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The Three Rs: Relief, Recovery, Restoration

September 22, 2020 by Robin Mallery Leave a Comment

For those of us who are active in the nonprofit world, that familiar phrase is one way to define the phases of outreach, programming, and community impact. The majority of the work we do in the Food Justice sphere will fall under either a Relief, Recovery, or Restoration umbrella.

The old adage “Give a man a fish…” is the perfect segue to a discussion of The Three Rs, through the Urban Seeds lens.

Our 19-week cooked-from-scratch meal share initiative, begun at the onset of Covid, is a marvelous example of a Relief effort. We saw a need to provide fresh, nutrient-dense meals to children and their families in our community to compliment the foods that were being provided by other agencies and organizations. While we have offered numerous cooking demonstrations and food samplings over the years (which is an example of recovery), we had not undertaken sharing full meals. With the understanding that schools and community food share opportunities, such as pantries, were providing large quantities of shelf-stable packaged foods to students and their families, we jumped in with our version of relief — fresh dinners, prepared from scratch, with a salad or vegetable side dish, an entree, and a piece of fruit for dessert. The meals, prepared lovingly by dedicated volunteers, supported our tenet to “eat the rainbow”, which reflects meals laden with colorful veggies or fruit, and from which we were able to elevate the conversation of another strong commitment for Urban Seeds — embracing our moral obligation to nourish our community with foods that are inherently nutritious as they are less processed than typical shelf-stable packaged foods.

This is a delicate conversation — the contrast of sharing large quantities of processed, packaged foods which are much less expensive than fresh, whole foods in regards to convenience as well as cost. Shelf-stable foods contain preservatives and emulsifiers that can be a detriment to health and well-being, especially in children, but that is what allows them to be stable on a shelf for many months. Mac n’ cheese from a box with the bright orange powdered “cheese” sauce is easy, quick, and affordable to distribute and prepare at home, yet it is high in sodium, food dyes, and adulterated fats. The mac n’ cheese dinner made during our cooked-from-scratch initiative, loaded with fresh veggies and complete with a side salad and a piece of fruit for dessert, cost $2.50 to prepare — for the entire meal. Did it take a few hours to make 350 dinners, pack them up, then distribute them? Yes! Was it worth every moment? Yes! Can we continue to duplicate this effort to truly Nourish Our Community? Yes!

Hunger relief can and does have various choices, with a place for each being integral to community support. Yet, when we rely primarily on the less expensive, more convenient offering of packaged shelf-stable foods, we are not optimizing the current and future health and well-being of the children and their families of our community. We can do better. Hence the delicateness of this nuanced conversation…I am not undermining the substantial value of the relief measures provided by community food share programs (food bank and pantries), but I am inviting us, as a community, to explore and support complimentary relief measures that focus on fresh, whole foods.

Now, the pivot to the compelling mission of Urban Seeds, “To advocate for a quality, equitable, and robust food system, increasing access to healthy, nourishing food for all”. This noble mission, focused on Restoration and Resilience Building, encompasses three pillars:

  • Providing education and support to families so that they may gain the tools, skills, knowledge, and motivation to create nourishing family meals at home — economically and with cultural familiarity, fostering resilience through the Trauma Informed framework
  • Increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and quality meat & dairy
  • Supporting local farmers and food producers

Our signature program, Nourish, is a marvelous example of a true Restorative initiative, and which currently incorporates two of the three above-mentioned pillars. Providing high quality, nutrient-dense foods at wholesale prices to our program members, we are increasing their access to nourishing foods. Many of the Nourish offerings are not available within numerous neighborhoods in the Evansville area because there are no full service grocery stores in certain zip codes. Or some whole foods are seen as being outside of their family food budget. What we have discovered both in our focus group outreach and from studies done across the country, is that increased access to whole foods is only one small part of the opportunity to foster resilient families. The more important restorative piece to this type of initiative is to provide education and support to families so that they can conveniently incorporate whole foods into their weekly meal planning. This is accomplished by building a bridge from which education and support is seen as a partnership, and while classes are facilitated by an organization, the topics are chosen by the participant and in some instances, the classes are often taught by peer educators. This leads to family engagement with an emphasis on culturally familiar flavors, techniques, and traditions. As we cultivate a trusting relationship with our members, Urban Seeds is seen as an authentic presence with the ultimate mutual goal of restoration as the conduit to independence, vibrant health and well-being, and confidence among our membership families.

