RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT)—The Underground Kitchen Community First brings quality, nutritious food to communities that tend to receive the least.
‘We’re making that information accessible. We’re also making that food accessible to the public,” said Micheal Sparks, the founder of UGK Community First.
UGK Community First was born during COVID when they served 300,000 meals to people in need.
This food disparity crisis was an issue they saw hitting low-income areas the hardest.
Over their five years of service, they’ve introduced five programs to help communities in Central Virginia free of charge.
One of them being the From Scratch program.
“Farm-to-table food access for child care centers throughout Richmond city and central Virginia. We’re currently serving over 12 child care centers right now with farm-to-table hot meals every day,” Sparks said.
Another is the Future Foodie program, which aims to educate children on the importance of eating nutritious food.
“So, if it’s spaghetti and meatballs, we’ll give them the history of pasta, the history of a meatball. And where it was grown and where the food was made,” he said.
This year, they introduced the Smart Soul Food program. It’s a six-week course where attendees receive hands-on lessons from professional chefs and dieticians on making healthy food.
The non-profit worked with Councilwoman Ellen Robertson, representing Richmond’s 6th district, an area essentially a food desert.
“This is just a fabulous opportunity for us to work with those families. We’ll get them to use their own refrigerators, their own stoves, their own pantries to stock quality food and ways of how to prepare that,” Robertson said.
They hope that by providing this education to these communities, the impact will go beyond the dinner table and create lasting healthy habits for these families.
“If we’re feeding our children and our families better food, then we have much better health outcomes. And long term, for the state, it’s cheaper because we’re not running up medical bills,” Sparks said. “And we’re producing wonderful additions to our society by feeding folks well so they can think well. You can’t learn if you’re not eating well.”
The first class for the Smart Soul Food program will begin on Jan. 30.
It meets every Thursday from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Visit the Underground Kitchen’s website for more information.
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