City Market partnership offers fresh produce at housing sites

Children, Youth & Family Services, together with Charlottesville’s City Market, has found a new way to give back to the community.

Every Saturday, after the market closes, CYFS volunteers pick up any leftover produce that vendors are willing to donate. The CYFS Parenting Mobile then travels to the Westhaven public housing complex in the city and the Mallside Forest apartments in Albemarle County the following Tuesday to donate the fresh fruits and vegetables to anybody in need.

“We really want to try to make sure that everyone has access to fresh produce,” said Kelly Graling, the program’s founder. “It shouldn’t be a privilege who gets fresh food and who doesn’t.”

The organization has always had dry foods such as cereals and pasta from the local food bank to donate, but Graling said she felt it simply was not enough. The CYFS intern decided to supplement the food bank’s dry foods with fresh local produce.

“We want to encourage healthy eating and introduce more fruits and vegetables into everyone’s diet,” Graling said.

The program has helped introduce children to a new variety of fruits and vegetables that many parents had never purchased before, according to Hillary Nagel, manager of Parent Education and Support at CYFS.

“Different foods have come out in the community, especially a lot of fruits and vegetables that kids have not been exposed to,” such as cantaloupe, she said.

The partnership also allows the organization to reach out to the community and make its services known. As volunteers hand out the produce, other CYFS volunteers conduct a small playgroup in which they read, color and participate in other sorts of activities with young children.

“It’s a way to get our faces out there and keep in touch with the community so that they know who we are,” said Paige Nolt, who works in the Runaway Emergency Services Program at CYFS.

Residents have not stopped expressing their gratitude.

“I love it,” said Sterling Allen, who brings her grandchildren out every Tuesday. “It gives the kids something to do. It’s real nice.”

Vendors have been more than willing to donate their leftover fruits and vegetable, according to Stephanie Maloy, manager of the City Market. Because the produce is completely fresh with no preservatives, it does not last long enough to be sold the following week.

“A lot of those vendors ought to be donating something,” said George Cason, one of the market’s founders, who donates his fresh cantaloupes, watermelon, squash and tomatoes.

Graling said she has not been able to accept all of the produce that vendors would like to donate because of a limited amount of storage space at CYFS. Maloy said she hopes to involve other organizations in the program that would be able to store the produce and hand it out at other locations.

“I couldn’t be happier with the program and the fact that it is going on,” Maloy said.

The program will run through October, when the farmer’s market closes. Graling, however, will leave this month to complete her doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Massachusetts and is looking for volunteers to keep the program running after she leaves.

“The hope is that we could eventually get volunteers in the community that would be willing to help come and pick up some of the produce on Saturdays and bring it to CYFS,” Nagel said. “We want to be able to keep the project going.”