We are working diligently to engage our local farmers — the third pillar of our mission — into the Nourish program. Due to Covid, we’ve not been able to have as robust of engagement with our member families but we anticipate a resurgence in our impact with the soon-to-occur second cohort of members becoming part of our Nourish participants.

Relief = Give a person a fish
Recovery = Give a person a fishing pole
Restoration =  Teach a person to build a pond so they may raise fish, increasing independence and building resilience for generations to come.

 

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Food Resilience

August 17, 2020 by Robin Mallery Leave a Comment

Urban Seeds helps nourish community

BY MEGHAN STRATTON / PHOTOS BY ALEX MONTGOMERY

EVANSVILLE LIVING

The COVID-19 pandemic slowed down many things, but Evansville organization Urban Seeds continued going strong.

During the quarantine, the group saw an increase in local food and nutrient insecurity. The Urban Seeds team, led by executive director Robin Mallery, pivoted from their normal structure to provide relief efforts. Over the course of the stay-at-home order, Urban Seeds cooked and served 350 healthy meals each week for families in need through the Dream Center, YWCA, Memorial Baptist Senior Housing, Vision 1505, Lucas Place II, Garvin Lofts, John Cable Center, and Lincoln School.

“Our focus with Urban Seeds is to facilitate resilience building in families through restorative initiatives,” says Mallery. “Resilience is where families are confident and able to perpetuate well-being in their own household around nutrition because they’ve been given not only the tools but also the access to nourishing foods on a regular basis.”

To Mallery, a healthy food system means local growers and food producers feel embraced and supported in the community. Urban Seeds accomplishes this mission through educational programs like Nourish, a community grocery buying club initiative that bridges the gap between healthy cooking and expensive ingredients. Other food-centered programs include meal planning, cooking classes, and use of SNAP benefits at farmers markets.

Amanda Bradshaw-Burks, movement manager for Urban Seeds, adds there often are barriers to accessing healthy foods, whether it be transportation, money, knowledge, or other factors.

Urban Seeds, founded in 2005, has developed from a community garden project to a fully functioning nonprofit. Although the past 15 years have seen changes in leadership and structure, the intention of providing access to nourishing foods for the Evansville community has remained the same.

“For us, we really try to focus on the restorative efforts and provide that long-term accessibility to nourishing foods,” says Bradshaw-Burks. “We’re trying to find where those barriers are and break the barriers down, so people can continue to access the healthy food.”

FULL ARTICLE

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Evansville’s Market on Main opens for second season Downtown

August 17, 2020 by Robin Mallery Leave a Comment

Aimee Blume

Evansville Courier & Press

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — A steady stream of friends and community leaders stopped by the market’s information tent to congratulate Robin Mallery on the opening day of Evansville’s downtown Market on Main last week.

Mallery is the newly-named executive director of Urban Seeds, one of the organizations responsible for the market and many other local food and nutrition programs.

“We’ve had much more foot traffic than we anticipated, which has been wonderful,” she said.  

It was hard to plan the market around numerous restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Mallery is happy with how it came together.

“We are following Purdue Extension’s very detailed guidelines,” she said. “There are signs posted with the guidelines, and our market manager Ashley Kiefer has done a fantastic job promoting them online, and we have extra masks if people want one. Our vendors are thrilled to be here, and they have been very cooperative. Most shoppers are wearing masks and they are lined up six feet apart at the produce stands, which is wonderful.”

Due to restrictions, the market has fewer vendors than in the past, but there is a great variety: produce, honey, baked goods, preserves, beverages, dog treats, fresh flowers, food trucks, even jewelry. As the season proceeds and field crops ripen, more will drop in.

