Here is a video that profiles Piney Grove Baptist Church, which was the subject of my last blog post. This reflects more upon the church as a whole and the good they have done for the community.
Driving through North Philadelphia, one would normally see cracked streets, battered rowhomes and corner stores, but Piney Grove Baptist Church, along with its two daycare centers, is a diamond in the rough.
The brightly colored daycare centers are one of the first things that meet the eye when turning on to Fisher’s Lane, the street that Piney Grove calls its home. However, these daycare centers are not just flashy with no substance – in fact, substance is what the whole center is based upon.
The daycare center provides healthy food for the children that it watches over, with no junk foods or sugary drinks. This is so the children can get away from the “corner store” lifestyle that many of their peers have fallen victim to within the confines of the neighborhood, and the daycare center strives to make this a good example for the children even when they are not on the daycare’s watch, or outside of the center, such as on field trips.
One child, while on a field trip to Chuck-E-Cheese, asked where the vegetables were.
The church itself also gives back to the community; every first Friday of the month, the church opens its doors and provides food for the homeless that is collected from the community. But food is also not the only way the church gives back. Right now, they are trying to collect enough money to put up more lights in the neighborhood for safety purposes.
Piney Grove Baptist Church’s front sign. The church strives to serve the community through providing food to those in need, along with setting a good example to the impressionable youth that it takes care of.
Piney Grove was also involved in the Easter Food Drive, which was La Salle’s Exploring Nutrition program’s first real event. The church is always open to helping the community in any way that it can. The LGU capstone course, along with Marjorie Allen and Tom Wingert, worked hard all semester to make the Easter Food Drive the success that it was.
Because Piney Grove, along with the other churches and schools that are involved with Exploring Nutrition, are located in a “food desert”, it is important that the community works together the best it can to fight the ever-growing problem of hunger and obesity (aren’t they two completely different situations?), especially amongst children who are not provided with the proper nutrition.
Repost from John Beatty’s blog, obtained from the USDA’s interactive tool in which demographic information can be found. This map shows the food deserts in North Philadelphia; more specifically, around La Salle University.
Julie Anne Henstenberg, La Salle’s head of the nutrition program at La Salle, gave a good overview in her speech here. While going over the problem with nutrition, Henstenberg, along with spoke about going into the neighborhood herself and finding fresh, affordable and healthy food. While this is possible, many residents of the area simply aren’t aware of this, or may not be interested in buying fruits and vegetables with the money they have to provide food to their families. There is, of course, what Henstenberg calls “positive deviants”, who are the outliers in the grand scheme of things and are “people who have limited resources and are living in the neighborhood … who buy fruits and vegetables and having good health outcomes,” according to Henstenberg.
“Given all the same resources, they’re the ones who are successful,” said Henstenberg.
So, what does Henstenberg want to do with these “positive deviants?”
“I would like to find them and I want to interview them to see what it is, how they do it. What resources they have, what their beliefs are, what their knowledge is, and then, once I figure that out, I would like to be able to take that and distribute that knowledge to the neighborhood and hopefully engage the neighborhood in those positive behaviors that some people are already doing within the context of this, and figure out a way to spread that around,” said Henstenberg.
The hopes for the future are positive. With the Easter Food Drive making an impact, La Salle is looking to keep churches and organizations such as Piney Grove Baptist Church in the loop with upcoming projects, such as a food drive around Thanksgiving, which is going to be based upon the same structure as the Easter Food Drive.
Outside of these events, Exploring Nutrition is hoping to further develop ways to provide access to the healthy and fresh food that is readily available to them.
Like Tom Wingert, one of the main figures in Exploring Nutrition, said in an interview (which you can find here): “Access to food alone is not enough.”
The overall purpose of this video is to shine a light on the good works that these neighboring churches do, especially Piney Grove Baptist church. The specific goals in telling this story is to do a profile on Piney Grove Baptist and get a deeper look at what they have contributed to community over the years and what they plan on doing in the future.
The components needed will be pictures of the church and the food supply they keep along with pictures of their daycare center. Interviews with Pastor Robert H. Paul and Victoria Wilmore, who is in charge of the daycare center. Video footage will also be needed to tell Piney Grove’s story and their work with La Salle University and the community. Once all of the research is conducted and we have gathered all the information and footage we need it should be easy to pick and choose the right parts to tell a great story.
This is the tagline for “A Place at the Table”, a 2013 documentary about fighting hunger in America. According to IMDB, the documentary is described as “A documentary that investigates incidents of hunger experienced by millions of Americans, and proposed solutions to the problem.”
