“I wanted to create long-term solutions to hunger,” says Cindy Gentry, founder and executive director of Community Food Connections (CFC), a local non-profit dedicated to alleviating hunger and creating food self-sufficiency.
“I thought a small portion of our contribution can be helping low to moderate income people get a firm stand on meeting their own basic needs,” Gentry says.
And so it has. Since its inception, CFC has ensured that 15,000 low income women and children, as well as 10,000 senior citizens, have greater access to good, healthy food. It has brought local farmers closer to local consumers and to each other, helped 109 food- and craft-related micro-businesses get their start in Phoenix, and is responsible for creating the vibrant Downtown Phoenix Public Market, which brings more people downtown on a regular basis than the Phoenix Opera.
But CFC’s successes are even more astounding when one considers that the organization is run by only a handful of people, many of them volunteers. According to Gentry, CFC owes its success to the involvement of its numerous community partners – more specifically, nearly 100 community partners, ranging from individuals to governmental institutions, to the university.
“I’ve learned to do things in collaboration and cooperation,” Gentry says. “No matter how strong a leader one person is, you have to have everybody else at the table. Everybody brings a different expertise and a different knowledge.”
CFC’s high impact programs are a showcase of the organization’s partnerships. The Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, for example, which allows low income families to use vouchers at farmers’ markets across Arizona, grew out of the joint efforts of six different entities including the Association of Arizona Food Banks, Arizona department of Economic Security, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and numerous local farmers.
CFC’s partnerships with ASU are also extensive. The organization collaborated with both ASU and the USDA to conduct a market feasibility study. Several professors from the ASU College of Design offered their classes to help collect information and conduct surveys for CFC’s supply and demand study. The college also created two integral design studios, and even helped CFC with graphic design work.
The partnership began when Gentry approached ASU design professor John McIntosh, who has since retired, with an idea for a downtown market.
“Historically, there had once been a farmers’ market downtown and it was time to revive the idea,” he says. “Working together, town and gown created a thriving public market in downtown Phoenix.”
The market has grown to include 70 vendors and attracts more than 1,200 customers each Wednesday and Saturday. Gentry says the market’s sales have increased by 158 percent since it first opened nearly four years ago.
Both Gentry and McIntosh say the partnership helped the market project succeed.
“We had tremendous support from that school,” Gentry says. “It gave us legitimacy as we went to form the rest of our market team.”
Gentry also worked with graduate student Kristen Rasmussen, nutritionist for ASU’s new Engrained Cafe, to help bring organic produce from local Arizona farms to ASU students.
Now, CFC is partnering with ASU’s Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness to help teach basic agribusiness principles to resettled refugees in the Refugee Farm Project.
“The program increases the capacity of the refugee clients served by the IRC to use their skills and expertise from their home countries, gain hands-on experience with the American business and financial environment, build credit histories, and greatly improve their quality of life, as well as that of their adopted community,” Gentry says.
In January ASU professors will deliver an applied learning seminar on basic accounting and marketing skills and business law.
“Many were farmers in their own countries, but business is different here,” Assistant Professor Renee Hughner says. “This is the most viable way for them to be self-sufficient.”
Gentry and CFC are dedicated to cultivating a sense of community within all levels of Arizona’s food market.
“We have something that is more people-scaled than what you get with your typical development project,” Gentry says. “It’s more than a building. It’s creativity, it’s spirit, it’s food that brings people together, and it’s a long term vision. I know we’re creating community.”
