MARKETMAKEOVERS
MarketMakeovers.ORG is a dynamic, user-friendly online toolkit about the process of making over small corner stores to carry healthier food choices. It’s designed to serve a national community of public health practitioners, advocates, community activists, educators and policymakers. It features the work of the South L.A. Healthy Eating Active Community Initiative (HEAC), local high school students, and Public Matters, using the conversions of three corner stores in South L.A. as case studies.
South L.A. is one of many “food deserts” across the country. Supermarkets are scarce; quality produce is hard to find. Consequently, the rates of obesity and diabetes are alarmingly high and growing.
MarketMakeovers.ORG is a combination of pragmatic information and creative, innovative strategies in multiple presentation formats: downloadable, user-friendly how-to’s of market makeovers as well as innovative youth-generated videos that provide context about South L.A.’s food desert – its history, consequences and documentation of efforts to alleviate it.
MarketMakeovers.ORG is an evolving guide: a repository of information, best practices and lessons learned; a forum for exchange; and a springboard for advancing work in this burgeoning field.
The site will feature guests such as:
The Kitchen Sisters, NPR
Hannah Laurison, Public Health Law & Policy
WYSE (West Oakland Youth Standing Empowered)
Mary Lee, PolicyLink
WHO’S BEHIND MARKETMAKEOVERS.ORG?
For the past two years, the South L.A. Healthy Eating Active Community Initiative (HEAC) and Public Matters have worked on a highly successful public health, civic engagement and leadership development project with high school students from The Accelerated School (TAS).
The South L.A. Healthy Eating Active Community Initiative (HEAC) is one of six sites in a state-wide initiative funded by The California Endowment with the goal of reducing childhood obesity and diabetes by increasing access to nutritious food and physical activity opportunities for children and families.
Public Matters is a California-based group of artists, educators and media professionals that integrates civic engagement into interdisciplinary, neighborhood-based projects that directly benefit communities and enact long-term sustainable change.
Los Angeles Councilwoman Jan Perry (CD-9), HEAC Program Coordinator Aurora Flores and HEAC Youth Ambassadors (Britanni Dighero, Jessica Orellana, Andrea Vazquez, Adriana Moreno, Jonathan Contreras), Los Compadres Market Grand Re-Opening, December 2008.
HEAC Youth Ambassador takes the podium, Los Compadres Market Grand Re-Opening, December 2008.
Check out what people have been saying about our work:
Lindsay William-Ross, “Kitchen Sisters Talk Community Action and How Food Brings Us Together,”
LAist, May 13, 2009
“Building Community: One Kitchen at a Time,” Eat: Los Angeles, May 13, 2009
Patt Morrison on KPCC
Mary MacVean, “Nurturing South L. A., One Market At A Time,” Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2009
Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, “Urban Areas Struggle to Find Grocers”, Associated Press, December 18, 2008
MSNBC, December 18, 2008::
ABC News, December 18, 2008:
Yahoo, December 19, 2008:
Foxnews.com, December 19, 2008
Shenzhen Daily, December 24, 2008
New Zealand Herald, December 22, 2008
Nongsain.indopia.in, India, December 19, 2008
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Gwen Langrehr | August 16, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Great work! I can’t wait to show my students your videos and what students across the nation are doing to make their communities stronger.