FoodShare South Carolina is aiming to improve food security and fruit and vegetable consumption for communities in Columbia, South Carolina that face limited access to fresh, nutritious foods.

The organization operates by creating a once or twice monthly bulk produce box that includes 10 to 12 varieties of fresh produce and a recipe card for healthy cooking suggestions. FoodShare SC also participates in the state’s Healthy Bucks program, which allows Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to purchase a wholesale produce box for US$5, while Healthy Bucks funding pays for the remaining US$10 cost of the box.

“Our statewide network uses a community-based approach that demonstrates that FoodShare is more than just a box of food,” Wilson tells Food Tank. “Our goal is to improve the health conditions of those in underserved areas of the state through food access and work together to dismantle oppressive systems that both cause and hold poverty in place.”

While working as a Certified Diabetes Educator, Beverly Wilson, Co-Founder and Executive Director of FoodShare SC, launched the program in 2015 with her colleague Carrie Draper, after learning that many of her patients could not afford to buy fresh food. Wilson and Draper decided to develop FoodShare SC as an alternative produce distribution and nutrition program within the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. Across South Carolina, 18 nonprofit organizations have replicated FoodShare’s model and have distributed over 160,000 food boxes, comprising over 3 million pounds of produce since 2015.

A 2020 report from the Rural & Minority Health Research Center and the Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina finds that nearly half of the state’s residents—approximately 2.3 million people—live in areas of low food access. In Richland County, where South Carolina’s capital, Columbia, is located, 12 grocery stores have closed in low-income areas since 2016. And according to a report from the Food Equity Subcommittee of the City of Columbia Food Policy Committee, the availability of grocery stores and the foods they sell vary by demographic, more stores carrying a greater variety of fresh fruits and vegetables in white and affluent parts of the city.

Read the full article about access to nutritious foods by Vicky Brown Varela at Food Tank.