YOUNGSTOWN — The Mobile Market Initiative in Mahoning Valley aims to deliver groceries to the city’s most vulnerable residents by 2022.
The initiative launched Tuesday with a goal to secure a bus to set up shop in different areas of the city to allow people to purchase healthy groceries at low prices.
Rose Carter, executive director of ACTION, said Youngstown has been a food desert for the past six years.
“We want to be able to make it as comfortable and convenient, especially our most vulnerable and handicapped people, as possible,” Carter said.
Mayor Jamael Tito Brown has acknowledged the city is a food desert, she said. Brown has also discussed luring a grocery store to Youngstown through the $82.7 million the city is receiving from the American Rescue Plan.
Carter said while the city waits for the grocery store, alternative plans have been made to help residents get the food they need through pop-up markets and now the Mobile Market Initiative.
“We decided and saw that we needed to have groceries [brought] to our most vulnerable people,” Carter said.
Over the past three years, the pop-up markets have helped feed more than 8,000 people, Carter said. Pop-up markets will continue in the city through September.
Vicki Vicars, an organizer with ACTION, said mobile marking is a growing trend in urban areas across the country where food insecurity is an issue.
She said the group looked at other models across the country, including Stark County, to see what vehicle should be purchased and how the program would operate.
This article originally appeared in Mahoning Matters
