August 14, 2019
CAREERS Special Edition
Mississippi
Alberta
North Portland
Page 9
Vancouver
East County
Beaverton
Photo by d anny P eterSon /t he P ortland o bServer
Charles Robertson (left) and Kris Soebroto help run Village Gardens, a non-profit community garden and grocery store in north Portland aimed at connecting low income
and diverse communities to fresh, healthy food.
Village Gardens a
new resource for
fresh and healthy
by d anny P eterSon
t he P ortland o bServer
A local non-profit is taking a unique ap-
proach to connecting low income commu-
nities to fresh, healthy food by facilitating
both a community garden and a grocery
store that sells its produce, providing ac-
cess for community members to grow their
own food and discounts in a retail setting
for its low income customers.
Village Gardens was established in 2001
by community leaders in the St. Johns
Woods apartments (now called Cathedral
Gardens Apartments) and organized with
Janus Youth Programs’ support. In addition
to the community garden, which serves
about 80 gardener families, an orchard of
Changing
Eating Habits
about 50 fruit trees is co-located at the site,
and the harvests from the garden and or-
chard serve about 400 people per day in the
grocery store.
“We share food, cook food, grow food,
and sell food, as a way to build commu-
nity and build economic resilience in the
neighborhood,” Village Gardens Program
Director Kris Soebroto told the Portland
Observer.
“For the most part, it doesn’t get any
more local than a block and a half away,”
added Charles Robertson, Village Gardens’
prepared foods manager, referencing the
close proximity the grocery store, located
near the corner of North Trenton Street and
Newman Avenue, is to the garden, just a
short walk to the east.
The outreach comes as low income com-
munities experience a worsening access to
healthy foods, particularly in the last half
century, a trend that’s occurred locally and
across the nation, Robertson said. Research
also suggests racial and ethnic disparities
prevail when it comes to the availability of
fresh food grocery stores serving lower in-
come neighborhoods.
“That’s making these communities the
hub of diabetes and unhealthy eating hab-
its,” he said.
Robertson has been involved with Vil-
lage Gardens since 2008, about the time
the grocery store component of the organi-
zation was being established, and was inte-
gral to getting that program off the ground
through grant writing and organizing. That
occurred in response to the closure of a
for-profit grocery store in the neighbor-
hood, leaving low income residents few
healthy options for food.
The operators of the former store also
had a mission of servicing low income
customers and had about a third of the
store’s sales come from the Supplemental
Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP)
C ontinued on P age 15