I think that this tagline is painfully obvious, as even those who are uninformed about the goings-on in America are aware of the presence of national hunger. But at what degree is the nation starving? What is causing the hunger?
As it is said in the film, it’s not a shortage of food that is causing hunger — rather, it is an economical issue. For example, you don’t typically see people starving out in the suburbs of, say, Northeast Philadelphia, but instead, someone who is in the innercity, a single parent perhaps, who struggles to feed not only him or herself, but children as well.
The film says that at some point in their lives, one in two children will go hungry. To me, if this doesn’t anger you, you’re not paying attention. But what can we do about this issue? What other issues are linked to hunger?
The answer to the latter question is that obesity can also be linked to hunger. Wait a second — obesity? Isn’t that the opposite of being hungry?
No, it’s really not. The reason that people go hungry in the first place is because they can’t afford to purchase food, healthy or not — some people, according to the film, are “living” off of $3 a day, which is, in my opinion, outrageous. These people then use what little money they have on processed foods, which are the “cheapest calories” they can get. These empty calories are simply not worthy to be considered a meal for these starving individuals.
I thought the film presented a lot of issues that could be analyzed by observing these communities (mainly innercity) and trying to get a better understanding by working alongside them, such as what La Salle’s NHNP is doing. However, while it addressed many issues, I don’t think that it presented many feasible solutions.
Unfortunately, the people who live in areas of poverty and hunger are well aware of their situation, but they really don’t want to do anything about it, which is something that was obvious when I and my classmates in the online journalism class went out and reported on the food purchasing and consuming habits of locals in the North Philadelphia area.
To me, I think that the film definitely can be used to raise awareness on how to help communities, but the help provided is simply subective when it comes to providing healthy foods. Whether or not it is “affordable” to those living in these areas is striking a different chord than just providing access to the food. Like the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Here’s a short audio clip where I give a bit more background on what the NHNP plans on doing, along with some reactions from two locals and a student.
La Salle University is in the works of developing the Neighborhood Health and Nutrition Project (NHNP) to provide access to healthy, affordable food in the area surrounding the school. This idea was sparked in 2009 when the Fresh Grocer was built with the Shoppes at La Salle, because this was the beginning of a new era in the area that was known as the largest “food desert” in Philadelphia.
La Salle’s faculty and staff have built a concrete project around a thought that was conceived in 2009 when Fresh Grocer and the Shoppes at La Salle arrived. The project, spearheaded by Marjorie Allen, aims to work with the neighborhood, such as community organizations and church parishes to raise awareness about the project.
La Salle students are also jumping in on the action — right now, there are six on-campus classes and groups working to promote the NHNP: online journalists, market research, digital art, Leadership and Global Understanding (LGU), Academic Enrichment Program (AEP) and social work. While these groups are learning about their respective subjects, they are simultaneously working to promote the project, whether through “polished publication,” creating marketing plans to attract attention for the project, fundraising or creating logos for the project.
One of the plans that NHNP is currently working on is the Easter Food Drive, for which they are partnered with 15 local churches to deliver food to people during the Easter holiday. This, according to Tom Wingert (one of the main figures in the NHNP alongside Allen) is “good service that supplements what is already going on” and it “cements partnerships and shows dedication to the community” and the project itself.
You can read an article that I wrote for La Salle’s student newspaper, the Collegian, here. The article shows what stages the NHNP is currently in. Throughout the semester, along with updating my blog with information on the NHNP, I will be working directly alongside the NHNP and doing a series of articles reporting on the progress and activity of the program.
On Monday I went out with my skateboard and camera to the two corner stores on Nedro Avenue, one on 20th and Nedro and the other on 21st and Nedro. The selection of foods was limited, with not many options as far as fresh fruits and vegetables. Most available items were boxed, processed foods that could be found at local supermarkets, but small corner stores like this make lots of business with those who are in “food deserts”. Despite the Fresh Grocer being only a few blocks away, many residents of the area like to come to corner stores because of the lower prices, but they may be missing out on the importance of fresh foods in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. 
This is a shot of the “produce” section at the Nedro Market on 21st and Nedro. I noticed that there were many different items next to the “produce”, such as baby food and steak sauce.
Most of the selections were canned or boxed foods.
More boxed food.
The pictures were taken with an Olympus VG-160. The camera has 14 megapixels, a 5x wide optical zoom lens, 4.7-23.5 mm, 1:2.8-6.5.
This is a public service announcement, this is only a test.
Dom Gulli
The Corner Store 