Photos from recent a video-taping for an upcoming segment on OK Horizon, harvesting vegetables with a family at Jane Addams and a cooking demostration in the home of a WIC mom and her family.
Creating Solutions. . .
In May 2009, Indian Health Care Resource Center of Tulsa (IHCRC) launched a new three-year Community Food Project to address local hunger and nutrition problems. With $300,000 of funding from the United States Department of Agriculture, the project weaves three interrelated strands – a food assessment and analysis component, a set of community-based food security, cooking and gardening empowerment projects and a policy track to comprehensively improve access to affordable, nutritious, local fresh foods by low-income residents living in metro Tulsa.
The over-arching objective of the Food for Life project is to improve healthful food security within Tulsa's vulnerable low-income, often multicultural populations. The project plan addresses awareness, access, food knowledge, skills and policy. Activities will include organization of the community with activity groups, conducting community education and championing enlightened food policy and community improvement projects.
The project plan was developed to improve local food security in the community and reduce the barriers of low-income persons to consume nutritious, healthful foods by facilitating self-reliance and increasing capacity for food production, developing school and community gardens and the sharing of traditional knowledge and skills.
Strategies will be employed to improve accessibility to in-season fresh locally grown food, as well as year round solutions to affordable nutritious foods. A range of approaches will be employed to help families place healthy foods on their dinner table, including growing your own via home and community gardens, farmers markets, food cooperatives, collective discount buying clubs and federal food subsidy programs. This approach will be supported by traditional Native American models of shared work, participatory decision-making and shared community ownership.
The Food for Life project has been aligned with a "rising tide" of converging local and statewide forces that are working together to effect comprehensive positive community change. These partners support the establishment of policies to promote community environmental changes to increase access to affordable nutritious foods, facilities and programs to promote increased physical activity. The Food for Life project will capitalize on this support through advocacy of a newly established Tulsa Food Security Council.
Source: Food Research Action Center (FRAC). Hunger in the U.S. Updated January 17, 2007.
Cultural perspectives and targeted social marketing will inform the community about the Food for Life project, including parents, teachers, the business community, education, and civic and nonprofit organizations. Social marketing and community mobilization will be used to:
- Raise awareness in the community regarding food security issues;
- Increase the community's knowledge about food;
- Enhance skills and assets in the community around cooking, gardening, shopping, food production and quality; and
- Advocate for progressive governmental and institutional policies to support a healthy food environment.
MISSION: Promoting local food security and eliminating food deserts in Tulsa through advocacy and the provision of educational assistance in vegetable gardening, grocery shopping and meal preparation.
VISION: All Tulsans will have the skills to prepare nutritious meals using conveniently available and affordable whole foods.
Ways to participate:
- Start your own home garden
- Volunteer your time at a school or neighborhood community garden
- Take your children along on a shopping trip to a local farmers market
- Attend a demonstration cooking class Project Associates
- Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma
- Global Gardens
- Kendall Whittier Inc / GROW
- Me and My Mac Design
- Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative
- Pearl Farmers Market
- Tulsa Community Garden Association
- Tulsans Operating in Unity Creating Hope (TOUCH )
- Buy Fresh Buy Local - Sustainable Green Country
- Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture
- Pathways to Health - Tulsa Health Department
- Tulsa Area Community Schools Initiative
Food for Life - a Community Food Project IHCRC welcomes Steve Eberle as the Community Food and Garden Coordinator.
Stephen Eberle
Community Food and Garden Coordinator
(918) 588-1900 ext. 3221
seberle@ihcrc.org
Indian Health Care Resource Center of Tulsa, Inc.
550 South Peoria, Tulsa, OK 74120-3820
