RestoreOKC, Inc

PROJECT PURPOSE

RestoreOKC has grown to serve the 73111, 73105 & 73117 (and portions of 73114) area known as ?Northeast Oklahoma City.? With more than 50% of our families with children below age 5 living below the poverty level and a growing understanding of the importance of preventing and reducing adverse childhood experiences, RestoreOKC has known that there is an urgent need to place coordinated services into the community in such a way that really centers around children & families. Last year, RestoreOKC partnered with Homeland. to renovate a 7,000 square foot space into a grocery store in Northeast Oklahoma City as the nearest grocer was a 3-hour round trip bus ride during a pandemic. This space community-led space secures donations to offset store overhead and keep food costs low for neighbors. While store did more than $1 million in sales, quadrupled the national average of category sales for fresh produce, and created 80 new jobs for those with barriers to employment, it also helped establish precedent for placing community services into spaces that people naturally gathered or are considered "essential" during a pandemic. The purpose of this project would be to continue to innovate & build strong, community-led solutions that enhance the well-being of our most vulnerable neighbors through expanded physical food access opportunities in our community & into Southeast Oklahoma City, 73129 which is also 50%+ below poverty level.

EVIDENCE

To establish evidence for The Market at Eastpoint, we worked with a model in Atlanta as well as with the Oasis Market in Tulsa to look at evidence-based practices that have successfully scaled employment, wellness & well-being & expanded economic development & infrastructure for their communities. Their outcomes alongside a 3rd party market survey done by grocery research group MTN established similar market conditions for our existing & proposed locations. Since opening, we have seen 4x the national category sales average for fresh produce in our Market & have implemented programs such as Double Up Bucks to make that more accessible for our most vulnerable neighbors. To establish evidence for creating space to house the community resources we leaned into interventions in other states & on partners who have executed signed MOUs to move into the community resource center: Boys & Girls Club (already moved into & are operating in the space as the "anchor partner," Homeless Alliance, Public Strategies, Lynn Institute, Mental Health Care.

POPULATION DESCRIPTION

In our proposed QCT service area, more than 50% of families with children under five living below the federal poverty level with a significant percentage of the overall population being vulnerable seniors. The cross-section of food access and the overall well-being of communities has been well studied and, in our context, has resulted in an 18-year discrepancy in life expectancy for the Northeast Oklahoma City community when compared with the wider city average. When combined with a pandemic, we saw that food access was not only linked to sustainability, but to health but also to economic viability. During COVID, we saw a significant increased burden to families who lacked transportation & faced an approximate 3 hour commute to the closest full-service grocery store. During the pandemic, we did over 10,000 pounds of food relief in a single-day & established the need for a long-term food access point. By anchoring this to a community-led grocer we were also able to scale jobs for 80+ employees who were able to walk to work throughout the pandemic. Low-income communities and communities of color have been, and currently are, those who are most deeply harmed by the current food system & were disproportionately impacted by housing, loss of employment & income variability throughout COVID which have all been proven to lead to greater risk of and/or persistent multi-generational poverty.

PERFORMANCE MEASURING

In addition to evidence-based outcomes from similar models in Atlanta & Tulsa, we completed an MTN Third Party Market Study to determine the feasibility for the original store and meet Homeland?s requirements for public-private partnership. Initial evaluation data has included surveying at least 10% of clients for qualitative data related to our defined objectives that have not only tracked positive change for our community, but are also informing future projects and programs for continuous health improvement. We are working with the Public Health Institute & the OU Health Science Center to roll out a full research & evaluation proposal which would be evaluated by OU Health Science Center using the quantitative sales data alongside health data over time. We are utilizing those in addition to our own outcomes to determine feasibility for expansion into SE OKC.

ONGOING INVESTMENT AMOUNT

$

ONGOING INVESTMENT DESCRIPTION

None

ONGOING INVESTMENT REQUIRED

Able to continue operation without additional funding from the State of Oklahoma