Wrapping up surveying: The Food Solutions team has wrapped up surveying!  Thank you to all the residents who participated and helped us to understand more about the food access needs in our neighborhood.  Although this does wrap up our qualitative data step, we will still be learning through stories, testimonials, conversation, and more, so please feel free to share your food stories with us!  

Problems with the data: Our Food Solutions team has been examining the data and has concluded that the data, while very helpful, under-represents some demographics and over-represents others.  Also, the data doesn't always give us the full story -- for example, in some cases, folks who rely on food shelfs answer that they can always afford the food that they want because the food shelf is free.  The Food Solutions team will use their close relationships with lower income residents, Somali residents, elderly residents, and others to make sure that all voices are included and accounted for where the data is lacking.

Interesting take-aways: One of the most interesting trends so far has been that many people have mentioned that they would like a healthy food option.  For some that means access to produce.  For others that means a healthy restaurant or healthy grab-and-go food.  For others that means food made from scratch with no artificial ingredients or preservatives.  Across all demographics, a lot of people are talking about getting access to a healthy option!

Another interesting trend is that many lower-income residents carpool with friends, family, or neighbors to get access to groceries.  Carpooling saves them lot's of time and money.  However, there are many lower-income residents who do not have access to carpooling and have mobility difficulties caused by age or disability.  For these folks, getting groceries is quite time consuming and physically demanding.  

A lot of students in our neighborhood struggle with food affordability.  They would like to have access to affordable and healthy food beyond the NCU cafeteria.

Community Food Event: We are planning a biiiig food event for October, where everyone in the neighborhood can come together, celebrate, and weigh in on what sort of a solutions we want/need -- a coop, an innovative restaurant, an innovative food delivery service, etc. -- so stay tuned for more information on that!  

Shout out to Headwaters Foundation for Justice for helping to make this work possible!

Bellow is the overall results from our data.  Please keep in mind that this data does not tell the full story of our neighborhood.  When we look at the data we usually filter it by some special criteria -- for example we can look at just data from specific buildings or data just from people who have difficulty affording food.  Nevertheless, the overall data is interesting.  Enjoy!