By Joey Mattei, ABC 4 News
A local network of faith-based congregations came together today to host a walking event to demonstrate the difficulties some in the midlands face when doing simple tasks like shopping for groceries.
The purpose of this is to show how serious of issue food deserts are in the midlands.
“It’s really almost unfathomable all the challenges that I don’t think about because i just pull in get my groceries and go home and unload them.” Eric fink says that walking such a far distance is hard enough but add groceries to that load – it becomes an even more daunting task that many people take for granted.
“When we shop, and I drive up in my driveway and how many trips I make from my vehicle to my door just carrying the groceries back and forth and then translate that from 15 feet to a multi-mile walk in the heat and challenging conditions.” Said Fink.
On Saturday, members of the More Justice faith-based congregations came out to walk a mile in their shoes, by walking a mile to a local grocery store.
But this group is hopeful there’s a way to address the food desert problem in the midlands.
“Increasing the number of mobile markets and also increasing the number of locations where those mobile markets can serve the people who are in need of healthy and accessible food.” Said Tami Ashford-Carroll.
A mobile market is a trailer that can move from location to location providing fresh food to areas that need it most.
But the city currently only has one truck that stops in three locations each week.
Organizers say that’s not enough.
“What we know from our research is that for those mobile markets to really impact the people who need it, they need to go to about nine locations, so we need them to go to more locations and we need more of them.” Said Tami.
“The models that are out there are really happening where there’s a whole calendar filled with multiple stops each day to get to where people are so that they can get access to healthy food” said Eric.
This group says that they plan to keep pushing for the city of Columbia to create more resources.
View the original story here.
