Philly institutions team up to offer $380,000 for food justice solutions
Aug. 18, 2021
In tackling any seemingly intractable trouble, in that location's never a magic bullet.
Progress is made through concerted effort by many groups coming at the issue in different ways. Diverse perspectives equals diverse solutions—necessary for making headway on complex bug.
That's what the Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention at the Philadelphia Wellness Department—also known as Get Healthy Philly—recognized several years ago. And it led them to try a new approach in their work towards food justice—which they define as everyone having the correct to grow, sell, set and swallow nutrient that's nourishing for themselves and their community.
Rather than dedicating all their funds into more wide-based "Go Good for you" initiatives, they decided to attempt putting the ability—and money—in the people's hands.
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"We are increasingly recognizing that nutrition is tied up in a lot of different things," says Amanda Wagner, who manages Get Good for you Philly's nutrition and physical activity piece of work. "[We're] thinking virtually how we should really be post-obit the lead of various Philadelphians, and shifting from just having ane citywide arroyo to healthy food access."
Then in 2019, the Health Department teamed up with the Reinvestment Fund to launch the Philadelphia Food Justice Initiative (PFJI). Initially with Health Department dollars and at present with funding from both institutions, PFJI supports community-led—pregnant designed, implemented and owned past folks in the customs the project seeks to serve—work that gets healthier food to Philadelphians who have the least admission to it.
Which is actually not then elementary a task. Providing "access to healthy foods" brings up questions like, "What are people's connections to food? What food do they accept available to them?" Wagner says. "What do they see as opportunities and solutions?"
Turns out Philadelphians have a lot of ideas; PFJI received more 100 applications for the start circular of funding. And in the past two years, PFJI awarded more than than $640,000 to 12 organizations—10 of which are BIPOC-owned or led. The money has funded Urban Creators' mobile popular-upward food markets; Rebel Ventures' in-school market selling healthy snacks made by Philly youth; Land Based Jawns' workshops for Black and Ethnic women to larn to grow food and live off the land—and a whole lot more.
On August 3, they announced their third call for proposals—offer $380,000 in grants for community-driven solutions to historic food injustice. As in by rounds, projects led by Blackness, Indigenous and people of color and/or people with lived experience with wellness injustice will be prioritized, says Reinvestment Fund's Molly Hartman.
"This initiative is actually about supporting the grassroots of transforming our food system," Hartman says.
The stakes of wellness disparity
A closer await at Philadelphians' admission to healthy food reveals a pretty grim reality. According to a 2022 Philadelphia Health Section study, 81 percentage of all stores that sell food in the city offer mostly unhealthy food—they behave lots of processed items high in salt, sugar and fat and little fresh produce.
And poorer Philadelphians take significantly fewer stores selling healthy food in their neighborhoods. In the lowest median income parts of the city, stores that sell footling to no fresh produce outnumber stores that sell a lot by near 7 to one. In the highest median income parts of the city, the ratio is only 1.v to 1. The vast majority of Philadelphians living in poverty are people of color; poverty rates for Latinx, Black and white Philadelphians are 37.9, 30.8 and 14.8 percent respectively.
And the stakes of those disparities, referred to past some as nutrient apartheid—coupled with raging inequity in health intendance—can be quite literally life or decease. Heart illness—more than oftentimes developed in people who have a diet high in fat, salt, sugar and cholesterol—is the leading crusade of expiry here in Philly (as it is nationally), with iii,417 dying of it in 2019. Blackness Philadelphians are ane.three times more likely to die of middle illness than white Philadelphians.
And nosotros're smack in the middle of some other massive reminder of the consequences of wellness disparities. Of the x,126 (reported) Philadelphians who accept been hospitalized due to Covid-19, half are Blackness and merely 20 percent white (those groups each make up a little more than twoscore percentage of our city'due south population). Nationally, adjusted for age, Black Americans have been ii.8 times more likely to be hospitalized and two times more likely to die of Covid-19 than white Americans—in part due to the prevalence of comorbidity, every bit well as lack of access to quality health intendance.
To lessen these disparities, Go Good for you Philly is focusing on health justice, which they define as, "The commonage movement to heal society and eliminate barriers that preclude private and community well-being."
"[Health justice] is actually this recognition that private health is tied up in community health," says Wagner. "And community health didn't just announced out of nowhere."
Meaning, at that place are systems, structures and policies in place that are responsible for our huge health disparities—including systemic racism, which has prevented people of color owning land, accumulating wealth, and in turn accessing quality healthcare and nutritious food—literally the edifice blocks of skillful health.
"Food is such a key part of that because food has such a connection to your concrete health, your mental health, your community's health," Wagner says. "And information technology also can connect with commemoration and joy and culture and history."
State Based Jawns
On a recent stifling day, Ashley Gripper knelt next to a raised bed in an empty lot-turned-garden oasis in Cobbs Creek. Backside her, cucumbers hung forth a wood trellis and merely-ripening cherry tomatoes peeked through foliage drooping in the midday rut. "This will help keep the moisture in the soil," Gripper said as she spread golden straw around the base of sage and holy basil plants.
It's a page in the vast catalog of food-growing wisdom Gripper has shared over the past twelvemonth. In 2020, with a $57,000 grant from PFJI, the Philly-native launched Land Based Jawns to offer Black, brown and Ethnic women agriculture, survival, self-defense and carpentry teaching and preparation, and cocky and community healing.
