Local partnership getting the Mahoning Valley Mobile Market on the road
.jpeg "Flying High Inc.’s Jeff Magada partnerd with A.C.T.I.O.N.’s Rose Carter to create the Mahoning Valley Mobile Market two years ago. So far, they’ve served 20,000 people at 150 locations.")
Rose Carter had known for a while that her neighbors and friends in Mahoning County lived in a food desert.
Carter is the executive director of A.C.T.I.O.N., the Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods.
She saw firsthand that the lack of access to grocery stores wasn’t a new problem but needed a new kind of solution.
She wasn’t the first to notice the need, but she was one of the first to do something about it.
“We wanted it to be a hand-up, not a handout,” said Carter. We wanted them to shop with dignity.”
How did the Mahoning Valley Mobile Market start?
The Mahoning Valley Mobile Market is a partnership with A.C.T.I.O.N. and Flying High Inc., according to Carter and business partner Jeff Magada.
He’s the executive director of Flying High, a non-profit organization that offers workforce development and job opportunities in the Youngstown and Mahoning Valley area.
“It started with A.C.T.I.O.N.’s desire to put grocery stores in the city,” said Magada. “Rose Carter and A.C.T.I.O.N. started raising their voices to say there are numerous food deserts in the city of Youngstown and city proper.”
A.C.T.I.O.N. had established a close working relationship with Flying High Inc. through the Dress to Succeed program.
For this program, clothing and suits are donated to individuals who have been incarcerated and are being released.
According to Magada, one day, he delivered suits for the program and showed Carter something that would set the Mahoning Valley Mobile Market into motion.
“She expressed her frustration with how things were moving slowly trying to get a grocery store,” Magada said. “I said, ‘Take a ride with me. I want to show you something.’ We went to Flying High’s GROW Urban Farm.”
Magada walked Carter through the rows of vegetables and fruit being cared for at GROW Urban Farm.
“There was a point when she stopped and she looked at me and she said, ‘Jeff, what are we waiting on? Why don’t we do pop up markets? You guys run them, We’ll schedule them and get people there,’” said Magada.
According to Carter, it has been the perfect partnership at the ideal time.
They started setting up pop-up farms at markets and festivals, selling fresh produce from the GROW Urban Farm at lower-than-market prices.
“For three years, we were all over the city, anywhere we could set up a pop-up market, but that was only from May through September,” she said. “I remembered how back in the day, we used to have the milk man, the ice man and the watermelon man visit us. We came up
