by
Ade
No
more food deserts. The drought is over!
You might be wondering
what, exactly, is a food desert. Well, in the city of Chicago, it’s a pretty
big problem. A problem in which entire communities have severely limited access
to fresh fruits and veggies, and therefore suffer from significant health
issues related to poor diets.
After reading a 2006
report that mapped food deserts in Chicago, a group of community activists
banded together to work on a solution. Steven Casey and Jeff Pinzino were
soon joined by Sheelah Muhammad. The three of them brought together
the combination of skills and talents that helped make Fresh Moves a reality.
But this was not an
easy problem to solve. The simple fact was that opening a traditional market
wouldn’t address the multi-neighborhood needs quickly or efficiently.
National chains have difficulty finding large parcels of affordable urban land
to support their high costs of operation. Independents can’t gamble on
unproven locations, and ethnic markets are slow to grow. So despite high
profit margins for fresh foods and substantial unmet demand, Food Desert Action
had to think outside the big box.
The answer? Put the
whole thing on wheels! So Food Desert Action sprang into, well, ACTION. They
were able to secure a bus, donated from the CTA. They partnered with
Architecture for Humanity to transform the bus into a mobile produce market.
They worked with volunteers at EPIC to put together this website. And now,
they’re working hard to bring the Lawndale community fresh, delicious,
nutritious produce – and educating the public at large about how fun it can be
to eat healthily.
Fresh Moves Mobile Grocery Store An Innovative Solution To Food
Deserts (PHOTOS)
In a move that exemplified Rahm Emanuel's
approach to Chicago's most intractable problems, the city's new mayor sat down
on Wednesday with the leaders of six major grocery-store chains to address the
crisis of the city's so-called "food deserts."
For hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans, the
nearest fresh fruits and vegetables are a mile or more away. This leaves
residents stuck either taking long rides on public transportation and bringing
back only what they can carry, or eating the processed and packaged foods
available at the corner store.
Food deserts, areas that are distant from the
nearest fresh foods, are a serious public health crisis, causing a marked
uptick in diet-related illness like diabetes, obesity and cancer. Minorities
and lower-income Chicagoans are far more likely to live in food deserts, which
are almost entirely on the city's South Side.
Emanuel's "Food Desert Summit"
sought to entice major grocery chains to invest in new stores in food deserts.
But a small group of devoted activists have been working on the problem from
the opposite direction.
A few years ago, Steven Casey, Jeff Pinzino
and Sheelah Muhammad hatched the idea for the Fresh Moves bus, a mobile grocery
store that would bring fresh groceries directly to the communities that needed
them most.
(Scroll
down to look inside the bus.)
"We talked to a couple of grocers, and
realized that bricks and mortar wasn't the quickest solution, that the barriers
to entry were too great," said Muhammad, now the board secretary at Fresh
Moves, in a phone interview with Huffington Post Chicago. "We wanted a
solution that was more flexible, that met the needs of more residents in more
communities."
The group was helped by a few key partners.
The Chicago Transit Authority donated a bus for them to use, Architecture for
Humanity helped transform the bus into a grocery store, and EPIC helped build
their website.
On May 23, the bus began running routes in
Lawndale and Austin, making three stops a day, two days a week. And the demand
has been overwhelming: in its first five days, project manager Dara Cooper told
HuffPost the bus served over 600 customers.
"The first day, it was pouring raining,
and we sold out of organic collard greens the first hour," Cooper said.
"We sold out of mangoes, cherry tomatoes, it was amazing."
Fresh Moves gives the produce it doesn't sell
to homeless shelters. But so far, that hasn't been much. While much of their
food is locally sourced and organic, they are also very focused on
affordability. "When you talk about access [to fresh food], part of it is
geographic," Cooper said, "but a big part of it is monetary,
too."
Goodness Greeness, an organic food supplier,
offers Fresh Moves a discount, and they're able to keep prices low across the
board. "I'm always so excited when people get to the cash register and
they realize they can grab something else and put it in the bag," Sheelah
Muhammad said.
The most important lesson for both Muhammad
and Cooper, though, was debunking the myth that low-income people didn't want
fruits and vegetables, that they preferred fast food and junk food.
"We're proving that unfounded theory
wrong," Muhammad said. "There's a huge demand for this. They're tired
of the fast food, they're tired of the lack of options."
As Fresh Moves looks to expand its bus service
to new routes and new neighborhoods, more and more people in Chicago's food
deserts could have another option rolling down their streets before long.
Take
a look inside the Fresh Moves bus:
School on a
bus brings classes to Indian slums
Monday, 07 November 2011
A school-on-wheels in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad is the
only chance for children living in slums to have an education. (Reuters)
By KRISHNENDU HALDER
REUTERS HYDERABAD
On a hot
afternoon, a bright orange bus drives into a slum area of the southern Indian
city of Hyderabad, parking amidst shelters made of tarpaulins and bits of wood.
Barefoot children come running, eyes shining, and troop inside.