The first accomplice of 17 women participated in ten workshops earlier this spring. They learned to start seeds and build raised beds with Chef Laquanda Dobson and Hajjah Glover at Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram's Garden—but information technology wasn't but about food. Gripper brought in Nyambi Naturals to teach the women to make medicinal salve, and therapist Tien Sydnor-Campbell to guide radical self-forgiveness and provide tools for healing. Gripper created short video lessons to share with her 2,000-plus followers on Instagram as well.
Gripper's Earthseed Skillshare series was inspired by the Parable books written past Octavia Butler in the '90s. The prescient Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents are prepare in California, mid-2020s. The fundamental characters are trying to survive amongst rampant violence and scarcity caused by climatic change, social inequity and other problems we ignored in the previous century. The teenage protagonist sets out to live differently, and inspires others to join the community she starts to build.
"[Butler] provided a road map of not just how we survive," Gripper says. "Only also how we heal, how we thrive, and so how we rebuild."
Gripper has worked in food justice for 10 years, since her first task out of higher at Penn'southward Urban Nutrition Initiative. She's currently a PhD Candidate in Environmental Wellness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she'due south exploring the impacts of urban agriculture on the mental, spiritual, and social well-being of Black people.
Early on in 2020, her father, Paul Gripper Three, died of middle disease. It was ix years after her mom passed. Gripper attributes her sickness to the grief she experienced after her maternal grandfather died.
Gripper'south friends—many who are farmers—urged her to work the country. She became an apprentice at Sankofa and actually experienced for herself what she was writing most in her dissertation. "When my dad passed, information technology gave me the opportunity to stop doing school, stop pushing and really slow downward and lean into doing the things that I've always wanted to exercise."
"The activities that Ashley had us go through—pitching a tent, building raised beds, radical self-love—the key factor is yourself," Moody says. "Of course you gotta do this stuff in community, but everyone has to sympathize how much power they have and how they tin really alter non only their lives but other people's lives."
It also gave her time to reflect and process what had happened in her family. "Daddy experienced food apartheid; Mommy was grieving deeply, didn't have the tools or resource to work through information technology; Daddy was grieving mommy, definitely didn't have the tools or resource to work through it," she says. "I have the tools and resources to work through it and I encounter the differences it'south making in my life. But how many other people are in that same situation?"
Mieka Moody, honour-winning branch manager and library supervisor at the Lillian Marrero Library, joined the start accomplice this spring—and is ane of the few women who made it to every single workshop. "Everything I went to hyped me up, empowered me," she says.
She plans to share some of what she learned through the library community and would similar to bring Gripper in for programming as well. Even more profoundly though, she started getting more in touch with herself, she says.
"The activities that Ashley had us go through—pitching a tent, building raised beds, radical self-love—the key cistron is yourself," Moody says. "Of course you gotta practise this stuff in community, simply everyone has to sympathize how much power they have and how they can really change non only their lives but other people's lives."
Call for proposals
Other PFJI grantees include Glover Gardens, which used funds to design, build and install garden beds in Southwest, West, Due north, and Northeast Philadelphia homes. Mill Creek Farm hired three Black women to manage the farm and donated hundreds of pounds of produce to popular-up food drives around Westward Philadelphia during the height of the pandemic. Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha adult a program to launch a community-owned affordable produce buying club.
All projects provide a final written report, which too serves as a reflection on opportunities, challenges and feedback for the plan.
This year, individuals and groups can apply for up to $100,000 in funding for whatever they need—operating overhead; staffing; planning and research; working with a consultant; supplies or inventory; pandemic recovery, for example—to further work focused on increasing admission to salubrious food in neighborhoods that accept historically lacked access. The proposed project must accept either deep-roots in a neighborhood or (defined) community; broad city-wide achieve; or potential for systems change or scaling up over time.
"It's non but virtually what's lacking—it'south, what'south there that people are connecting with?" Wagner says. "What gives them joy and how practise we build on that as well?"
The application process is designed with grassroots organizations in mind. There'due south flexibility—applicants can use photos and videos to help describe their work, and the review squad makes themselves attainable for questions along the mode. This yr, they're also hosting a (virtual) info session—August 18 at 2pm—where folks can ask questions. It volition be recorded and widely shared.
"We know that accessing funding is a big barrier for a lot of organizations then nosotros're looking for means to connect more and give them the tools that they need hopefully to provide a potent awarding," says Hartman. Besides new this year: they're accepting applications in Spanish. (Applications are due September 20.) Applications will be reviewed past a various selection commission including members of diverse urban center departments, food-focused organizations and folks who have direct experience with nutrient insecurity.
Though this work tends to highlight the injustice, Wagner says that the initiative is about supporting the free energy and solutions that are already at that place every bit well. "It's not just almost what'southward lacking—information technology'south, what'due south in that location that people are connecting with? What gives them joy and how exercise we build on that equally well?"
The Citizen is one of 20 news organizations producing Bankrupt in Philly, a collaborative reporting projection on solutions to poverty and the city's push towards economic mobility. Follow the project on Twitter @BrokeInPhilly .
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Header photograph: Urban Creators held popular-up food drives throughout the pandemic with PFJI funds | Courtesy of The Philadelphia Food Justice InitiativeHow to Fight Food Insecurity in Philly
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/grassroots-approach-food-justice/