APRIL

Week #4.Social Justice Material and Tradition Elements for this Block.

SUSTENANCE
Food Deserts

Urban deserts: Fresh-Food-Free Zones. Video available at http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,24222955001_1900870,00.html Grocery Gap statistics. See attached sheet. Food desert locator: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/fooddesert.html. Proverbs 23:13: The field of the poor may yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice.

Driving down a two-lane highway in rural Nebraska last spring, I passed a Native American man riding an old bicycle toward the nearby Omaha Indian Reservation. We were at least seven miles from the nearest town, and he had four grocery bags bulging with food slung over his handlebars as he worked to climb a hill. I'll bet a week's worth of groceries that he wasn't biking for the exercise. -Steph Larsen, Welcome to the food deserts of rural America. Jones, the mother of two children, doesn't have a car. She usually takes the bus to the store, and then a taxi home. Cab fare is about $10, and she has to pay an extra 25 cents for each bag of groceries. You've gotta do what you've gotta do," Jones said. "You've gotta eat. -April Jones, North Charleston resident. Quoted in Urban food deserts, by Diane Knich. Objectives.
Introduce participants to the concept of food deserts. Help participants to think critically about the systemic issues and complex factors contributing to food deserts. Encourage participants to notice the presence of food deserts in their own context. Encourage participants to imagine creative solutions to food deserts.

Background for Facilitator.

Food deserts is a term gaining increasing attention within our nation. It names a complex reality, but essentially points to the existence of geographical areas where healthy, affordable food is difficult to obtain. In a nation that produces a remarkable amount of food, there are many more food deserts both rural and urbanthan you might expect. Residents in these areas often have a lower income and limited access to transportation, making it doubly difficult to travel the miles to a distant source of healthy food. In the absence of full-service grocery stores, fast food restaurants, gas stations, and expensive convenience stores commonly fill the food gap. These food sources have obvious implications for the health and well being of the residents. The writer of Proverbs offers an image of a poor persons field being swept bare through injustice. It is an image of desertification, and challenges us to consider what current forms of

injustice might be sweeping bare the food sources of the marginalized in our own communities.

For this session, please plan to spend 80-90 minutes together. Materials You Will Need.
Paper & pen. Screen or monitor to show the time.com clip and the food desert locator. Copies of the Grocery Gap statistics sheet (attached)

Presentation of the Material. (Part 1) 4 min.

Show the video clip entitled Urban Deserts: Fresh-Food-Free Zone,

Gut Response. 3 min.

Give participants a few minutes to get initial responses to the video down on paper. Encourage them to note things that surprise them, or quotes and statistics that stood out to them.

Presentation of The Material. Part 2. 5 min.

Pass around copies of the Grocery Gap sheet. Ask participants to take turns reading the statistics aloud.

Gut Response. 3 min.

Invite participants to voice their responses to the material using a single word or short phrase. Do they feel disbelief, sadness, cynicism, indifference, surprise?

Engagement of the Material: Group Activity. 40-45 min.

Part 1: Locating food deserts (10 minutes) Ask the group if they think there might be any food deserts in or near their own neighborhood. Do they think there are food deserts in the area where they grew up? Where do they think the highest concentrations of food deserts are within our country? Bring up the food desert locator (http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/fooddesert.html) on a screen or multiple monitors that everyone can see. First look at the whole map, noting how widespread food deserts are and which parts of the country seem to have particularly high concentrations of food deserts. Then click on the find address tab and enter the groups address. Examine the food deserts immediately surrounding the location. Would they have guessed these were food deserts? Finally, invite participants to enter their home addresses, addresses of their colleges, or other areas they have lived in. Part 2: Imagining solutions (30-35 minutes) Ask the group to break up into groups of two or three. Assign each group to one of the tasks listed below. Give them twenty minutes to brainstorm approaches to their task. Ideally, the groups will have access to laptops or computers that will enable them to do some basic research, utilizing census statistics and other tools. If the groups do not have internet access, encourage them to work from the things theyve learned from the sessions material. Task 1: You have been asked to present information to a large grocery chain that would persuade them to build a supermarket closer to the food desert you have selected. Information

