Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience:The project has maintained three primary target audiences during this reporting period - 1) local community residents who can be served by the Village Market Place Local Food Hub, 2) community organizations and community leaders who can serve as partners for outreach and community engagement, and 3) regional farmers whose agricultural production can serve as a source for the Village Market Place (VMP) Local Food Hub's products. With respect to the community resident target audience, the neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles (SCLA) has a disproportionately high number of liquor stores, fast-food chains, and corner convenience stores, with a disproportionately low number of access points for health, fresh, sustainably and locally produced fruits and vegetables and value-added products. The area also has a high concentration of low-income community residents, with more than half of the population eligible for Calfresh benefits. With this in mind, Community Services Unlimited's (CSU)'s incentive project considers local residents of all ages and ethnic backgrounds to be a primary target audience. With respect to the community organization and community leader audience, Los Angeles in general, and South Los Angeles in particular, is home to a variety of non-profit organizations that advance a similar community development mission as does CSU. We consistently invite organizations to attend events at the PRCWC (for instance, our Earth Day South LA event), in some instance have collaborated other organizations on the development of events (for instance, working with Community Coalition and LA County on fresh food tasting events), and have invited local organizations to use meeting spaces in the PRCWC for their own purposes (for instance, the Los Angeles Food Policy Council's Food Leaders Lab). These collaborations continued through digital spaces and in-person service outreach during the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall, connections with community organizations allow us to further our mission to build collective capacity at the community level; in addition, these organizations can then share information about the PRCWC and the incentive program to their own members and constituents. With respect to the regional farmer target audience, the state of California has seen significant contraction in terms of overall farmland cultivated and number of working farmers over the last several decades, as market conditions have led to increased consolidation. Community Services Unlimited has a history of providing market opportunities for smaller-scale and sustainability-minded growers who produce food in both rural and urban settings across San Bernardino, Riverside, Fresno, Ventura, Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo counties. With this in mind, CSU's VMP project has continued to cultivate and expand these relationships as a way to support their livelihoods and bring fresh, local produce into SCLA. During the reporting period CSU also expanded its efforts to purchase from urban growers through the creation of the South Central Growers and Harvesters Network, through which they offer training and support to urban growers so they can crate micro enterprises. Changes/Problems:This report has already outlined a number of Covid-19 related challenges facing the organization, its staff, its community constituents, and the overall movement for an equitable food system. This has obviously required a major restructuring of the workflow of the organization, a process that continued in earnest as CSU worked to re-launch the VMP's in-person experience in 2021. Ultimately, the volatility of the past year has required patience, flexibility, and dedication. The good news is that CSU continued to actively and effectively pursue its goals during this reporting period. The organization has been extremely vigilant throughout the pandemic to protect the safety of everyone, especially staff, including through the creation of distinct work zones for those working in person (for instance, creating separate zones for kitchen work, office work, packing work, etc.). This inevitably impedes speed, requires staggered scheduling in order to abide by social distancing guidelines, and calls for significant and ongoing coordination efforts. It has also created new levels of management and the creation of new human resources policies for staff related to monitoring exposure, privacy policies, and considerations of leave benefits, among other issues. This reporting period spanned a time when Los Angeles County experienced significant Covid-19 surges and enforced restrictions. Unfortunately, despite the precautions taken, a two-week organizational shutdown was enforced by CSU in January 2021 due to viral exposure of staff members. All staff worked from home during this period, some produce bag deliveries were put on hold, and other slowdowns ensued. A final topic worth mentioning is the ongoing leadership transition of the organization. In October of 2019, Neelam Sharma changed her role from Executive Director to Co-Executive Director, alongside Heather Fenney Alexander. In May of 2021, Neelam officially announced her plans to end her tenure with CSU in December 2021. CSU's board is in the process of envisioning the future leadership structure of CSU, with the goal of ensuring that its long-time programming can be led by community members who are passionate and prepared to lead that work, while also considering ways for CSU to grow its impact and scope in the broader movement for equitable food-oriented development and food justice. All of these challenges were factors in CSU's delayed submission of this final report. The combination of increased workload related to shifts in programmingin response to the ever changing conditions of the pandemic, intermittantstaff absense as individuals became sick or were caring for children required to quarentine, and internal reorganization that shifted roles in many areas, including grant reporting, impacted CSU submitting this report on time. CSU has taken the action to reassign administrative duties, including grant reporting, and enlisted additional support from a newadministrative assistant and our program evaluation consultant to improve systems for tracking grant reporting requirements and deadlinesand will help to ensure timely submissions in the future. