New Orleans is a food desert.
It’s weird, I know, because we have a huge reputation for our food—but our soil can’t grow it, not after the storm. Everything comes through the port, down the river, on the highway. Other people bring food to New Orleans to sell. They build grocery stores in Metairie, downtown, Uptown, on Magazine.
But they don’t build in the Lower 9th Ward.
There’s no grocery store there. There hasn’t been one since Katrina in 2005. It’s an extreme low-income neighborhood that depends on a problematic inconvenient public transit systems to cross the city to get any fresh food.
Our School at Blair Grocery wants to change that.
They’re reaching out to local universities and institutions and offering fresh fruit and vegetables to the community—but they’re also offering hope.
OSBG serves as a school, a service institution, and a place of employment for teenagers and young adults from the Lower 9th who want to give back and get more for their community.
But that’s all going to go away without help.
The New Orleans City Council recently passed through new zoning ordinances, and this landmark of the Lower 9th (built by a married couple in 1955 by hand with cypress wood) has to be rebuilt to code. The renovations cost $100,000.
They can’t afford this. They’re a nonprofit barely scraping by. They put together an IndieGoGo campaign, but it’s stagnating at just under $3,000—$97,000 short of their goal.
If they don’t open their building before the summer, the community could lose this resource for good. No garden, no produce, no program, no building.
Please help them in any way you can. Donate a dollar, signal boost, share this post, their link, anything anywhere you can do it. This is important, and soon it could be gone.
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