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America's Healthy Food Financing Initiative | Press Release | 9 Jun. 2022
Queen Mother's Market Cooperative in Cincinnati's Walnut Hills neighborhood received funding through America’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative’s (HFFI) Targeted Small Grants Program. The 2021 funding round distributed $22.6 million in Reinvestment Fund awards to 134 projects.
The press release for HFFI explains the scope of this record-breaking opportunity:
Funding for the HFFI grants program is provided by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), authorized by the 2014 Farm Bill. The program provides one-time catalytic investments in projects that will improve access to fresh, healthy food by creating and expanding fresh food retail and food enterprises. The 2021 round is the largest since the program launched in 2018. The 2021 Request for Applications (RFA) originally made $4 million available through the program. The pool was expanded to $22.6 million by the USDA, as a result of the $155 million in additional resources for the HFFI program [...].
Queen Mother's Market is starting off as a membership-based buying club, but will expand to be a member-owned cooperative grocery store and community hub in the next couple years. It will fill a need for access to healthy food in this part of the city, and offer an opportunity for community members to direct the decisions made about the food available in their neighborhood.
Queen Mother's Market is the product of the hard work of leaders in the Walnut Hills community, with support from some of our other partners in Healthy Food Access and Consumption and Farm to Consumer work, including Co-op Cincy and Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation.
Read more about Queen Mother's Market on their page.
And donate to Queen Mother's Market's fundraiser to help the cooperative build a physical store in Walnut Hills!
🏪 Want to contribute to the local economy through your food purchases? Check out our Buy Local page. Interested in being a part of a neighborhood-led good food enterprise, like a buying club or a co-op? Get in touch with us via maddie@greenumbrella.org.