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Staff training is ongoing in terms of the overall functioning of the market, the implementation of CalFresh and the GusNip incentive program, and interactions with market customers and partners. CSU also brought on several new key staff members during this reporting period - including staffers focused on marketing and communications, farm management, administrative support, and VMP associates. Some CSU staffers were given additional responsibilities as they grew into more management-level roles with the organization. While some of CSU's direct agricultural production waned during the early peaks of the pandemic, staff focused on farm management have been able to maintain and eventually ramp up steady productive capacity at both the nearby EXPO farm site and the agricultural spaces directly on site at the PRCWC. During this reporting period, CSU also worked to create and refine internal documents to ensure a systematic approach to all aspects of organizational operations. These documents generally focus on employee recruitment, ongoing organizational management, and external operations and communication. As one specific example, a major undertaking of the current grant period was the refinement of a CSU Employee Handbook, prepared to help employees find answers to common questions and synthesize key points from other official employment documentation. As noted in previous report, CSU has also continued to engage as a steering committee member in the Equitable Food Oriented Development (EFOD) network, which aims to support local organizational initiatives as well as the broader movement for healthy and equitable food systems. Key areas of engagement by members of CSU during this reporting period included considerations of evaluation and technical assistance, fundraising, as well as micro-grant making. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?CSU uses multiple forms of communication and outreach to promote and disseminate our work. The organization maintains a list-serve that reaches thousands of local and extra-local stakeholders to keep them abreast of all upcoming activities and outcomes. We also maintain an active website and social media presence across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. During this reporting period, significant consideration was given to revamping and designing the use of the platforms for optimal reach and engagement. In addition, in-person events and workshops at the PRCWC, and at other collaborative sites of community outreach, allow for additional connections with local residents and other interested audiences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?This is the final reporting period for this CFP grant. In terms of pursuing the broader goals of this project moving forward, CSU will continue to focus on the improvement of the PRCWC space to meet the current needs of the organization and our customers. It will also focus on workforce development to advance organizational goals, as well as seek out both local and national collaborations to increase the scope of its impact. The organization is also focused on the continued improvement of the quality and quantity of its data collection in order to better understand customer and participant preferences and practices. For this, CSU will be relying both on our electronic POS system as well as more in-depth research with customers, including surveys and in-depth interviews.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The first year of this project (2017-2018) focused primarily on transforming the Paul Robeson Community Wellness Center (PRCWC) to serve as the primary site for the Village Market Place Local Food Hub. During the second year of the project (2018-2019), the PRCWC was officially opened, serving as an operational market and logistical hub for CSU's Village Market Place (VMP) social enterprise, as well as an active event and gathering space for relevant community, food system, and economic development collaborations. In the third project year (2019-2020), CSU continued to expand the operations of the VMP, engaged in a host of other community collaborations, and swiftly adapted to the challenges of the Covid-19 outbreak. In this fourth project year (2020-2021), which coincided with major peaks in the pandemic, CSU significantly expanded its online ordering, added new innovations to its digital programming, continued to deepen connections to community members in need through outreach and strategic partnerships, and successfully reopenthe VMP for in-person shopping. CSU's produce bag subscription program saw significant growth, as CSU continued to promote option via multiple online/offline mediums. As evidence of growth, multiple drop-off sites for paid produce bag subscribers were added during this period. In addition, CSU continued to provide weekly support for South Central families - numbering approximately 230 households - experiencing food insecurityduringthe pandemic. This initiative began in April of 2020, is ongoing. In addition to providing groceries, CSU provided an ongoing needs assessment and offered guidance on benefits access, including CalFresh, P-EBT, and CARES Act-related support, Utility bill discounts and more. CSUcontinued to maintain an online list of community resources, as well as connected households in the program to other CSU educational opportunities. Another key pathway for bolstering local access to healthy foods came through new partnerships in emergency food distribution. Throughout 2020 and 2021, several groups approached CSU to leverage the organization's existing expertise and staff knowledge to support packing, sorting, and delivering. One notable partnership took shape with the Martin Luther King Jr Hospital Outpatient Clinic, which aimed to provide groceries to its most vulnerable patients. Another notable partnership was with the organization Feeding Black Futures, an effort that focuses on delivering produce to families of people who are incarcerated, focusing specifically on those who do care work within these families (primarily mothers and grandmothers). Through these partnerships CSU was able to contribute toward meeting critical food security needs of households, while supporting regional small farmers and urban producers through sourcing. CSU also continued its community education programming via its Garden Gateway (GGW) program, relying primarily on the use of its social media pages, including Instagram and YouTube. Pre-registered participants also could pick up supplies in order to put new gardening and cooking skills learned through the workshops at home. CSU also continued to offer socially distanced hands on learning through volunteeropportunties hosted at the CSU/EXPOurban farm. There were also several notable new partnerships developed and enacted through the GGW programming during the reporting period. In a sustainable seafood initiative, CSU collaborated with HoldFast Aquaculture, a California-based company that produces high quality seed for sustainable seafood growers (bivalves and mussels). CSU was connected to these organizations through a long-time relationship with Diane Kim, a Senior Scientist and DEI Manager at the University of Southern California's Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. Collectively, they are working to better understand consumer perceptions of seafood, and to work to improve access to high-quality sustainable