It’s a school on wheels that brings education to the doorstep of disadvantaged
children such as these every day, halting for several hours at a time in
different parts of the sprawling city.
The children, whose parents are day laborers on construction sites, or work as
rag pickers and maids, either never go to school or drop out once enrolled.
Many have to work as hard as their parents to pay off family debts.
“These children have no time to go to school, unless the school
comes to them,” said T.L. Reddy, founder of the CLAP Foundation, a
non-governmental organization that runs the mobile school.
“At first we prepared a temporary tent in their slum to give basic education
for the children. Then slowly we developed the concept of a school inside a
vehicle to attract more.”
Reddy, a teacher for 25 years, first thought of doing something for the
children when they caught his attention a decade ago. After gathering donations
and setting up the tent first, they began operating the bus three years ago.
The inside of the bus is bright and clean, its walls festooned with the
alphabet, numbers and pictures of fruit and animals. Children perch on seats
around the inside of the bus, writing on slates they hold on their laps.
Some days, the bus is so full that children sit cross-legged on the floor as a
sari-clad teacher talks to them.
“The teaching is good in this bus and nobody beats us,” said 10-year-old Devi,
who enrolled in the first grade of primary school three years ago but soon
dropped out.
She attends school in between helping her father collect rags, and hopes to be
a teacher.
Manjula, another 10-year-old girl, bubbles with excitement about her studies
and wants to be a doctor to bring medical care to slum children such as
herself.
“Now I can read and write from 1 to 200 numbers,” she said.
The goal, Reddy said, is to teach the children enough for them to be
mainstreamed into government schools. So far, some 40 children have done so
despite the considerable odds.
“The greatest hurdles are things ranging from the erratic schedule of the
students, and the varied mindset of their families,” he added.
But the school’s greatest achievement may be something far more simple.
“This is the only chance they get to be kids, even if it is for only two
hours,” Reddy said.
Charter for
compassion gains support
27 MAR 2012
More than 85,000 individuals, organisations and cities have now signed
up to endorse the Charter for Compassion, a document that aims to inspire
compassionate action around the world
Karen
Armstrong speaking at TEDGlobal 2009 in Oxford Photo
© TED / James Duncan Davidson
Claiming to embody a principle that is at the heart of all religious,
ethical, and spiritual traditions, the Charter for Compassion calls us to
always treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves.
The document states: “Born of our deep
interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to
a fulfilled humanity,” adding that it is a necessary resource in
creating “a just economy and a peaceful global community.”
Recent
signatories include the Canadian city of London, Ontario, which has
a population of 350,000 and is the first official Compassionate City in
Canada and also includes the first school to formally endorse the charter.
Meanwhile, Spalding University in Louisville, US, is the first
university in the world to be designated a Compassionate University.
Internationally,
there are over 70 cities and regions working towards official adoption of the
Compassionate City status, from New Delhi in India to Nottingham in the UK. Governing
bodies in each city will work with citizens to develop means of cooperation and
empowerment.
The charter calls for empathy with the
suffering of all human beings – even those regarded as enemies – as well as for
accurate information to be given to young people in order to encourage a
“positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity.”
Physical and spoken acts of violence,
as well as the exploitation or denial of people’s basic rights, are condemned
in the document as it urges us to restore compassion to the centre of morality
and religion. Any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or
disdain is illegitimate, it states.
“One of the chief tasks of our time must
surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live
together in mutual respect,” explains the founder of the charter, Dr Karen
Armstrong, in her book Twelve Steps to A Compassionate Life, published in
2011. “Yet religion,” she continues, “which should be making a major
contribution, is seen as part of the problem. All faiths insist that compassion
is the test of true spirituality and that it brings us into relation with the
transcendence we call God, Brahman, Nirvana or Dao.”
In her book, Karen looks at religious
history alongside neuroscience and finds that our brains have evolved for us to
be caring and to need care. By investigating our enemies, knowing their history
and participating in dialogue, we can stop the vicious cycles of attack and
counterattack, Karen believes.
“We need to create a world democracy
in which everybody’s aspirations are taken seriously,” she says. “In the last
resort, this kind of ‘love’ and ‘concern for everybody’ will serve our best
interests better than short sighted policies.”
A
former nun, acclaimed theologian, historian and author, Karen received a TED Award (Technology, Entertainment and
Design) in 2008, which enabled her to create the charter. As well as the
$100,000 prize, Karen was also granted a ‘wish for a better world’, which TED would help her fulfil.
“I asked TED to help me create, launch and propagate
a Charter for Compassion that would be written by leading thinkers from
a variety of major faiths and would restore compassion to the heart of
religious and moral life,” explains Karen.
Members of the public – of any or of no
faith – were invited to help shape to the charter. Through the project’s
website, more than 150,000 people from 180 countries were involved in
submitting and commenting upon contributions. Drawing on this input, an
interfaith group of religious leaders then crafted the final charter.
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