Community Funding Provides Grocery Store in West Oakland

(CC) Fast Company

Imagine living in an area of the country where you don’t have access to fresh food. This is the case in West Oakland, just over the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. So the local community, with the help of the for-profit People’s Community Market, is taking the initiative to do something about it.

Brahm Ahmadi, the founder and CEO of People’s Community Market, explained, “The feedback from the community was continuing to affirm that, while smaller projects were important, they weren’t adequate for servicing needs.” He continued, “West Oakland doesn’t have coffee shops or anywhere you can sit down. The community is not only lacking in access to good food, but it’s lacking in a variety of goods and services. The plan is not just to offer a fun, positive space, but a venue that we make available for social supports necessary for people to make progress in becoming healthier.”

So how does this program work? How does the community create a grocery store and a source of fresh food for a community that is 48 percent obese, which many believe is due to its lack of access? People’s Community Market needs to raise $3.6 million to build the 15,000-square-foot grocery store. They have already raised two-thirds of that budget, but there’s a hitch.

The California FreshWorks Fund, an organization that aims to bring fresh food to California’s food desert areas, has offered to provide two-thirds of the funding. Before they will do that, though, the remainder of the money must be raised, which amounts to roughly $1.2 million. The PCM hopes that they can get enough donors to provide the initial base of that money, and then angel donors will follow.

As Ahmadi says, “Our thinking is that if we can make significant progress and show momentum, a number of angel [investors] in a wait-and-see position will come in and help close it out.”

If the project is able to secure all of its funding, it hopes to have its doors open by the end of next year. That moment couldn’t come soon enough for the citizens living in the food desert of West Oakland.

(By Marissa Brassfield for CalorieLab)

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Community Funding Provides Grocery Store in West Oakland is a post from: CalorieLab - Health News & Information Blog

Source: http://calorielab.com/news/2012/11/14/community-funding-provides-grocery-store-in-west-oakland/

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