elm Street near the campus of Youngstown State University. "It will be used for equipment purchases, some working capital that they need in terms of operating the program,” Gillespie said. “It's a great collaboration."
Common Wealth's Kitchen Incubator provides space where local food entrepreneurs can launch a new venture or expand their businesses.
"There are dozens of food entrepreneurs who have been waiting patiently to have access to the resources," such as a certified kitchen, help with business planning and job-coaching, said Common Wealth's Pat Rosenthal. "This grant will fill that missing piece."
The objective is to not only establish a venue where entrepreneurs can produce and sell their goods, but also to reclaim areas of the city and return them to productivity, noted Jim Converse, director of Common Wealth.
"We’re taking a really exciting, creative way to go about re-establishing viable productive neighborhoods including a food-based economy," Converse said.
A key to building and sustaining this economy is to drive forward what Converse calls the "25% shift," that is, convincing people to purchase their produce and food from local sources.
"We now buy less than 3% of our food locally," Converse said. "If we could get to 10% of our food produced from a 16-county region, that would include 8,000 new jobs" related to production, processing and growing.
The more ambitious goal of buying 25% from local sources would mean 27,000 new jobs in the region related to the food economy, Converse stated.
Converse also said that his work with the Farm Market over the last several years has demonstrated the great demand for this service in the inner city. The Farm Market is now a component of a larger urban movement to transform the community, aided with initiatives such as the kitchen incubator.
"We're really excited about this project being one of the organizational midwives, giving birth to a new regional food society," Converse said.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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