This year, shoppers who prefer not to mingle may even pre-purchase a Market Box containing a variety of produce and goodies and either pick it up or have it delivered curbside on Main Street.  

FULL ARTICLE

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Urban Seeds helping to provide 250 nutritious scratch meals a week

August 17, 2020 by Robin Mallery Leave a Comment

Aimee Blume
Evansville Courier & Press
EVANSVILLE, Ind. – Few are enjoying being shut in the house during our current lockdown situation, and many parents are struggling to help bored kids complete schoolwork and thrive without seeing their friends. But the added stress for those who don’t have enough food to feed their family is huge. 

Evansville-based Urban Seeds has partnered with other local organizations to provide 250 meals each week for children and their families, seniors and veterans at risk of not having enough to eat during this time of crisis.

This is a change for the organization, which normally focuses on creating access to and use of fresh, nutritious food by many segments of our population. To this end, it doesn’t typically produce food but instead sponsors Nourish, a bulk food buying club which makes the staple foods — fresh vegetables, grains, meat, and dairy — more affordable while providing education and support so families may learn to cook meals at home.

FULL ARTICLE

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Urban Seeds working with donors, partners to provide nutritious meals to families in need

July 28, 2020 by Robin Mallery Leave a Comment

Urban Seeds working with donors, partners to provide nutritious meals to families in need

Brook EndaleEvansville Courier & Press

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — An organization that’s been a longtime advocate for increasing access to nutrient-dense foods is pushing that mission forward by providing local families fresh, made from scratch meals amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This week, they did it in partnership with Fischer Farms and Pizza Revolution, offering sausage pizza with a cucumber and tomato side salad. 

Urban Seeds mainly works in communities, building relationships, and offering support in helping people access healthy ingredients and learning how to cook with them. 

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National African American History Month

February 27, 2020 by Robin Mallery Leave a Comment

In America’s farming community a 2012 Agriculture Census found that 8 percent of American farmers are minorities; of this 8 percent, less than 3 percent are African Americans. The history of these farmers is long and vibrant.

The Indiana Black Farmers Co-Op is an organization that unites Indiana’s Black farmers in their mission to improve the community through engaging youth, fostering community, and improving food access in the areas that are in need of it. The Co-Op’s members sell their products at the Indiana Black Farmer’s Market in Indianapolis and collaborate to ensure a wide variety of products are available.

Here in Southern Indiana is Lyles Station; one of the last remaining African American settlements in the state. It serves to preserve the heritage of this early 1800’s settlement with it’s museum, programs, and tours. Among it’s history is a tradition of agriculture which remains today.

On the national level is The National Black Farmers Association which represents African American farmers and their families in the United States. It’s education and advocacy have focused on civil rights, land retention, access to resources, agricultural training, and rural economic development.

These groups and the farming communities working alongside them are driving towards the betterment of our agriculture systems, the education of our communities, and improving the connections between farmers and those they serve. In preserving their heritage it carries their legacy into the future.

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Fall 2019 Newsletter

November 17, 2019 by Robin Mallery Leave a Comment

Read our Fall Newsletter!

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Second Annual World Food Day

