5 Columbus nonprofits join together to fill a basic need — access to healthy food

Five Columbus nonprofit organizations have recently joined together to bring healthy foods and culinary education to citizens in one of the most food insecure areas of the city.

The collaboration is called #NourishColumbus, and it’s a program designed to turn locally grown vegetables into medically tailored and healthy prepared meals for residents of the North Highland community.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, food insecurity is defined as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.” The North Highlands area is a “food desert,” an area with low-income residents who have limited access to affordable and nutritious food.

The Columbus Botanical Garden is working to grow the vegetables with the direction of urban farmer Sharayah Davis. She and Chandler Collins, development director at the botanical garden, came up with the idea of Nourish Columbus.

Through donations, the garden provides fresh local vegetables to Bare Roots Bibb Cafe on Second Avenue, which creates prepared meals and distributes them to two other nonprofits in Columbus: MercyMed and Truth Spring Academy.

“We are the conduit in the sense that donors can go onto our website and donate money to our vegetable garden,” Collins said. “$25 dollars equals about 13 and a half meals…(the donation) starts the chain.”

From cafe to fighter of food insecurity

Along with the collaboration, Bare Roots Bibb Cafe is undergoing a transition to become The Food Mill, a multi-purpose organization to combat food insecurity in the North Highlands area.

Owner Olivia Amos said that when the cafe fully completes its evolution into The Food Mill in early August, the cafe will work as a function of the nonprofit entity Ugrow Inc., which was founded by Davis.

And along with the transition, the flagship downtown restaurant Bare Roots officially closed on July 20.

Amos said Bare Roots is looking at another opportunity for the space and will have another announcement about the plans in about three to four weeks.

The cafe on Second Avenue will still provide breakfast and lunch, as well as prepared meals and prepared family-style meals, but they will work on other programs such as Nourish Columbus.

Amos said the program has been in the works for over a year.

“It’s amazing, since all of these organizations have come together and started the collaboration, how much progress we’ve been able to make very quickly,” she said. “Especially with the botanical garden stepping in to help us on a weekly basis with the produce, that’s just enabled us to do more each week.”

No matter what someone’s socioeconomic status is, eating healthy can be a learning curve for everyone, Amos said.

“We’ve just been so conditioned to how we’ve been eating and mass production of food that we really need to retrain ourselves and educate people” she said. “It is amazing though once you solve the basic need of food, especially at the local level, how you see other issues beginning to solve themselves... all of these other things that are negative to the city: overall health, the cost of that to the city, crime, unemployment rate, housing, a lot of those things begin to improve.”

MercyMed partnership

Through the partnership with MercyMed, The Food Mill and Columbus Botanical Garden are able to promote the concept of food as medicine.

“It’s a huge service that will end up impacting the city with lower healthcare needs or costs in the long run, is the ultimate goal,” Collins said.

In the long run, the plan is to replicate the partnerships so every area of the city has a healthcare clinic within walking distance, a pop-up or mobile food market, and access to a dietitian, medically tailored meals and healthy prepared meals.

“We want that to be available to everyone in the city that that need is there for,” Amos said.

Another function of the program is a partnership with Open Door Community House, whose mission is to eliminate poverty in the community. The Food Mill will operate a shared kitchen space for Open Door’s culinary program, and incubator space will be provided for culinary entrepreneurs.

Amos said there are more projects in the works, and all of the revenue generated will go back into the nonprofit in order for them to be able to feed people in the community.

“We are also talking with the (Housing Authority of Columbus) right now, we’ve got several projects in the works with them,” Amos said. “Also SafeHouse Ministries, I’ve been talking to them and then eventually Fox Elementary, we want to start a program with them as well with their kids and families that are food insecure.”

Another project The Food Mill is working on is creating a food hub and farmers market in partnership with Beyond Harvest Foods. The market will be able to accept SNAP benefits and ensure farmers receive full market value.

Beyond Harvest Foods has also been contributing chicken to aid Nourish Columbus’ efforts.

MercyMed too is working on its own efforts to provide fresh, healthy food to its patients and those in need.

Recently, Columbus businessman Brad Turner bought land on the northeast corner of the intersection at Second Avenue and 38th Street, just north of The Food Mill and MercyMed.

Old dilapidated buildings on the property were demolished, and Keith Sims, a patient health advocate and farmer employed by MercyMed, is already working on turning the space into a garden to support the clinic’s mission, according to Amos.

To support food insecurities and help abolish, people can donate to #NourishColumbus at columbusbotanicalgarden.org/donate-now/.

To contact The Food Mill, email thefoodmillcolumbus@gmail.com.