seafood across economically and culturally diverse communities. CSU envisions being akey player as a future hub for sustainable seafood in South CentralLos Angeles, similar to the role the organization has long played in building logistical and social infrastructures for sustainable fruit and vegetable products. CSU led on consumer interest surveys, and distributed 300+ pounds of sustainably sourced bivalves to GGW participants, sponsored grocery participants, and customers of the subscription produce bags. A virtual GGW workshop was then held, featuring a cooking demonstration as well a mix of farmers and scientists discussing sustainable seafood. Another new relationship forged was with City Plants, an organization that works with non-profit partners and LA City departments to plant and care for trees throughout the city. That connection was initially made through an existing partnership between CSU and the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to promote energy and water conservation programs. Beginning in April of 2021, CSU worked with City Plants to do free on-site distributions of shade and fruit trees to community members, with a second distribution in May, and a third in July. CSU held a 2021 GGW focused on tree planting and care, allowing for a creative integration of programming that offered practical benefits to community constituents. In 2021 CSU successfully distributed over 100 fruit tree to residents of South Central Los Angeles. During this reporting period, CSU also underwent a major redesign of its organizational website, a key topic that has allowed the organization to promote its mission during a time of social distancing and beyond. Backend planning for the website took place throughout 2020 and the new site went live in late 2020. The site helps tell the story of the CSU and VMP to a broader audience through a more accessible and engaging interface, and includes links to the VMP shopping platform as well as all other relevant CSU programs and partnerships. While in-person outreach during this reporting period remained constrained by the pandemic, several new local partnerships - including with local restaurant Earlez Grill and their "Meatless Monday" program, as well as the University of Southern California's holiday toy giveaway - offered CSU an opportunity to conduct additional outreach and build community connections. Beginning in July of 2021, CSU began to hold informal events on Saturdays to help support constituents interested and comfortable connecting in person. In addition to giveaways related to the GGW, these events included VMP discounts and specials, information about CalFresh and other support, wellness practitioners and free yoga classes, as well as Covid-19 vaccination (in collaboration with the LA Mayor's Office). Throughout the early months of 2021, while dealing with the surging and turbulent pandemic conditions in LACounty during the reporting period, CSU planned for the reopening of the VMP and return to in-person programming. CSU took inventory of what would be needed to do so successfully, including consideration and design ideas around new display units, updated signage, and the resumption of food orders. In addition, CSU needed to consider new requirements and consumer expectations related to pandemic safety - including, for instance, deep cleaning and sanitization, masks, plexiglass barriers, etc. A host of activities - including equipment maintenance, training on safetyprotocols, physical and logistical system upgrades, and various forms of staff training and re-training - were enacted to ensure that the VMP would be ready to go when re-opened. The VMP successfully reopened its market for in-person shopping in July of 2021, and increased the discount on produce offered to EBT shoppers to 75%.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:The project has maintained three primary target audiences during this reporting period - 1) local community residents who can be served by the Village Market Place Local Food Hub, 2) community organizations and community leaders who can serve as partners for outreach and community engagement, and 3) regional farmers whose agricultural production can serve as a source for the Village Market Place (VMP) Local Food Hub's products. With respect to the community resident target audience, the neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles (SCLA) has a disproportionately high number of liquor stores, fast-food chains, and corner convenience stores, with a disproportionately low number of access points for health, fresh, sustainably and locally produced fruits and vegetables and value-added products. The area also has a high concentration of low-income community residents, with more than half of the population eligible for Calfresh benefits. With this in mind, Community Services Unlimited's (CSU)'s incentive project considers local residents of all ages and ethnic backgrounds to be a primary target audience. With respect to the community organization and community leader audience, Los Angeles in general, and South Los Angeles in particular, is home to a variety of non-profit organizations that advance a similar community development mission as does CSU. We consistently invite organizations to attend events at the PRCWC (for instance, our Earth Day South LA event), in some instance have collaborated other organizations on the development of events (for instance, working with Community Coalition and LA County on fresh food tasting events), and have invited local organizations to use meeting spaces in the PRCWC for their own purposes (for instance, the Los Angeles Food Policy Council's Food Leaders Lab). These collaborations continued through digital spaces and in-person service outreach during the Covid-19 pandemic. Overall, connections with community organizations allow us to further our mission to build collective capacity at the community level; in addition, these organizations can then share information about the PRCWC and the incentive program to their own members and constituents. With respect to the regional farmer target audience, the state of California has seen significant contraction in terms of overall farmland cultivated and number of working farmers over the last several decades, as market conditions have led to increased consolidation. Community Services Unlimited has a history of providing market opportunities for smaller-scale and sustainability-minded growers who produce food in both rural and urban settings across San Bernardino, Riverside, Fresno, Ventura, Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo counties. With this in mind, CSU's VMP project has continued to cultivate and expand these relationships as a way to support their livelihoods and bring fresh, local produce into SCLA. Changes/Problems:We experienced four significant thefts during the reporting period. We had a trailer that we had inherited with the building that we