As part of Denver’s attempt to address food access issues in neighborhoods, two northeast Denver nonprofits are getting city money to help people eat healthier.
The city’s $1 million investment to spur ideas is a mix of grant and loan funding the economic development office and will target the low-income neighborhoods of Globeville and Elyria-Swansea. Researchers estimate the average resident in those neighborhoods has to travel two miles to visit to a full-service grocery store — twice as far as the average Denver resident.
The funds are also part of the city’s increased involvement in making food issues part of its local government responsibility, something cities around the country are doing.
“The community has been asking us, as a city, to be more involved,” said Blake Angelo, manager of food systems development in the city’s Office of Economic Development. His position was created about a year ago. “Before about 2010 you could see food mentioned maybe two to three times in a plan. If you look at a lot of our more recent plans you see food coming up more and more often, and in more and more ways.”
The GrowHaus, a nonprofit that has been growing and selling food in the Elyria-Swansea area since 2011, will get $76,720 to hire two staff members — expected to be residents from the neighborhood — and a program director.
The residents will be called promotoras, the Spanish word for promoters, trained on how to shop for healthy food, how to prepare it at home, and how to spread the knowledge to neighbors.
“It’s a real word-of-mouth community,” said Coby Gould, executive director of the GrowHaus. “People trust their peers.”
The second grant, $66,213 to the nonprofit Focus Points Family Resource Center in partnership with Right to Live Well, will pay for staff and equipment to create a local business support center for local food micro entrepreneurs. Part of being able to eat healthier is tied to having a higher income, officials said.
“Most people use food in informal businesses such as cooking and selling food,” said Robin Reichhardt, economic opportunity organizer for Right to Live Well. “The neighborhood is full of entrepreneurs, though the majority are not registered with the state.”
A lack of financial education, an abundance of complicated paperwork or the need for a computer are often barriers, Reichhardt said. At the support center, business owners would get help with that and more. The group has already been giving food entrepreneurs training to modify recipes or to help them earn food safety handling certifications.
The project in the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods could test how city funding might work — or not work — to promote food access or to attract grocery retailers to fill gaps referred to as food deserts.
The application process for the more than $850,000 left from the $1 million investment, targeted to attract retail, is still open. For those awards, the target area may expand to include Montbello.
Angelle Fouther, chair of the Montbello Organizing Committee, said she understands many communities in Denver are in need of a place to buy healthier food, but pointed out that Montbello is Denver’s largest neighborhood and has “zero full-service grocers,” she said.
Denver is also working on the first Denver Food Plan — a guide to the city’s long-term role in creating a system supporting consumers, producers, small farm owners, urban gardeners small businesses and others.
But advocates such as Fouther and Reichhardt emphasized that the city’s role has to be in partnership with the community.
“Healthy eating and well-being definitely falls in the ballpark of the responsibility of the government,” Fouther said. “It doesn’t mean we should sit and wait for the government to come save us. We are working hand in hand.”
