Creighton Community Foundation

Feeding Phoenix: Feeding Phoenix, initiated in response to COVID-19 after operating as a youth-led community fresh food access program for approximately 4 years prior to COVID, has evolved into a vital hunger relief partnership led by Creighton Community Foundation. Supported by, and simultaneously supporting numerous nonprofit food agencies, and funded by both key institutional funders and a tremendous outpouring of grassroots support, Feeding Phoenix at the end of FYE 03/31/2024 is powered by approximately 1,500 annual volunteers, and every week of the year distributes 12 to 20 tons of nutritionally balanced food to over 450 low-income, food-insecure households. Since its inception in April 2020, Feeding Phoenix has filled a significant gap in community food security. We strive to serve everyone in our communities experiencing food insecurity while preserving dignity and providing access without undue burden of personal information. With our highly approachable program, we routinely observe that most of our community attendees only engage with Feeding Phoenix during extreme need, and periodically come and go from Feeding Phoenix based on personal circumstance. Consequently we serve a much larger number of community members over a calendar year, and estimate 6,500 unique households annually have encounters with food insecurity where they turn to us and find help in Feeding Phoenix. The program stands out for its focus on nutrition, optimizing food bank resources through direct procurement and unique food producer partnerships, and through a balance of activities, manages to shape hunger relief foods that are often of dubious nutrition into nutritionally well-rounded food boxes. Feeding Phoenix includes a great deal of transportation for donated and procured foods and supplies, transportation of some goods for partners' distribution sites, a significant amount of food packaging, and the operational logistics of running a 40-60 volunteer, 425+ household distribution event every Saturday. Originating from a youth-led initiative, Feeding Phoenix continues to be significantly youth powered by kids in service, and is a dynamic hub for community engagement and youth service programs, playing a pivotal role in the Foundation's broader community-building efforts. Finally, Feeding Phoenix is also a critical on-ramp in our community to building relationships with individual community members, working through relationships to strengthen household capacity and youth outcomes, and creating on-ramps to improved food and nutrition security, with consequent improvements in nutritional health and chronic disease reduction for the household.

Securing Nutrition: Securing Nutrition extends food and nutrition security work beyond Feeding Phoenix activities of addressing urgent, immediate needs, and focuses upon nutritional inequities among low-income families. This program, driven by Community Health Workers, offers Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program support, educational nutrition sessions using evidence based frameworks, and medical food boxes designed to support community members suffering from nutritionally-linked chronic diseases in partnership with medical institutions. A key initiative is FrescaZona, a social enterprise aiming to provide local, nutritious food access. This venture will include a SNAP customer retail outlet, medical food box distribution, and subsidized delivery services for community members with limited transportation. Marketing and visibility efforts are also integral to Securing Nutrition, and may lead to additional social enterprise business ventures, aiming to shift community perceptions towards nutritional health and increase food security.

Fresh in the Neighborhood: Fresh in the Neighborhood (FITN) addresses food inequity and open space disparities in low-income communities, by transforming underutilized open spaces into vibrant, food-rich community areas, often in partnership with local schools. This multisite program not only creates recreational and food production spaces but also empowers families towards greater food and financial security through SNAP education and enrollment, local farmers' market engagement, and urban agricultural producer training. FrescaZona and FrescaFarms social enterprises, operating as distinct independent businesses, serve as core components of FITN, and generate revenues through agricultural production, garden materials, and educational services while cultivating food directly for community use and supporting the program's charitable activities. The FrescaFarm enterprise as a dedicated agricultural producer incorporates innovative agrivoltaic systems that combine food production with renewable energy generation, creating additional sustainable revenue streams to support community programs. FrescaZona directly retails food boxes eligible for SNAP EBT purchase online and the use of USDA funded Double Up Food Bucks, and under grant-funded transactions from Creighton Community Foundation fulfills medical food boxes for chronic disease patients of medical care partners throughout the community. FITN aims to connect neighborhoods, foster youth-activated spaces, and stimulate economic activity around food and culinary arts. Current projects include urban agriculture initiatives at David Crockett Elementary School, Acre 51 at Ascension Church of Phoenix, an emergent less-abled community member outdoor food space (Thrive & Grow) adjacent to Larry C Kennedy School, and the support of a school site collegiate-quality soccer field installation to foster broad community connections around Loma Linda School in partnership with Christ Church of the Valley, among other initiatives. With a predominant focus upon youth, Thrive & Grow is next expected to scale into a broadly partnered service hub that may generate fee-for-use revenues from medical partners or direct services reimbursement revenues through health plans, as well as site utilization fees, that will all serve to uplift community service disparities that substantially impact less-abled peoples, leading to reduced opportunities and poorer life outcomes.

Community Works: Community Works is a comprehensive program focused on activating disadvantaged neighborhoods to enhance youth outcomes and community vibrancy. Community Works involves resident practitioners who lead middle school students in character development and community service activities. It also involves fiduciary sponsorship of PTOs and school programs, using a fee-for-service model to rapidly start services and enhance fiscal governance. Our support extends to fundraising for Junior Ambassador programs, mini-grants for classroom activities, community garden development for school sites, school district event funding (Teacher welcome back type events), funding for extracurricular programs, and pass -through funding for school-based organizations or aspects of the District itself (such as the Family Resource Center). Principally, the activities of this program are all aimed at fostering active, school-engaged communities. But Community Works is also broadly inclusive of a number of community vibrancy-increasing strategies. Building on a decade of strategic land use entitlement work - that today also includes the co-chairing of a Land Use Coalition for Open Space Equity - one facet of Community Works continues to advance plans for digital billboard installations along highway corridors that will create sustainable revenue streams to support our community food security, placemaking, and youth development initiatives. This work is particularly connected to the development and operation of place-making initiatives, including community food-producing agricultural sites that often require subsidization, but are critically important to sustainably addressing the pervasive food inequity and low food access that impair youth household stability and health outcomes in our communities. As a location and land-specific development project, digital billboard projects, and underlying long-term development of appropriate land use entitlements and clearing of regulatory obstacles is synergistic with land development-oriented place-making activities of the organization typically connected to urban agriculture, and the development of both uses may go hand in hand; in essence, this makes communities work in our low-income, open space and food inequitable communities. These initiatives have led to significant community impacts, including food distribution and neighborhood improvement projects. The program's success is rooted in strong partnerships with organizations like Arizona State University and Arizona Trauma Institute, which contribute to our evolving knowledge base for youth development. Community works plans to sub-lease land for digital billboard placements on highway corridors within the next two years, generating revenues for school site programming, fiduciary sponsorship, and support services for disadvantaged community families.