VILLAGE MARKET
VILLAGE MARKET
Village Market is a for-purpose social enterprise that: (1) provides healthy food for our neighbors; and (2) facilitates healthy urban + suburban relational connections through commerce.
The Village Market is not a stand-alone operation; it is part of a local church driven, integrated community empowerment ministry that begins with the most vulnerable children and families. See: “iCare Village of Hope – Overview.” This integrated ministry has a specific emphasis on serving children and families in crisis through the CarePortal platform, a national church-to-child care platform operated by The Global Orphan Project, to strengthen vulnerable families to keep children out of the foster care system. See: “iCare Village of Hope – CarePortal.” The foster care system disproportionately impacts Black children and families, so rallying churches and the community to strengthen at-risk families is vitally important to reversing racial disproportionality in the child welfare system.
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The timing of the Village Market re-start is strategically important. Linwood Gardens, a 32-unit affordable housing development specifically geared to families seeking to escape domestic violence, is near completion and set-to-open in early 2021 at 33rd and Michigan, a short walk to 3400 Woodland, the site of the Village Market. Here is an article about the development: https://www.kcur.org/community/2019-08-19/a-new-affordable-housing-complex-will-help-families-escaping-domestic-violence-in-kansas-city.
In addition, iCare Village of Hope owns several lots abutting Linwood Gardens, and is in active (and promising) dialogue with the City of Kansas City, the developer of Linwood Gardens, and several strategic partners to break ground in mid-2021 on the development of 24 apartment units for youth aging-out of foster care, and multiple single-family townhomes for family transition connected to the iCare / World Harvest CarePortal ministry, where the need is for mid-term housing security for at-risk families. Architectural renderings of the development are attached hereto.
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Our most important next step in community development east of Troost Avenue is to add the Village Market in the heart of the already thriving local efforts to care for and strengthen children and families in crisis.
Demographics
Ivanhoe is the poorest neighborhood in the Lower East Side of Kansas City, Missouri, in Jackson County, with an inner-city community of ~10,000 with a density of 5,186 people per square mile. Approximately 63.8% of Ivanhoe Southwest's population has an annual household income below $25,000 which means that most residents live in low-income households. The percentage of children living in poverty in Jackson County is 22.8%. The neighborhood is 90% African-American and most of the population has only attained a high school degree. Roughly 40% of the land in Ivanhoe is vacant or abandoned, but grass-roots efforts are underway to revitalize this community.
In the area surrounding World Harvest (3400 Woodland Ave.), there is a dire need for healthier food. Surrounding neighbors are plagued with a number of ills: high blood pressure, obesity, smoking, alcohol addiction, diabetes, heart disease and strokes. Ivanhoe church leaders estimate that over 50% of their congregations receive EBT benefits. Study after study has shown that fresh foods, such as fruits and vegetables are irreplaceable as protective factors against cancer and heart disease, however, it’s been shown that lower-income families eat more processed foods than middle and upper-income families, meaning that while the poor pay more to eat, they get less back in nutritional content.