intended to develop into a mobile sound/film editing space stolen off the property, had a break-in to our storage shed that resulted in canopies, tools, and some other equipment being stolen, the motor to our electric gate stolen, and a theft of personal items during an event at the Center. As a result of these incidents, we did increase our security system - adding additional motion triggered cameras and CCTV cameras to our parking lot. We also provided additional training to staff. These incidences are challenging in their drain on time (filing policy reports, insurance claims, etc.) and in that they are disheartening; however they did provide the opportunity to improve our security. The challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic have already been explicated in depth in this report. Indeed, it was clear from the outset that the public health and economic stress of the Covid-19 pandemic would fall hardest on the historically marginalized, low-income communities of color that CSU and the PRCWC were created to support and serve. This presents a great challenge moving forward, but also an opportunity to demonstrate precisely why the type of community-based model of food-related economic development embodied in the organization's work is necessary. Our most reliable suppliers during the earlier days of the pandemic were the regional small farmers with whom we have been building relationships with for over a decade. Because restaurants and farmers markets were closing, they need someplace to sell there produce, and our community need food. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Staff training is ongoing in terms of the overall functioning of the market, the implementation of CalFresh and the incentive program, and interactions with market customers and partners. The Covid-19 outbreak occurred at a time when significant strides in workforce development and staff training were taking place, with VMP staffers taking on additional roles and responsibilities with confidence and competence. While Covid-19 required some of that development to be put on pause, in other ways it has pushed staff members to continue to expand their abilities in the face of pressing needs. In another important development, CSU has continued to engage in direct collaborations with other organizations as part of the Equitable Food Oriented Development (EFOD) framework. EFOD is facilitated by DAISA Enterprises and spearheaded by a Steering Committee of the following organizations: Community Services Unlimited Inc, Nuestras Raices, La Mujer Obrera, Mandela Partners, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, Leadership for Urban Renewal Network, Planting Justice, Sankofa Community Development Corporation, and allies from Capital Impact Partners, Self-Help Federal Credit Union, and The Wallace Center at Winrock International. As outlined in the collaborative's mission statement, EFOD developed as both an innovative framework and a community of practice, providing, "a foundation for creating community-owned models of economic and social opportunity, with a particular focus on low-income people, people of color, indigenous people, and immigrants and refugees who suffer disproportionate impacts of uneven development and growth. EFOD ensures that members of these communities can build the food systems they need to maintain culture, create health-promoting places, and build community wealth." During this reporting period, the work of CSU and its effort to successfully finance the transformation of the PRCWC was featured as a case study on the newly launched website of the EFOD Collaborative. In addition, during this reporting period, CSU contributed to the development of a brown paper that provides a broader philosophical and practical guide for those interested in the EFOD Collaborative's work. By serving as a Steering Committee member on that project, CSU has advanced its goal to work as a leader within the broader movement for community economic development and community-based food justice. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?CSU uses multiple forms of communication and outreach to promote and disseminate our work. We maintain a list-serve that reaches thousands of local and extra-local stakeholders to keep them abreast of all upcoming activities and outcomes. We also maintain an active website and social media presence across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. In addition, in-person events and workshops at the PRCWC allow for additional outreach to local residents and other interested audiences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next reporting period, CSU intends to be agile as a way to continue to pursue the project goals while responding to the uncertainty of the ongoing Covid-19 epidemic. The next reporting period will focus on the development of innovative digital marketing and outreach, an improved online ordering system, investments in pick-up and delivery service, and the continued improvement of the PRCWC space to meet the current needs of the organization and our customers. We will continue to bring on new staff to execute our plans, engaging in ongoing training and orientation to advance our goals. We are also focused on the continued improvement of the quality and quantity of our data collection in order to better understand customer and participant preferences and practices. For this, we will be relying both on our electronic POS system as well as more in-depth research with customers, including surveys and in-depth interviews.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The first year of this project (2017-2018) focused primarily on transforming the Paul Robeson Community Wellness Center (PRCWC) to serve as the primary site for the Village Market Place Local Food Hub. During the second year of the project (2018-2019), the PRCWC was officially opened, serving as an operational market and logistical hub for CSU's Village Market Place (VMP) and Soulful Café, as well as an active event and gathering space for relevant community and economic development collaborations. During this current project year (2019-2020), CSU continued to expand the operations of the VMP and Soulful Café, as well as engage in a host of other community collaborations to engage local residents in the nutritional, social, and economic missions of the organization. Beginning in March of 2020, CSU was forced to swiftly adapt to the challenges of the Covid-19 outbreak. The VMP underwent a major shift to online ordering systems and CSU engaged in a strategic reorientation that emphasized focused support for CSU's core community constituencies. The first half of the current reporting period saw the continued operation of CSU's Village Market Place and Soulful Café. The VMP offers a mix of fresh produce (sourced from local farmers), packaged grocery items (including a number of hard-to-find options in the neighborhood such as vegan