Reinvestment Fund Awards $22.6 Million to Improve Healthy Food Access in Underserved Communities | News

Grant awards to 134 projects to improve entry to nutritious meals in their communities.

PHILADELPHIA, June 10, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Reinvestment Fund right now declared $22.6 million in money support awards to 134 projects by way of the 2021 round of America’s Wholesome Meals Financing Initiative’s (HFFI) Qualified Tiny Grants Software. Funding for the HFFI grants software is offered by the United States Division of Agriculture (USDA), approved by the 2014 Farm Bill. The plan supplies 1-time catalytic investments in tasks that will strengthen obtain to contemporary, healthy meals by making and growing contemporary food items retail and food items enterprises.

The 2021 spherical is the major since the application introduced in 2018. The 2021 Request for Apps (RFA) initially created $4 million offered as a result of the system. The pool was expanded to $22.6 million by the USDA, as a end result of the $155 million in more methods for the HFFI program introduced by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack previous 7 days below the USDA’s framework for reworking the food system. With this financial commitment, the HFFI application will do the job with stakeholders towards recognizing the expanded eyesight for the system that commences to deal with the complexity of food stuff accessibility in communities across The usa.

“The Biden-Harris Administration and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack are fully commited to creating area and regional food stuff units that advantage all People in america, from farmers and ranchers to tiny companies and family members who at the moment have to journey a lengthy way from home to discover fresh, balanced foodstuff,” mentioned USDA Rural Growth Under Secretary Xochitl Torres Little. “USDA is very pleased to spouse with Reinvestment Fund to make sure that these methods get to the communities where they are essential most, so people can come across nutritious meals possibilities wherever they are living.”

Awardees ended up picked through a competitive process that was open up to qualified contemporary food retail assignments and food items enterprises seeking economical guidance to overcome the larger prices and original obstacles to operating in underserved areas. The application gained 566 Letter of Desire submissions to the RFA in December 2021. Dependent on eligibility, 359 candidates have been invited to post full programs in January 2022, with 294 remaining purposes received by the deadline in March 2022.

As the Countrywide Fund Supervisor, Reinvestment Fund administers the HFFI plan on behalf of USDA. The community-private partnership aims to offer ability making and financing methods to stimulate food items small business improvement at scale and construct a additional equitable meals procedure that supports the health and financial vibrancy of all Us residents.

“The legacy of racist procedures like redlining and the resulting disinvestment continue on to harm communities in so numerous strategies, like as a result of the deficiency of access to balanced, cost-effective foodstuff,” claimed Don Hinkle-Brown, President and CEO of Reinvestment Fund. “We are honored to operate with the USDA to tackle some of these historic injustices by the HFFI software by investing in foodstuff techniques belongings that not only raise foodstuff entry in underserved communities but increase wellbeing, strengthen regional economies, improve wealth and good quality employment, and create essential local community anchors.”

Awardee assignments are situated 46 states, in addition to Puerto Rico and Washington DC. Of the 134 grant awardees, 45% serve rural communities and 81% are owned or led by people of colour, reduced-profits persons, gals, and/or native individuals. Of the awardees, 69% are grocery retail assignments. Yet another 31% of awardees offer substitute retail products like cellular marketplaces, CSAs or foods containers.

Awardees include things like:

• The Neighborhood Farm Cooperative, a worker-owned, local community-centered cooperative farm small business in Selma, Alabama that seeks to establish a cellular product sales unit to market good quality, refreshing produce and staple solutions to underserved communities throughout Dallas County.
• Manuel’s Food items Sector, a neighborhood grocer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that will be bettering its retail functions by partnering with regional farmers to convey contemporary develop to the keep, acquiring a industrial kitchen area to get ready foodstuff, and giving weekly membership produce bins.
• Nalwoodi Denzhone Neighborhood General Keep, a nonprofit in San Carlos, Arizona, that will address the ongoing meals issues going through the San Carlos Apache communities by establishing a common shop on a tribally-owned, 90-acre farm.
• Northeast Grocers, a Black-led neighborhood coalition that has been operating to tackle the lack of grocery merchants in Northeast Kansas City, Kansas by leveraging neighborhood and philanthropic funding to produce a enterprise model for a cooperative shop.

The 2021 HFFI application offered monetary guidance in the type of a person-time grants to food stores and meals enterprises that aimed to reinforce, expand, and innovate in just the food retail offer chain. The software helps a wide variety of businesses, business enterprise types, and money needs of ventures that method, distribute, combination, market, and offer balanced, fresh, and economical food items to underserved communities and markets. A total record of awardees is out there at http://www.investinginfood.com.

Even though new at USDA Rural Improvement, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and U.S. Division of Well being and Human Companies have invested in balanced meals initiatives as a result of Group Advancement Economical Establishments and Neighborhood Progress Firms due to the fact 2010. To day, federal support has totaled $270 million in grants and has leveraged an estimated $1 billion in supplemental financing. It has also supported virtually 1,000 grocery and other nutritious food retail projects in more than 35 states across the place, revitalizing economies, producing positions, and bettering overall health.

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About Reinvestment Fund

Reinvestment Fund is a mission-driven economic institution dedicated to building communities function for all people today. We carry monetary and analytical applications to partnerships that do the job to guarantee that people today in communities throughout the place have the alternatives they try for: cost-effective spots to are living, accessibility to healthy foodstuff and health care, faculties wherever their children can flourish, and powerful, local organizations that assistance positions. We use information to realize marketplaces and how transactions can have the most highly effective effect, which has persistently earned us the top Aeris score of AAA for fiscal strength and four stars for effects administration. Our asset and possibility administration techniques have also gained us an A+ ranking from S&P. Given that our inception in 1985, Reinvestment Fund has presented above $2.7 billion in financing to bolster neighborhoods, scale social enterprises, and make resilient communities. Master far more at reinvestment.com.

Media Speak to

Kavita Vijayan, Reinvestment Fund, 1 2155745893, [email protected]

Source Reinvestment Fund