Until recently, West Harlem was a NYC community with few healthy food options for low-income residents. But that changed this month with the opening of the West Harlem Community Healthy Food Hub. Celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson was on hand for a cooking demonstration alongside funder Laurie M. Tisch. West Harlem Group Assistance, a longtime LISC NYC partner, manages the site that provides a range of services including a client choice pantry, food stamp enrollment, nutritional counseling, and cooking classes. It’s all part of LISC’s place-based initiative funded by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund to address issues of diet-related diseases, poverty, and unemployment.
The excerpt below is from:
"West Harlem Food Hub Is a One-Stop Health Shop'
by Julia Longoria, WNYC
It's an old problem: greasy, cheap, fast food makes healthy food hard to come by in low-income neighborhoods. This week, the West Harlem Community Center Healthy Food Hub offered a new solution: a one-stop health food shop.
"Instead of things being done all over the city, we're honing in and bringing all the services to one area, to really have more impact with the residents in West Harlem," said Colleen Flynn, director of Green and Healthy Neighborhoods Initiatives at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC).
Flynn said it was a joint effort. West Harlem Group Assistance helped convert a cozy, vacant, commercial storefront into a healthy food pantry. Community members can pick their own fresh food there, thanks to the Food Bank for New York City and City Harvest. Continued[+]...