products), household products and cleaning supplies (featuring environmentally-friendly ingredients), bulk bin groceries (such as nuts and dried fruits), and value-added products (handcrafted by CSU staff using locally grown items, including herb mixes, jams, and pickles). The Soulful Café has specialized in the creation of fairly-sourced coffee and tea, made-to-order smoothies, baked goods and desserts, soups, and a rotating mix of seasonal meal options and . For all eligible items, we honor EBT and CalFresh, as well as participate in the USDA GusNIP incentive program. This portion of the reporting year also saw significant infrastructural upgrades within the PRCWC (including enhanced refrigeration capacity and the installation of solar panels); the maintenance and improvement of external urban agricultural spaces; hiring, training and development of staff; and engagement with youth interns. In addition, the VMP and the PRCWC continued to fulfill its mission as a community gathering and event space. With free wireless internet offered to customers and "after school special" meal-deals, the café' served as a site for community and student co-working. During that period, Garden Gateway Workshops with local community members focused on urban agricultural topics such as plant propagation and building raised garden beds, while the food preparation and cooking portions of workshops focused on simple plant based recipes using seasonal locally grown ingredients. Youth in CSU's From the Ground Up internship program met weekly at the VMP Food Hub and at CSU's urban farm, learning how to grow food using natural methods, health and nutrition, and exploring topics of equity and social justice related to the food system. FGU interns hosted a harvest festival at the Paul Robeson Center/VMP Food Hub in October 2019 where they led activities that highlighted different harvest traditions. They also collaborated in an effort to bring a "smart" bus shelter to the busy intersection near the food hub. The bus stop now has lighting, a notice board of when the next bus is coming, free wi-fi, a usb charging port and art handmade by community residents. For this effort CSU partnered with USC Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication and OutFront Media/JC Decaux. In collaboration with a variety of community partners, CSU also hosted regular Capoeira workshops, yoga classes, and our "Rooted in Reading Book Club." During this reporting period, CSU also remained an integral part of the work of the Equitable Food Oriented Development (EFOD) network, of which CSU Co-Executive Director Neelam Sharma is a founder, serving as an Executive and Steering Committee member and participating in resource-development and strategic planning. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in mid-March of 2020 required dramatic shifts on the part of CSU across all aspects of organizational operations. In-person community events were put on hold indefinitely. CSU launched a basic online ordering system for the VMP, offering same-day delivery for orders placed by 10am. Additional outreach efforts were made to promote the VMP produce bag subscription program, a CSA model program wherein residents receive a bag of fresh, local, beyond organic produce each week via home delivery. Importantly, CSU shifting our CalFresh Outreach and Application Assistance to offering assistance by phone, given the shutdown, providing guidance in terms of eligibility, application processes, and food ordering was crucial. Further, to help community members find the help and information needed, CSU began to compile and disseminate an online list of vital resources. The subsequent months saw the growth of the VMP's produce bag program, with options for pick-up, home delivery, and several new neighborhood drop sites. Much of CSU's community programming, such as the Garden Gateway Workshops, moved to virtual platforms (such as Instagram Live, Zoom and YouTube), with gardening, cooking, and nutritional focus areas selected based on community member feedback of their greatest needs/interests during the pandemic. CSU also hosted monthly no contact pick-up events where community residents could get soil, compost, plants and nutrition workshop ingredients for Free. At the same time, CSU resolved to focus on having a deep and supportive impact on local families who had come to patronize the VMP, as well as to find ways to continue to support local farmers who have come to depend on the VMP as an outlet for their products. CSU developed a model in which households that applied for CalFresh with the organization directly would also be surveyed about the food needs of their household, followed by appropriate grocery deliveries (for example, vegan alternatives for vegans or snack bags for children) until their benefits were received. Once benefits were received, an additional survey was carried out to determine whether the benefits would provide adequate food or if the household needed continued support. Thorough this sponsored grocery CSU supported 60 households with weekly groceries, and continues to increase the number of households we are supporting. Through the summer months of 2020, CSU expanded its pick-up options as consumers became more comfortable making in-person visits. At the same time, CSU recognized the need to improve the online ordering interface that had become a key portal for connecting to customers and potential customers in the community. Significant efforts were put into developing and designing a revamped website for ordering, which went live during the latter part of this reporting period. During this time, CSU also deepened its partnerships with front-line anti-hunger organizations - including the LA Community Action Network (LACAN) and Hunger Action LA (HALA). These partner organizations were provided with bulk grains and produce deliveries by CSU, to be redistributed to their community member constituencies in need. Throughout this process, CSU continued to assess family eligibility for benefits programs, including EBT and CalFresh, as well as the GusNIP fruit and vegetable purchasing incentive program, providing additional resources where possible. In addition to food, through various community-based partnerships, CSU was also able to support local families with other items such as dental care kits, diapers etc. CSU also partnered with other agencies involved emergency food, such as health clinics and community center, to provide them with locally grown produce to include in their food distribution efforts.