could be about the community itself, including the number of children; general health/wellness statistics; the benefits to the supermarket of building here; and common good that a supermarket can bring to a community. Task 2: You have been asked to come up with an idea, other than a standard grocery store/supermarket, that could give those in the food desert youve selected access to healthy and affordable food. Develop a proposal for your idea, including what would have to happen to make the idea a reality, any related costs and why you think it would work in this community. Task 3: You have been asked to design an education campaign to help those who live in the food desert understand the importance of eating healthy foods and tips for accessing healthy foods and selecting affordable healthy foods when on a budget. (Tasks adapted from a session of Teaching Tolerance: A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Full session available at http://www.tolerance.org/activity/food-deserts-causesconsequences-and-solutions) At the end of the twenty minutes, invite the groups to present their solutions to one another.

Group Reflection. 12 min.

Begin the group reflection by engaging the piece of Christian tradition found in Proverbs. Read aloud Proverbs 23:13: The field of the poor may yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice. Ask the group: In light of the material weve engaged, does this piece of proverbial wisdom apply to our own contexts? What forms of injustice are at work in our food systems? Then invite the group to reflect on the task activity. Did the tasks they were assigned to feel attainable? What potential obstacles do they imagine facing? Tell the group that Michelle Obama has the goal of eradicating food deserts by 2017. Do they think this is a realistic goal? Finally, ask the group if this session will make them think about food access in new ways, or if they will see their neighborhoods any differently. How so?

Synthesis. 5 min.
Allow participants to use journals to gather all the threads of this session together.

Pillar Signature: Ideas for Next Steps.

Encourage the group to intentionally visit a local convenience store, fast food restaurant, grocery store, and (if possible) farmers market in the next week. Ask them to make a list of what foods are available in each location, and how the costs compare. While visiting each food source, ask them to imagine what it would be like to have that location as their primary food source.

Prayer. 3 min.
Invite the group members into several minutes of silence, lifting up all those in our nation and world who have limited access to food. End the time of silence with the following:

O God, to those who have hunger give bread, to us who have bread, give hunger for justice. -From South America, source unknown. Published in Neil Paynters Blessed Be Our Table (Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications) 2003, 51.

** additional resource materials/web links**

The Grocery Gap: Who has Access to Healthy Food and Why it Matters. Review of Food Access Research provided by Policy Link: Lifting up What Works. http://www.policylink.org/site/c.lkIXLbMNJrE/b.5860321/k.A5BD/The_Grocery_Gap.ht m CDC feature on food deserts: http://www.cdc.gov/features/fooddeserts/ Steph Larsen, Welcome to the food deserts of rural America. grist. http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-21-welcome-to-the-food-deserts-of-rural-america Provides a helpful look at rural food deserts. Marian Wright Edelman, Urban Food Deserts Threaten Childrens Health. Huff Post: Impact. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-wright-edelman/urban-food-desertsthreat_b_410339.html. Provides a perspective on urban food deserts.

The Grocery Gap

23.5 million
The number of Americans who dont have access to a supermarket within a mile of their home

70,000
The number people relying on a typical grocery store in Washington, DCs lowestincome, predominantly African American wards, compared to one grocery store for every 11,900 people in Washington, DCs upperincome, predominantly white wards.

The percent of African Americans who live in a census tract with a supermarket, compared to 31 percent of whites

5000
The number of jobs created by the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, which provides grants and loans to help locate supermarkets and farmers markets in low-income communities. The Obama Administration and First Lady are trying to bring this program to national scale.
Sources: Access to Affordable and Nutritious Food: Measuring and Understanding Food Deserts and their Consequences: Report (2009) to Congress from the United States Department of Agriculture. The Grocery Gap: Who Has Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters: Report from Policy Link and the Food Trust.http://www.policylink.org/site/c.lkIXL bMNJrE/b.5860321/k.A5BD/The_Grocery_G ap.htm

30
The number of miles that 70 percent of Mississippi food stamp-eligible families live from the closest large grocery store

20
The percent of residents in rural counties who live more than 10 miles from a supermarket.

32
The percent increase in fruit and vegetable consumption for African Americans with each new supermarket in their neighborhood