In the summer of 2011, Chef Gida Snyder and I began brainstorming on strategies to bring EBT (electronic benefit transfer food stamps) to farmers market. A year later we have formalized this effort into a social enterprise called GreenWheel Food Hub, have found a wonderful fiscal sponsor in Feed the Hunger Foundation, and have honed ourselves a mission: let’s do what it takes to create greater access to fresh locally grown food, with a focus on low-income communities.
Our team now includes Kasha Ho and Nan Geller. We have also gained some incredible partners in this effort: She Grows Food (of course!), Kanu Hawaii, Whole Foods, and Kaiser Permanente.
Here’s the video we made to formally announce our EBT efforts and to spread the word about Whole Foods adopting us GreenWheel Food Hub as a Community Partner and our 5% Day at Whole Foods Kahala.
In just this first year we’ve been busy and learned a lot: in April we piloted a pop-up farmers market with Kanu Hawaii and EAH Housing at EAH’s Kalani Gardens affordable housing complex in Mililani, in a few weeks we will see the launch of EBT service at Wahiawa Farmers Market, and we are close to bringing EBT service to Honolulu Farmers Market (the team at Whole Foods has already helped us fundraise to cover start up costs for service to this market). We’ll continue chronicling the progress of GreenWheel Food Hub here.
Lisa Asagi
Editor and Co-founder
