WeTHRIVE! teams use common strategies for enhancing access to healthy food in their communities, yet each team brings its own unique perspective to the challenge.
Forest Park & Winton Woods City Schools serve 300 families per month
The Forest Park WeTHRIVE! team holds monthly Produce Pop-Ups in collaboration with Winton Woods City Schools (WWCS). They provide fresh produce to about 300 families at each event and have been hosting food distribution events for about eight years.
Mark Docter, director of child nutrition with WWCS, and Ron Wilson, community resource specialist with the Forest Park Police Department, coordinate the Produce Pop-Ups.
What exactly is a Produce Pop-Up? Well, the day starts with a delivery of fresh produce, and sometimes other items, from the Freestore Foodbank to Forest Chapel Church. Volunteers arrive at about 2:00pm and start sorting the food. Ron says they run an assembly line to fill boxes and bags that will be given to families as they drive or walk through the parking lot. Food is given out starting at 4:30 pm and they go until 6:30 pm, or until all the food is gone.
Volunteers include members of the Forest Park WeTHRIVE! team, people from the schools (students, administrators, teachers, and sports teams) and Forest Chapel, as well as fire and police department personnel. The pastor of Forest Chapel, Reverend Dr. J. Kabamba Kiboko, Ph.D., is fluent in many languages, Ron says, which comes in handy in helping the many Spanish- and French-speaking residents who come.
The Forest Park WeTHRIVE! team also stocks Blessing Boxes, which are mini food pantries (similar to Free Little Libraries) located throughout the community. (See our 2022 story about the first of four Blessing Boxes.)
Miami Township team members see people in need where they work
The Miami Township WeTHRIVE! team held their first food distribution event in 2023 (you can read all about it here). Since then, they’ve partnered with WeTHRIVE! teams in North Bend and Addyston on two more food giveaways.
Karen Herbert, director of the Miami Township Senior Center, and Carrie Bernard, manager of the Miami Township branch of the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library, are WeTHRIVE! team members who frequently see and hear about residents struggling putting healthy food on the table.
“I think Karen and I have an interesting vantage point,” Carrie says. “We both have the opportunity to really develop relationships with a lot of people in the community. And so during those daily conversations, we’re really seeing that need.”
Karen notes that collaborating with neighboring Addyston and North Bend increases the impact of the food distribution events. The communities are close geographically and they share lots of connections, which makes working together easy.
These Produce Pop-Ups work a little differently than in Forest Park. People walk through and choose what they want from the fruits and vegetables delivered by the Freestore. While the teams don’t know what items the Freestore will bring, they’ve been able to quickly find recipes to hand out with items that people may not be familiar with or know how to use.
Their advice for communities interested in holding food distribution events? “We learn something different every time,” says Carrie. “We make mistakes, but then you know how to make it better the next time,” adds Karen.
Addyston does whatever it takes to get food to those in need
The Addyston WeTHRIVE! team is dedicated to helping residents have better access to healthy food. While they worked with North Bend and Miami Township on a food distribution event last year, they also held two holiday food giveaways on their own.
Last December, a holiday Produce Pop-Up that was supposed to last a few hours ended up going on for four days because they had so much produce to give away. “We even stayed open later so people could stop by after work,” says Pam Jackson, Addyston councilmember and WeTHRIVE! team member. “Even though it was the week of Christmas, we wanted to be very flexible in trying to accommodate as many people as possible.”
The team partners with the Addyston VFW Post, who lets them use their building to store and distribute the food. The VFW also donated funds that were used to buy hams and turkeys to go along with the fresh produce from the Freestore.
For Thanksgiving, the team made up baskets of food with turkeys and delivered them personally to about 20 Addyston residents, who were very surprised and extremely grateful to receive the food.
Pam says the nearest food pantry is in Cleves and it is only open certain hours a couple of times during the week. “Anything we can do, we are willing to pull it together. We would do an event every month if we needed to.”
Cleves WeTHRIVE! team shows that a little box can make a big difference
When the Village of Cleves became a WeTHRIVE! community, one of the first things the new team did was to set up a food donation drop box at the Cleves Municipal Building. All items donated go to the Three Rivers Area Food Pantry, better known as TRAM.
Mary Angeline and Dawn Richardson are on the Cleves WeTHRIVE! team. They say there is definitely a need in their community. They have an unhoused population and they see others who are having trouble with the price of groceries going up.
By putting a collection box at the municipal building, residents can donate items to TRAM outside of the agency’s limited open hours. In the past year, the team has collected more than 300 items for TRAM, including food, personal hygiene items, and cleaning supplies.
The Cleves WeTHRIVE! team plans to create a cookbook for TRAM to give to clients to help them use some of the food they get. Mary developed a community resource guide that will hopefully be ready soon.
Other WeTHRIVE! communities and schools promote access to healthy food:
- North Bend has partnered with Miami Township and Addyston on Produce Pop-Ups and food distribution events.
- Woodlawn has a community garden and they share produce with residents. They also hold an annual farmers market event with a Produce Pop-Up, taste testing, cooking demonstrations, and other learning opportunities.
- Amberley’s WeTHRIVE! health and wellness team collected food donations at the village’s annual Ice Cream Social.
- Golf Manor is working on a Little Food Pantry that should be up and operating soon!
- Lockland City Schools includes Produce Pop-Ups at school events like their recent Spring into Wellness fair.
- Mt. Healthy City Schools and North College Hill City Schools have food pantries that are open to students and families.
Child care providers are getting farm-fresh food
The WeTHRIVE! Child Care Initiative works with partners to provide fresh produce to child care providers and families during the local growing season. For more information, read Planting the seeds of health: Introducing kids & families to locally grown fruits & vegetables.
WeTHRIVE! partners are also involved in improving access to healthy food:
- Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library, in partnership with UMC Food Ministry, provides afterschool meals for kids and teens at select branches. Locations include libraries in the WeTHRIVE! communities of Delhi Township, Elmwood Place, Mt. Healthy, Reading, and St. Bernard.
- Freestore Foodbank provides fresh fruits and vegetables for communities that want to host their own Produce Pop-Ups. Their Healthy Harvest Mobile Market also makes stops in or near WeTHRIVE! communities, including Lincoln Heights.
- La Soupe bridges the gap between food waste and hunger by rescuing perishable food, transforming it into delicious and nutritious meals, and sharing with the food insecure and their supporters.
- Mt. Healthy Alliance has a food pantry that serves more than 1600 individuals every month.
- ProducePerks Midwest helps families buy fresh fruits and vegetables by providing a $1:$1 match for SNAP and P-EBT shoppers – doubling their purchasing power. They also coordinate a Produce Prescription (PRx) program.
- Society of St. Andrew works with local growers to glean (harvest or pick up) their produce that is not marketable (but is still good food) and transport it to organizations that serve those don’t have access to healthy food.
- Tikkun Farm in Mt. Healthy holds a Free Market on Fridays (1pm-4pm) and Saturdays (1pm-2pm). They serve more than 400 families per week.
Food insecurity in Hamilton County:
Food insecurity occurs when people don’t have enough to eat and don’t know where their next meal will come from.
According to Feeding America, 13.3 percent of the population in Hamilton County experienced food insecurity in 2022. That’s 110,140 individuals – and 42,710 are children under the age of 18.