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience:The project has had three primary target audiences during this reporting period - 1) local community residents who can be served by the Village Market Place Local Food Hub, 2) community organizations and community leaders who can serve as partners for outreach and community engagement, and 3) regional farmers whose agricultural production can serve as a source for the Village Market Place (VMP) Local Food Hub's products. With respect to the community resident target audience, the neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles (SCLA) has a disproportionately high number of liquor stores, fast-food chains, and corner convenience stores, with a disproportionately low number of access points for health, fresh, sustainably and locally produced fruits and vegetables and value-added products. The area also has a high concentration of low-income community residents, with more than half of the population eligible for Calfresh benefits. With this in mind, Community Services Unlimited's (CSU)'s incentive project considers local residents of all ages and ethnic backgrounds to be a primary target audience. With respect to the community organization and community leader audience, Los Angeles in general, and South Los Angeles in particular, is home to a variety of non-profit organizations that advance a similar community development mission as does CSU. We consistently invite organizations to attend events at the PRCWC (for instance, our Earth Day South LA event), in some instance have collaborated other organizations on the development of events (for instance, working with Community Coalition and LA County on fresh food tasting events), and have invited local organizations to use meeting spaces in the PRCWC for their own purposes (for instance, the Los Angeles Food Policy Council's Food Leaders Lab). Overall, connections with community organizations allow us to further our mission to build collective capacity at the community level; in addition, these organizations can then share information about the PRCWC and the incentive program to their own members and constituents. With respect to the regional farmer target audience, the state of California has seen significant contraction in terms of overall farmland cultivated and number of working farmers over the last several decades, as market conditions have led to increased consolidation. Community Services Unlimited has a history of providing market opportunities for smaller-scale and sustainability-minded growers who produce food in both rural and urban settings across San Bernardino, Riverside, Fresno, Ventura, Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo counties. With this in mind, CSU's VMP project has continued to cultivate and expand these relationships as a way to support their livelihoods and bring fresh, local produce into SCLA. Changes/Problems:After the official opening of the PRCWC, the building still required a number of infrastructural improvements and construction fixes. This has included both internal and external efforts to prevent against water damage, improve the façade and landscaping, as well as to organize and decorate both the market and community gathering spaces in ways that are comfortable and inviting for visitors. The greatest challenges during the reporting period were dealing with the development of multiple roof leaks, failing HVAC equipment that resulted in not being able to regulate the temperature in the VMP market and café and commercial kitchen, pipe leaks that caused damage to walls and tile, and a variety of other issues. We have also worked to find adequate and safe storage areas within the building. These issues had a significant impact on staff time, and caused interruptions in operation as problems had to be fixed. After opening the PRCWC, the market was open 7 days per week. After assessing that Mondays were the slowest market day, the decision was made to move to a 6 day per week schedule instead. Mondays are now used for inventory, staff training, planning and development. We plan to keep this schedule for the foreseeable future, although we will consider the viability of a return to a 7 day per week open market in the following years. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As discussed in the outline of the program's activities, staff training is ongoing in terms of the overall functioning of the Village Market Place, the implementation of CalFresh and the GusNIP incentive program, and interactions with market customers and partners. We have focused in particular on training and consistently re-training staff to recognize the differences and unique qualities of varied types of local and seasonal varieties of produce. From there, we work together to help them better explain to our customers the growing and sourcing practices of our herbs and produce, as well as connecting these products to our market and Soulful Café offerings. In addition, significant ongoing staff training has taken place to build proficiency related to the use of the point of sale (POS) system, as well as to continue to improve upon ways to capture customer and inventory information through that POS system. In addition, we are part of a coalition of organizations focused on Equitable Food Oriented Development, developing coordinated national initiatives related to fresh food accessibility and affordability in underserved communities. Meetings and conferences have offered the opportunity for sharing knowledge about best practices and challenges, which further informs our programmatic development and implementation. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?CSU uses multiple forms of communication and outreach to promote and disseminate our work. We maintain a list-serve that reaches thousands of local and extra-local stakeholders to keep them abreast of all upcoming activities and outcomes. We also maintain an active website and social media presence across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. In addition, in-person events and workshops at the PRCWC allow for additional outreach to local residents and other interested audiences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?With the PRCWC now in full operation, the next reporting period will focus on increased marketing and promotion through community outreach, social media marketing, and improved in-store and external signage. We will continue to bring on new staff to execute on our plans, engaging in ongoing training and orientation to advance our goals. We are also focused on the continued improvement of the quality and quantity of our data collection in order to better understand customer and participant preferences and practices. For this, we will be relying both on our electronic POS system as well as more in-depth research with customers, including surveys and in-depth interviews. Related, with the one-year anniversary of our programming at the PRCWC approaching, we will use events and gathering as a way to get feedback from customers and participants. We are also exploring ways to re-launch produce bag delivery sites and produce stands in the next year, which have been put on hiatus as we focus on the PRCWC. All of these sites will accept CalFresh and the GusNIP incentive program.