First week at Fresh Corner Cafe = check!
So far, I have been enjoying my summer placement at Fresh Corner Cafe in Detroit. This organization is a social entrepreneurship committed to making sure their business is positively impacting the community. Through their Pop-Ups and Markets, they are able to sell produce and healthy meals to members of the Detroit/Metro-Detroit area, which in turns increases the access of healthy foods for people in their communities. The organization is built on “meeting people where they’re at”, the idea that we increase the amount of healthy options in the community by “meeting” people where they go the most and are most accessible to them, whether it be right after school when children are getting picked up, an elderly home that has limited access to a grocery store, or a gas station near their home.
Our summer project is focused on planning and executing the Markets and Pop-Ups, as well as evaluating them through surveying and strategizing steps to grow. Therefore, my project is very community-based, so I’ll be serving in the community to hear their needs and try to implement things along the way to make sure they are met. One of the things I am excited about exploring is holding community activities like cooking demonstrations, doing workout videos, or compiling a community cookbook!:) I hope to help identify other communities around the city that can benefit from working with Fresh Corner Cafe and where the Markets and Pop-Ups can be held. I am also interested in picking the brains of my supervisors and understanding everything on an organizational level. I’ve been enjoying living in Midtown and my placement allows me to move frequently around the Detroit/metro-Detroit area, but I would like to explore other parts of the city more.
Hi, Aries! It’s really cool to hear more about what working for Fresh Corner Cafe looks like. Your project sounds like a lot of working with people and like a lot of creativity is involved! I’m especially interested in hearing about how the cooking demonstrations and workout videos turn out, they sound like fun ways to make healthy lifestyles more feasible in the area. It also sounds like you have your plate full with a lot of stuff to accomplish before the summer is over. Best of luck, and have fun!
Hi Aries! I think it’s so cool that Fresh Corner Cafe meets people where they’re at most in their own communities, especially since lack of access to healthy food can be such a barrier to many people living in urban environments.
Hello Aries,
It sounds like your placement is exciting and you get to do something different every day. I enjoyed reading all of the different ideas that you have for the pop up food markets and how they could grow and overall make healthy food more accessible to the Metro Detroit area. I hope that you get to bring all of these great ideas to fruition, I am especially interested in the idea of a community cookbook!.
I love the sound of your project! Working through those community activities you describes both sounds like a ton of fun and helpful to building community. I also relate to the picking-supervisors’-brains thing. I’m really interested in what they know!
I think the idea of a community cookbook is so cool you should definitely look into that! I love recipes of a small and contained culture even within the broader city of Detroit. Your organization sounds like it is doing some really cool things!