When you provide people with access to healthy and affordable food, you also begin to address other needs in the community such as high levels of chronic disease or unemployment.
People's Grocery believes that, while meeting the local need for fresh healthy food, we can also meet other needs in the community such as jobs and education. So we do more than just grow and distribute healthy foods in the West Oakland community. We also provide nutrition education, create jobs, develop local businesses, create green spaces in urban areas and supporte youth to become entrepreneurs and leaders.
In the short term, our residents need healthier foods, stable employment, job training and meaningful educational opportunities. However, our vision is much larger than that.
We are building an independent food system and a local economy grounded in community partnerships and a local knowledge-base. We want to give people the tools to control their own food supply and help our community to become more self-reliant.
Economy and Food Systems
Currently, West Oakland has a summer farmer’s market (Mo Better Foods), a healthy food cooperative (Mandela Foods Coop), a Saturday farm stand (City Slicker Farms), multiple gardens, and other small ventures. Unfortunately, this food economy in West Oakland has not been able to support more than 5% of the demand for healthy food in the last two decades. People’s Grocery has focused deeply on the development of cooperatively-owned grocery stores in West Oakland, and we are now widening our approach. We are working with the city’s West Oakland Economic Development Workgroup and our Council member (Nancy Nadel) to ensure local food entrepreneurship in the Redevelopment Agency’s plans for West Oakland.
Health and Food Systems
We are re-establishing our commitment to wellness. Health Institutions in America are speaking about the “social determinants of health” much more deeply, and it has opened the doors to work around food, diet, and health that have not previously existed. We are excited to work with our partner organizations toward holistic health. Historically, our health programs have been educational (cooking classes, nutrition demonstrations, etc), and we now have enough of a base to evolve our programs into more resident-driven health projects and systemic political action.
Community Leadership Self Empowerment
Through our education work over the past 7 years, People's Grocery has built a strong foundation that we can use to expand our community self-empowerment programs. We need to invest in these programs as a priority in the next three years. We will more deeply engage the genius and creativity already in the community so that the community can create its own healthy food system.