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The previous year of this project was largely focused on transforming the Paul Robeson Community Wellness Center (PRCWC) to serve as the primary site for the Village Market Place Local Food Hub. During this project year, the PRCWC was officially opened in September of 2018, and since that time through the end of this reporting period (and beyond) is serving as an operational market and logistical hub for CSU's Village Market Place (VMP) and Soulful Café, as well as an active event and gathering space for relevant community and economic development collaborations. After the initial opening, the VMP and Soulful Café based in the PRCWC were open seven days per week up through Thanksgiving of 2018. Open hours were changed at that time to 9am-7pm from Tuesday to Friday and 10am-6pm on Saturday and Sunday, with Monday closed, in order to better manage staff hours and match market hours to consumer preferences. The market has consistently offered a mix of fresh produce (sourced from local farmers), packaged grocery items (including a number of hard-to-find options in the neighborhood such as vegan products), household products and cleaning supplies (featuring environmentally-friendly ingredients), bulk bin groceries (such as nuts and dried fruits), and value-added products (handcrafted by CSU staff using locally grown items, including herb mixes, jams, and pickled products). The Soulful Café has specialized in the creation of coffee and tea, made-to-order smoothies, baked goods and desserts, soups, and a rotating mix of seasonal meal options (including Portobello mushroom sandwiches, roasted asparagus potato salad, and vegetable cottage pie, to name a few). This reporting period proved to be vital in terms of monitoring and evaluating the function of the market, improving logistical interactions with vendors, and training and mentoring staff. A key task has been to identify customer flow, as well as to set up and refine our customer feedback systems. We have worked to ensure that we stock items that are requested by customers, regularly adjust supply to meet demands, and improve our in-store displays and signage as a way to clearly communicate to shoppers. We have also consistently marketed the VMP and café through in-store taste-testing, on-the-ground outreach, flyering, external signage, and social media marketing. Our aim is to attract and maintain consumer interest, using storytelling and pictures of our farmers, produce, and increasing variety of value-added products to better engage. Throughout this marketing, we emphasize the availability of CalFresh as well as the GusNIP incentive program, which provides additional purchasing power for fruits and vegetables, at the VMP. There have also been a variety of tasks required to transfer existing vendors into our new point of sale (POS) systems, as well as bring new vendors on line into the POS. Doing so allows for smooth operations in terms of placing orders, checking and restocking inventory, and making sure that the market includes the necessary variety of options. We have worked during this period to build a set of partnerships with vendors that represent a mix of smaller-scale local vendors as well as larger-scale regional vendors. This arrangement is aligned with our overall community development ethos while also maintaining reliability in terms of product offerings. The reporting period saw the executive staff conduct a variety of formal and informal trainings of new staff members at the PRCWC and with the Village Market Place and Soulful Café. Staff members have been trained in the use of the POS system, the implementation of CalFresh and the GusNIP incentive program, the reporting and tracking of data, food and office inventory, food and produce handling, and the processing of value-added products such as canning, pickling and cooking. In addition, staff were trained to order produce from farmers, which required training to understand the agricultural calendar and interact with farmers in light of seasonality and other needs of the partner farmers. Staff have also been continuously educated on differences between varieties of local produce, knowledge that they are then expected to pass along to market customers. Over the last year, CSU has worked to develop an urban farm at the PRCWC, working with TreePeople, the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation, US Green Building Council (LA Chapter), and community residents to plant over 20 fruit trees, and construct raised bed planters for on-site growing. Throughout the reporting period, several CSU Garden Gateway Workshops were held with community members, focused on a variety of topics related to gardening and cooking fresh foods. A significant achievement of the current reporting relates to the PRCWC's establishment as an active event and gathering space for a variety of community programs. We use each of these events as an opportunity to conduct taste-tests and cooking demonstrations with local residents, share more about the overall mission of our programming, and conduct outreach related to CalFresh and the GusNIP incentive program. A highlight of these activities was our launch a series of events under the header of "United in Wellness," which included a variety of Black History Month related programming. In addition, in April of 2019, we hosted our annual "Earth Day South LA" event, which included healthy cooking demos and taste-testing all day, as well as gardening, yoga, massage, music, and community health information. Further, CSU formed a partnership with Shared Studios to bring a "Portal" to the PRCWC for an 8-week series of events that took place between April - June 2019. The Portal is an immersive art project that uses a gold shipping container (which was located in the PRCWC parking lot) and innovative technology to create an environment that allows for intimate conversations across long distances. For instance, the Portal was used as a connection between teen urban gardeners in LA and rural farmers in Virginia, and a connection between South LA residents and co-op extension representatives in Richmond CA, among others. During the reporting period, CSU also reconvened the From the Ground Up (FGU) youth apprenticeship and internship program. During the winter and spring of 2019, two FGU apprentices supported outreach efforts to promote free community health and culture-focused events being held at the PRCWC, described above. An FGU program coordinator officially came on board in June 2019, while a full internship class was recruited and held over the course of the summer of 2019. Interns engaged in educational activities related to healthy eating, cooking, gardening, and community building, as well as supported CSU community outreach efforts. Finally, CSU has increasingly opened up the PRCWC space in order to engage with collaborators from the worlds of community economic development, food and agriculture entrepreneurship, and the arts. During the reporting period, the PRCWC provided a space for meetings of the Equitable Small Business Incubator, a program that offers local entrepreneurs the opportunity to develop plant-based businesses with financial and business training and access to our commercial kitchen. The site hosted meetings of the South Central Growers and Harvesters Network, an initiative that emerged from CSU's previous Garden Gateway and Tree of Life workshop programs. CSU has consistently offered tours of the PRCWC site to local community members during CSU events, as well as to a variety of community-based organizations. These gatherings serve as an opportunity to discuss the benefits and challenges of engaging in community economic development through food, as well as to emphasize the availability of CalFresh and the GusNIP incentive program to these organizations directly and to their constituents indirectly.
