Community Food Access Coalition forms to advise city on how to address food insecurity

INDIANAPOLIS — A group of community members are focused on dealing with food insecurity. The Community Food Access Coalition has been a long time coming.

On Monday, the all-volunteer coalition laid out their recommendations for the city. They recommended four appointees to the Municipal Community Food Access Advisory Commission. They also recommended that the city invest in more urban farming and grass roots organization helping to fight food insecurity like Octavia’s Visionary Campus.

“The vision of this campus is to be able to grow food, create a hub, a community hub, where we build community wealth, an asset for the community,” Alex Sangsuwangul the Caretaker for Octavia’s Visionary Campus said. “Where we can grow food, have youth come here, education, youth leadership development.”

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The campus already has some young teens headed down the right path. They’ve done so by creating the Next Generation Farmers program.

“It backs building youth up,” Elijah Brinkley a Next Generations Farmer Participant said. “Building food knowledge, I feel like building sort of a knowledge with food and knowledge of how to grow and knowledge from other growers.”

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Community Food Access Coalition hopes the city will invest in programs like next generation farmers.

“This isn’t a time for talking, this is a time for action,” Harrison Jacobo the Vice President of the Community Food Access Coalition said.

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It was four years ago the city passed Proposal 337, which allowed for the creation of the Community Food Access Coalition. It’s taken this long to get it off the ground. Now they hope the city will take their recommendations seriously.

“The coalition has control over funding from the city so OPHS will designate an allotment of money called a food fund to the coalition,” Jacobo said.

With the coalition established, the city says it is open to investing in some of the programs and that they look forward to learning about what grass roots organization might help create even more change when it comes to feeding Indianapolis residents in need.

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“We are always excited and eager to hear about new and potential partnerships, new opportunities, and I think that kind of circles back to this emerging you know coalition co-hort,” Alexis Weaver the Assistant director for the social determinants of health for OPHS said.

If the city chooses to invest in community grass roots organizations, it could go a long way.

“Having a little bit more funding we would be able to have more staffing, we could create more space for garden beds, create more time and energy for more folks to be involved,” Sangsuwangul said.

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The coalition’s next step will be working with the city to see how much funding they have dedicated to tackle food insecurity, where it is going and how they can help it be equitably distributed.

If you are interested in learning more about Octavia’s Visionary Campus they have volunteer opportunities. You can learn more by clicking here.