October 1, 2019 by Robin Mallery Leave a Comment

Join Us on October 24th, 2019 from 3:00-6:00 pm for the Second Annual World Food Day event!  This free event will be held at Trinity United Methodist Church in Evansville.
Creating a vibrant local foods system – a system in which nourishing food is accessible by everyone in our community – is an ambitious and important goal. A thriving local foods system includes one or all of these opportunities:
~Supporting and purchasing from local farmers and food producers whenever possible.
~Providing education, in a culturally sensitive manner, so our community members understand the benefits of eating nourishing food, as well as the teaching of shopping and cooking skills.
~Growing outreach programs so that no child, or their family, is food-insecure by highlighting government support of food access for all.
~Pooling of food purchase resources for cost-effectiveness.
~Volunteering with a nonprofit or organization that engages in food justice and food access activities, and learning more about our own local foods system in the Evansville area.
When we support our children and their families with the availability of foods that provide the building blocks for healthy bodies and engaged minds, we are all contributing to a strong community.
Food Day is an international celebration of and movement toward more healthy, affordable, and stainable foods systems. Created by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Day aims to bring us closer to a food system of access to “real food” that is produced with care for the environment and the animals that are part of our food chain, and the women and men who grow and harvest our food.
Our goal for the Evansville World Food Day is to educate our Evansville area community about how they can be part of a vibrant local foods system by highlighting where, who, and how our food is grown in the Tristate. We want the community to know that nourishing food is available in our area, and we want them to know of the resources available for increasing their knowledge for shopping, cooking, and enjoying nourishing foods.
If your organization or business would like to participate in this free event please email or phone with any questions you might have to Urban Seeds at 812-430-4180 or urbanseeds.org@gmail.com.
The deadline for submitting your application is Monday October 15th, 2019.

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What Is Food Justice?

August 12, 2019 by Robin Mallery Leave a Comment

Food justice is the belief that healthy food is a human right; so everyone has an inherent right to access nourishing, fresh food. Access considerations are a mixture of location, affordability, and cultural appropriateness. Food justice affects all of us because food is so deeply tied to our culture. We build community around food; it’s a way we share our love. Being able to enjoy and prepare food that actually nourishes the body and keeps us healthy is connected to our ability to thrive.

When we think of access to food, location might not be something we view as a barrier. For so many of us we enjoy the privilege of being able to drive a vehicle to a store we choose to obtain the food we need. Take away access to this vehicle and how would you navigate your way to get these groceries? If we are lucky we have a grocery store within walking distance and the physical ability to not only walk there but to carry groceries back to our home. Let’s say we don’t have a store within walking distance (as about half of Evansville residents don’t), now how are we going to get to the store? Let’s say we take the city bus. We now have to plan for the time the trip will take as well as, again, carrying our groceries back to our home by hand. Add having to bring children along with you if you are unable to access child care and this can become a daunting task. Now imagine having to do this about twice a month to get the food you need.

Affordability can be a monumental barrier in accessing nourishing food. In the previous discussion of location, the majority of avenues to get to a place that will have the groceries we want all have a cost associated with them. Assuming walking isn’t a reasonable option, the most convenient mode of travel is overall also the most expensive (personal vehicle). Other convenient options such as a taxi or Uber add up in cost, and if you are working under the constraints of a tight budget, that budget just got even tighter. Additionally, there is the obvious cost of the food itself. Too often the least expensive items are highly processed foods of low nutritional value. This presents a very obvious challenge when we are trying to feed a family on a budget. If the healthier, more nourishing items are financially out of our reach then we must nourish ourselves with foods that are devoid of much nutrition. This sets our bodies and psyche up for feelings of deprivation which may lead to chronic disease, or hopelessness as we then try to fill up with more of the same kinds of foods. It’s easy to see how this cycles continues over and over.

Cultural appropriateness as it relates to food is more nuanced. One aspect of food justice is to provide the avenues that allow us to feed our families with dignity. This means that the food I am familiar with, enjoy eating, and know how to prepare may not look the same as yours. If I provide you with a giant box of lovely, nourishing foods that you have never seen before, my good intentions fall flat. Not only are you not familiar with how to prepare these unfamiliar foods but perhaps nobody in your family will enjoy eating them. Different ethnic communities and cultural backgrounds eat different foods. This is more than just health, this is culture. We should all be able to maintain our great grandmother’s special dish or be able to prepare that dish that our dad always made for us, and we loved. These are things that should not be trifled with and need to be protected.

If you would like to find a way to help improve food justice there is much you can do. Choose a community you want to be part of; whether it is supporting a non-profit like Urban Seeds, a community garden, a faith-based group, or a food policy council. Choose the avenue that calls to you to engage with others working toward systemic change. Getting out there and participating in the discussion is vital.