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Progress 09/01/17 to 08/31/18
Outputs
Target Audience:The project had two primary target audiences during this reporting period - 1) local community residents who can be served by the Village Market Place Local Food Hub, and 2) regional farmers whose agricultural production can serve as a source for the Village Market Place (VMP) Local Food Hub's products. With respect to the community resident target audience, the neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles (SCLA) has a disproportionately high number of liquor stores, fast-food chains, and corner convenience stores, with a disproportionately low number of access points for health, fresh, sustainably and locally produced fruits and vegetables and value-added products. The area also has a high concentration of low-income community residents, with more than half of the population eligible for Calfresh benefits. With this in mind, Community Services Unlimited's (CSU)'s VMP project considers local residents of all ages and ethnic backgrounds to be a primary target audience. With respect to the regional farmer target audience, the state of California has seen significant contraction in terms of overall farmland cultivated and number of working farmers over the last several decades, as market conditions have led to increased consolidation. Community Services Unlimited has a history of providing market opportunities for smaller-scale and sustainability-minded growers who produce food in both rural and urban settings across San Bernardino, Riverside, Fresno, Ventura, Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo counties. CSU purchases exclusively from farmers of color and limited-resource/socially disadvantaged growers. With this in mind, CSU's VMP project has continued to cultivate and expand these relationships as a way to support their livelihoods and bring fresh, local produce into SCLA. Changes/Problems:The project did face delays due to multiple construction challenges, including issues with plumbing, materials installation, and general construction slowdowns, which subsequently delayed required permitting and inspections. CSU had anticipated being fully open by approximately March of 2018, but the delays pushed the opening back to September of 2018. This delay did have significant impacts on the number of events CSU could host, as well as the volume of purchases and volume of sales. Even with those delays, however, the project remains on track in general terms. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?CSU is engaged in a variety of professional networks related to food-based community economic development. During the reporting period, staff members took multiple trips to Oakland, California to meet with leadership from Mandela Partners and the Mandela Market Place, in which they discussed strategies and practices for building and maintaining venues for healthy and sustainable food retail in traditionally underserved communities. In addition, Executive Director Neelam Sharma co-created and leads a national workgroup that has developed a framework called Equitible Food Oriented Development (EFOD), which focuses on how food systems work can be leveraged to address the many injustices that impact communities of color. In relation to this work, Sharma developed and led a panel on Equitable Food-Oriented Development at the national PolicyLink conference in spring 2018. CSU staff also attended the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Community Asset Builders, attending and participating in multiple workshops. CSU also hosted a visit from representatives from the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, which is in the process of developing a co-op market, to share perspectives and best practices. Further, during the summer of 2018, CSU leadership trained Village Market Place staff on a variety of program-related duties, including produce handling, processing, packaging, and seasonality, as well as education on a broad range of local food system and agricultural topics, and all CSU staff received in-depth training on using and managing their point of sale system. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?CSU uses multiple forms of communication and outreach to promote and disseminate our work. We maintain a list-serve that reaches thousands of local and extra-local stakeholders to keep them abreast of all upcoming activities and outcomes. We also maintain an active website and social media presence across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. In addition, in-person events and workshops at the PRCWC and Magnolia Place allow for additional outreach to local residents and other interested audiences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The overall goals and plan of action as outlined in the initial CFP proposal for the VMP Local Food Hub Project remain in place. The aim of the next reporting period is to ramp up all activities in the market, café, and urban agricultural spaces at the PRCWC, as well as to maintain and extend connections with community partners and regional farmers. We will continue to make internal and external improvements to the PRCWC site, to bolster sales at the market, to host workshops and events with community residents and volunteers, to train VMP staff in all aspects of the local food hub, and to expand our network of local and sustainably sourced agricultural connections.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
CSU and the VMP Food Hub Project continue to make steady progress toward achieving these goals. During the reporting period, the revitalization of the PRCWC set the stage for the additional progress that is to come. The PRCWC remains on track to serve as a vital food hub in SCLA, serving as a point of access to healthy produce and value-added products, a site of sustainable urban agricultural production, and a space for community education on a variety of nutrition and agriculture-related topics.
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