Bridging the healthy food gap: Students launch food awareness campaign in Church Hill

Share this story

A passion for food, cooking and heritage led Gabrielle Tenney to attend a culinary institute before pursuing her bachelor’s degree at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The VCU School of Business senior has found a way to merge her love of cooking and marketing in a way that serves others as well as herself.

In spring 2015, Tenney took a service-learning course, Marketing for Nonprofit, and realized she enjoyed working with businesses in the community.

The class “also had this definition of marketing that I really enjoyed that was ‘to influence or change behavior,’” Tenney said. “So for me, as a cook and a marketer, I think, ‘How could I influence someone to change their eating habits, to exercise—to do these things that you don’t normally want to do?’”

When she saw a service-learning marketing course this past fall that promoted food sustainability in the community, she thought it was a great opportunity to work on her mission, receive credit for it and work with people in the community. The engagement was incredible, she said. Community partners such as RVA Trolley, Challenge Discovery Projects, Environic Foundation International, 31st Baptist Church, 7th District Health & Wellness Initiative, Robinson Theater and Shalom Farms have provided invaluable resources.

Van Wood, Ph.D., professor of marketing and Philip Morris Chair of International Business, and Manoj Thomas, Ph.D., assistant professor of information systems, led the class—Ford C3 Sustainable Transportation, Marketing and Entrepreneurship: Alleviating Food Deserts in Richmond, Virginia—which continues the legacy of its predecessors by advancing the VCU School of Business-Ford Food Desert Program in Richmond’s Church Hill area. The program started three years ago as a result of a $25,000 “Building Sustainable Communities” grant from Ford Motor Co. The school received a second grant the following year.

Since then, the program has helped low-income community members gain access to jobs across the Richmond region and expanded a sustainable transportation solution to increase community access to fresh produce in neighborhood corner stores. Last semester, the class put together a healthy cooking class to inspire community engagement.

“You get the kids involved, you get the adults involved, you get everybody in,” Tenney said. “And then … people will be more receptive and looking for those products and buying those products.”

Tenney and classmates Jennifer Ouk, Kirndeep Singh, Ria Gozon, Lee Wilson, Sergei Villamera and Adam Aquino launched a four-month food-awareness campaign called “Church Hill Food Heritage” and held cooking classes twice a week at the Robinson Theater. RVA Trolley—which had partnered with previous incarnations of the course—provided transportation for community members.

Instructors taught different international cuisines in each class, including Mexican, Italian, Indian and Moroccan food. The last was taught by a chef from Morocco who is friends with Tenney.

“I love to have people come in to talk about their cultural heritage,” Tenney said, “because that’s the idea to start this conversation: ‘What is my cultural heritage? What is my food heritage? What does that mean?’ And open that conversation with their grandparents and their aunts and other people in their community.”

The Church Hill Food Heritage program ramped up this semester with a six-week cooking course for selected high school juniors and seniors.

“The cultural aspect is something that, especially in a nonprofit organization, we struggle with,” Tenney said. “How are we culturally sensitive? And how can we be more aware so that we can better serve communities? I think food is a great vehicle for that conversation, because everybody likes food and everybody has a story about food.”