StarkFresh

StarkFresh is a small, but mighty 501c(3) nonprofit located in Canton, Ohio and servicing Stark County, Ohio. Our current mission is to improve healthy food access and advance food and farming education to everyone in Stark County. We envision a Community where a culture of healthy eating creates people who are healthier and communities that are rejuvenated and empowered. Although our Community Development Organization has been around in various forms since 1984, we did not start focusing on food insecurity until 2011. Being a small organization with several large-scale programs and a limited paid staff, we are quite adept at utilizing our existing partnerships and our vast volunteer network to ensure that our programs continue to run smoothly. To do this we have a comprehensive multi-layered program to address food insecurity, which align to create an overarching, integrated solution to the problem of increasing fresh, nutritious food access and consumption in chronically underserved neighborhoods throughout the County. We run three urban farming sites where employment skills are taught and produce is grown for our Mobile Grocery Market, which provides healthy food access to areas throughout the county that are in USDA defined food deserts and to those with low mobility challenges. These "Veggie Mobiles" take produce and other healthy groceries into the community where they are sold at a reasonable cost. We also distribute vegetable seeds for free throughout community distribution sites and collect gently-used cookware to distribute to residents who are in need.