Local students join to create food co-operative

In the 1840s, a group of English weavers developed the idea of a food co-operative -- a system to bring inexpensive, quality food to their impoverished town.

And 160 years later, the concept is at work in West Philadelphia.

A group of University City High School students, in conjunction with several Penn students working through the Center for Community Partnerships, are attempting to create their own food co-operative on Lancaster Avenue.

Officially, "a co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations," the International Co-operative Information Centre Web site reads.

And like the workers who pioneered the idea of a food co-op, the students are responding to a call from the community to help alleviate a growing nutritional deficit.

The project began over the summer as a joint effort between the students and the CCP. With funding from a school district program called Youth Works, the CCP created summer jobs -- centered around the concept of developing a food co-operative for Lancaster Avenue -- for six students from the EcoTech small learning community at University City High School.

In the EcoTech program, students "combine problem solving and public service, and one of their main goals is to promote nutrition in the community," Director of the Urban Nutrition Initiative at the CCP Danny Gerber said.

For example, EcoTech students are developing a physiology curriculum to teach to third grade Drew Elementary School students.

Also, some students are employed as gardeners after school. Pizza Rustica at 36th and Walnut streets purchases some of the produce from the students' garden.

"Philadelphia... as a city is really short of grocery stores," Gerber said.

In fact, results of a shoppers' survey administered by the Lancaster Avenue Revitalization Project showed that "number one on the list" of businesses that would be desirable to the nearby communities "was a place to sell fresh food," corridor manager Tanya Washington said.

While UNI already helps operate a farmer's market on Lancaster Avenue on Saturdays, locals have been asking for a more constant alternative to the expensive and distant Freshgrocer, said Vanesa Sanchez, a Wharton and College sophomore who has been working on the project since the summer.

As a result, the idea for a co-operative came up, Sanchez said.

"That's more than just coming in with a store," she said. "That is giving the community ownership and empowering them."

So Penn students working with the CCP and University City High School explored the need for a food co-op and to devised a plan for making the project materialize, Sanchez said.

The program concluded in mid-August, and Sanchez said four students are continuing to work on developing the co-op.

But Vania McDaniels, a junior in the EcoTech program, says progress has come to a standstill. McDaniels said there has been talk of getting more students at University City High School involved, but no plans have been set in motion.

The group has drawn up a business proposal, which Wharton Community Consultants will be reviewing with the students this month, Gerber said.

Ideally, "we'd love to do something on Lancaster Avenue," Gerber said. "We really like the idea of being on the Penn trolley line."

The students and the initiative's leaders at CCP seem to be most interested in the former K Electric building on the 4100 block of Lancaster Avenue.

Ajamu Johnson -- the Lancaster Avenue commercial corridor manager with the Peoples' Emergency Center Community Development Corporation -- suggested that the co-operative would provide an "anchor for the corridor" -- ultimately, grounding the health of the community in an independent, neighborhood-run project.

"Co-ops are communities within themselves that serve the interests of their members rather than the interests of outside investors," said Dan Flaumenhaft, a member of Mariposa -- a food co-op on Baltimore Avenue.

The Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society "made a huge difference in access to cheap and nutritious food," he said. "This is exactly what's going on on Lancaster Avenue."

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