Generations Center brings Fresh Food and Community Together
by Dawaune Lamont Hayes
The community is coming together to make sure people are fed. Not just any food: fresh nutritious produce from local farmers. Organizations like Heartland Family Service are working to connect senior citizens in North Omaha with produce by providing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) vouchers that can be used at local farmer’s markets.
Produce by Benson Bounty
“These farmer’s market vouchers are essential to helping our community, especially our seniors with food insecurities and so being able to provide and bring our farmers to the area to help support our seniors is so important,” said Ché Orduña, program director of Generations Center run by Heartland Family Service.
The North Omaha Intergenerational Campus, a.k.a. Generations Center, on Fontenelle Blvd and Fort Street, is the former site of St. Richard’s school. When in full operation, it serves as a community center with weekly activities, prepared meals, and a community garden for senior citizens who live in the Holy Name Housing cottages on the north side of the campus.
Orduña says their work was spurred by the national BUILD Health Challenge, which provides funding and programmatic support from area health systems to help neighborhoods in North Omaha address many health disparities. Representatives of the initiative claim to “meet people where they are” instead of prescribing one-size solutions to community needs.
People within the North Omaha community have been discussing the need for access to fresh fruits and vegetables for years as a majority of the area is recognized by the USDA as a food desert, meaning access to a fresh food distributor within a one to five-mile radius is very limited.
Orduña speaking with a resident while checking on the campus’ garden beds.
Data shows that areas with little to no access to fresh fruits and vegetables have the highest percentages of “underlying health conditions” like diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), and Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). These conditions make fighting inflammation brought on by viruses like COVID-19 more difficult. Senior citizens are some of the most vulnerable to the pandemic, according to the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and the global public health officials.
Orduña is quite familiar with the statistics, which led her to invite local producers like Benson Bounty and Olmstead Family Farms to campus to literally bring fresh food closer to home. “They are able to use their vouchers here because a lot of the time they have to go downtown or to Aksarben, out of their own community just to find fresh fruits and vegetables to just maintain,” Orduña said.
“We work the farmer’s markets, we thought this was a great way to serve the North Omaha community,” said Sadie Olmstead. First-generation farmers, Sadie and Erick Olmstead started Olmstead Family Farms on a one-acre garden in Florence near Forest Lawn Cemetery. They specialize in a variety of greens including bok choy, sunflower microgreens, salad mixes, and more. Sadie noted that eating from local growers decreases people’s carbon footprint; Erick estimated 30,000 acres or 50 square miles of land could feed the Omaha-Lincoln-Council Bluffs metropolitan area with a goal to eliminate food deserts entirely.
Thee Amigos perform provided live music.
Anyone who has the vouchers can purchase from the market held at the Generations Center where live music and a food truck are also present to make for a pleasant social environment in the age of physical distancing.
Ms. Althea Jones, a resident in the nearby cottages tends to the 25 garden plots on the center’s campus, she says having access to and growing her own food has been very beneficial.
“It is my therapy, it is my comfort, it is something that I enjoy doing and I am learning. I get off work, I just go up there and just enjoy,” she said, “It’s amazing watching your vegetables grow. Beautiful. I love it.” Jones doesn’t do it alone, she has help from her neighbors. Including Sheila, a fellow resident, “It’s me and Sheila that go up there every night, and we really just...it’s therapeutic for us.”
Jones says it is all a part of her love of giving back to her community. “I gave away 100 backpacks last year. Right up there in the community center, that is my baby too, to help our kids here on the north side,” she said.
As for the proximity to garden beds and local farmers, she’s encouraged, “It’s good that we have that here, that they can come up and pick up their own vegetables and stuff. I think that’s a plus, especially for the senior citizens,” said Jones.
Orduña is planning more market days at the Generations Center in July and growers are looking forward to coming back, all in an effort to put food, and ultimately health, back in the hands of people.