Feeding and fostering the community: A look inside the Orange Mound Sustainability Hub

On Friday morning on a residential lot in Orange Mound, a small group gathered to mark a milestone: 12 months of work had culminated in the opening of the Orange Mound Sustainability Hub.

After the success of their work in Frayser, Laresia and Austin Avery decided to bring their model to a new neighborhood. The couple is the driving force behind The Original Project Team, a Memphis nonprofit dedicated to eliminating food waste and feeding people in food deserts.

“We’re excited, honored to be in this neighborhood,” Laresia said.

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The hub is meant to serve as a sort of community nexus. It will offer meals to people in need as well as grow fresh fruits and vegetables to give away to the community. The Averys will provide information and instruction about starting and maintaining home gardens and cooking healthy meals.

“We want to inspire and empower residents to be part of the change and empowerment they want to see,” Austin said.

Fresh food, zero waste

The newly built house was constructed by Dwayne Jones, a home builder who grew up in Orange Mound, to serve multiple purposes. The front door opens into the kitchen area and a living space that will be used for food distribution.

Currently, the two back rooms will function as office and classroom space for the Junior Food Waste Council, a student ambassador program created to give students the tools to engage other students in Shelby County Schools about healthy eating and eliminating food waste.

At some point, the rooms can be converted into bedrooms. The Averys hope a family will move into the house at some point and take over the day-to-day operations of the hub.

They aim to be zero waste, and in addition to growing fruits and vegetables at the hub, they partner with local restaurants to reclaim healthy food that can be distributed to people in need that otherwise would have been thrown away.

In raised beds behind the house — the backyard also features picnic tables — they’ll grow kale, spinach, other greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, herbs cantaloupe and watermelon. All the food grown is given out in the community.

On the front porch is a hydroponic tower for growing seedlings. Community members can come to the hub, pick up the seedlings and take them home for planting. The hub will also have complimentary seed packets for fruits and vegetables that people can take home to start their own gardens.

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Students in the Junior Food Waste Council will also be given their own hydroponic towers to take home and start home gardens or distribute to others.

“It’s transformational,” Jones said of the hub.

'It's a great springboard'

While Orange Mound is not technically designated as a food desert, access to quality, nutritious food is not easy for many. The Save-A-Lot is not easily walkable for many in the neighborhood so those with transportation difficulties have to rely on corner stores, which have less of a selection and higher prices than large grocers.

But beyond access to food, Jones said the hub could help raise property values and make it easier to build in the neighborhood in the future. He recently built six single-family homes in the neighborhood but struggled to get financing for the first. With a dearth of recent new construction, lenders have nothing to compare to and are reluctant to give financing.

“What they’re doing here is historic,” he said. “It’s a great springboard.”

For Austin, it was important not to just offer services in a new neighborhood but to start improving the community before operations even began.

“This is the manifestation of the transformation of a blighted property,” he said.

Barbara McClain traveled from San Antonio to be in Orange Mound Friday. She met Austin several years ago when she was looking for someone to design a website for her ministry. A Facebook friend connected her with Austin and over time and after prayer, she became a part of the Averys' work.

“This is a manifestation of prayer that has been answered,” she said.

McClain said the hub would be a safe place in the neighborhood, a place that would not only feed but foster community and give people a place to build bridges across whatever divides them.

Laresia said they want the community to buy into the project and take over as they’ve seen in Frayser. She said an 18-year-old who lives near the Frayser hub recently noticed some work needed to be done on the vegetable beds and so, without prompting, he did it himself.

The man told Laresia he didn’t have a history of volunteer work but had been inspired by the hub. He’s now helping a neighbor in her 70s with maintaining her garden.

Expanding beyond Memphis

Austin and Laresia want to inspire others to address food waste and see the sustainability hub model rolled out across the county, helping eliminate food deserts everywhere. It’s all part of a wider “Hungernomics” program, meant to eventually address food waste and lack of accessibility on a large scale.

One location has already been replicated in St. Louis. Later this month, the Averys will go to St. Louis to teach students from a charter school there about healthy eating and growing their own food.

On Friday, the Averys thanked everyone who provided money, time and prayers to make the Orange Mound location possible.

“(The hub) is only because of The Lord and our gracious sponsors,” Austin said.

Those sponsors include the Care Foundation and the Frye family. Kevin and Jennifer Frye initially got connected with the Averys through Kevin’s work at Ring Container Technologies. The company has sponsored the Averys' work and over time the Fryes started to donate to them personally, first the Frayser location and now Orange Mound.

Kevin said the expansion into a new neighborhood was huge.

“The love that they provide… now others can feel that,” he said.

Corinne S Kennedy covers economic development and healthcare for The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached via email at Corinne.Kennedy@CommercialAppeal.com

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: The Original Project Team opens Orange Mound Sustainability Hub in Memphis