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EVV Area Food Council meeting notes 8.1.2019

August 2, 2019 by Robin Mallery Leave a Comment

Present: Blythe Battram, Urban Seeds; David Brenner, Vanderburgh Farm Bureau; Casey Williams, Purdue Extension; Andrew Smith, Purdue Extension; Arlinda Payne, EVV Chapter Black Nurses Association, Memorial Baptist Church; Helen Azarian, EVV Public Library; Lacy Wilson, Purdue Extension; Bill Hemminger, UE garden master; Robin Mallery, Urban Seeds; Ashley Tenbarge, St. Vincent; Lisa Myer, St. Vincent

Discussion:

  1. Market on Main
    1. Social connection–benefit, draw to venue
    2. SNAP utilization less this year at new location than last year
      1. Different clientele at MoM?
      2. Suggestion to share market info to TriState Food Bank to connect with backpack program students (Patchwork and Dream Center)
      3. Outreach has been made to local Family Services office to share fliers for SNAP at the markets with clients
      4. Suggestion to attach a Power of Produce voucher to the backpack flier
  1. Community Bulk Food Buying Club — Casey
    1. Initiated from Promise Zone’s access  healthy food workgroup
    2. Modeled after Top Box, Chicago
    3. Funds to Urban Seeds per Welborn’s HEAL grant
    4. Average ~ 40% lower cost per shopping trip
    5. Boxes of all/any foods
    6. Hire Coordinator – 12 hours per week @ $15 per hour, up to 20 hours in year 2
    7. Deaconess purchasing power for food procurement
    8. TSFB p/u and deliver to receiving sites
    9. Referring sites/agencies
      1. Work with families who are motivated
      2. Food Bank and pantries do not/cannot engage in financial transaction
    10. Casey reviewed the rough process, which is being finalized
    11. Grow into a membership program for new families in 2ndyear
    12. Local farmers will be brought in as able
  1. Community/Incubator Kitchen, indoor grow
    1. PZ annual / federal convene meeting in April to review best practices presented the idea
    2. Farm on Ogden as example
      1. Incubator farm and incubator kitchen
      2. Shared kitchen to mitigate food waste
    3. TSFB became available as they are moving to a new site
      1. Fridge/freezer
      2. Indoor grow in additional warehouse space
    4. Shared kitchen
      1. Food rescue
      2. Question: Who pays for heating/other costs
        1. Grants are plentiful from HUD, USDA
        2. Passive income from kitchen space rental — home producers, chefs, caterers; and from leased space for indoor farming
    5. Big questions:
      1. How do we distribute food effectively? Capacity is only one piece of the opportunity – a bigger issue is HOW do we engage consumers to actually buy/enjoy food that is grown or sold affordably?
      2. Is convenience food the ONLY way to go? How do we invite families in to the paradigm of cooking from scratch – low cost fresh food and SNAP frozen food?
    6. Many details to be worked out with many partners
  1. PZ flow chart by Julie McCullough, PhD
    1. Detailed flow chart mapped by Julie to capture food system opportunities (attached below)
    2. Solicitation of volunteers for any or all of these opportunities, many of which were talked about today
  1. Open Agenda
    1. Trauma Informed Nutrition Care & Education workshop offered in September
      1. Included in HEAL grant per Welborn to bring TINC&E to Evansville
      2. ~30 participants — educators, agency staff, Food Bank, pantry volunteers
      3. Links: https://www.leahspantry.org/leahs-pantry-team/qa-with-monica-bhagwan-about-our-trauma-informed-work/ and https://www.leahspantry.org/what-we-offer/resilience-building-nutrition-education/
    2. Memorial Baptist Health Fair this Saturday August 3rd, 10 – 2, – 100 participants, 25 vendors
      1. Funded by UpGrade grant
      2. Focus on healthy eating
      3. Screenings will be offered
    3. International Food Day event, hosted by Urban Seeds, October 16th 3:30 – 5 PM
    4. Next EAFC meeting October 23rd

Julie’s flow chart:

 

 

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