Our Mission.

5013c organization that is dedicated to  essentially changing our food system, increasing access to healthy food for vulnerable communities, reducing food waste and educating people on how to make food healthy and nutritious and tasty so that it inspires people to change their lifestyles. Ultimately, we’re working to push back against the root causes of food insecurity in America which is driving an obesity epidemic that is essentially destroying our country from within. That sounds possibly a little bit over the top, but the United States gross domestic product 17 almost 18% of that every year now goes towards health care costs and that’s doubled in the last 20 years. We’ve got kids as young as eight getting diabetes. We’ve got heart disease with our youth. 57% of kids under 18 are considered obese across America now and over nearly half of adults, so this is something that has been slowly steadily creeping up on us for about 50 years now,  and it’s now reached the point where, if we don’t do something we’re going to be starting to see some serious problems coming down the road very quickly. And this is all tied in with some other things like ecological change… some of the damage and some of the challenges in our food system are causing and driving many of the problems that we’re seeing on the news as far as climate change and climate chaos around the country and around the world.

So these are these are some big things that we’re working on, but what On Common Ground is working to do is. to drill down to the local community neighborhood level and tackle the root causes of food insecurity in our communities. 

We get situations like food deserts in Colorado springs as an example. On the southwest side there’s a huge food desert, we got about five square mile of residential area that doesn’t have access to food. We have a model for a grocery store that we can build in that area and that’s and it can provide access to healthy fresh foods. can be lined up with the snap and Ed program so that federal dollars can flow into the Community and help to pay for food, so that people can divert their scarce resources over to other needs like crazy insane housing costs. We’re also working on individual empowerment programs like basically teaching people who live in motels and converted garages and other spaces that doesn’t that don’t have a functional kitchen how to work around these environmental limitations to be able to cook healthy meals for their families. They may not have like a full oven or full kitchen, to be able to deal with it so we’re working giving people awareness to plug instruments like like slow cookers, insta pots, air fryers and things like that. We are showcasing these possibilities, so that people can start getting the idea that it’s not hopeless…they’re not stuck just getting a burrito down at the local corner bodega. There’s opportunities for them to be able to cook healthy meals, as long as they’ve got access to power and a roof over their heads. At the same time that we’re working directly with the Community, we have a dual mission. Part of our mission is to is to  speak directly to people and inspire healthy lifestyles, but a big part of our mission is speaking with municipalities and with other nonprofit organizations around the country to teach that sector that these things are possible. That the donation model of just donating food constantly to families is not in the long term solution for really helping people. We need to transition over to an empowerment model and something that is going to give communities a consistent access and a supply to resources that are not going to go away and which are not going to be constantly threatened by budget shortages and  funders demands and all the things that happen right now in the food bank system and other situations that we’re dealing with as a society.

So, it’s a big deal. We are a small startup grassroots nonprofit organization that doesn’t have a whole lot of resources and we’ve been plugging away working on developing these models and we’re at the point, right now, where we really need to step up our game with our communications capability and being able to intersect with. people through the web.

Food Desert definition

Food deserts are regions where people have limited access to healthful and affordable food. This may be due to having a low income or having to travel farther to find healthful food options.

Without access to healthful foods, people living in food deserts may be at higher risk of diet-related conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Several government bodies are now funding projects to prevent areas from becoming food deserts and to improve people’s access to food in existing food deserts.