March 2016 Challenge Winners


Heartside Gleaning Initiative


ABOUT: Heartside Gleaning Initiative (HGI) empowers individuals to become healthier through increased access to healthy foods and nutrition education. We do this by collecting excess produce from farmers’ markets and transporting it to low-income neighborhoods for distribution to individuals, food pantries and free and low-cost meal programs. In neighborhoods with large numbers of low-income residents and no suitable markets to obtain healthy, affordable food, mobile produce vans have proven to be an effective method to increase a community’s intake of healthy food. With increased capacity to collect and distribute fresh fruits and vegetables, HGI will increase access to healthy food for residents living in food deserts. This will potentially reduce the incidence and severity of obesity and long-term chronic diseases. HGI is different from other food distribution centers and mobile produce vans, because it only distributes healthy fresh fruits and vegetables and everything is free.

With Lisa Sisson, registered dietitian, assistant professor at GVSU, and founder and director of Heartside Gleaning Initiative.

Heartside Gleaning Initiative

Winners of $5,000



Page last modified January 16, 2020