News
Martha O'Bryan Center to start grocery shuttle bus
6/17/2010
A shuttle bus operated by the Martha O’Bryan Center will begin making regular trips to Kroger and other stores at Gallatin Road and Eastland Street, starting at 10 a.m. Friday, June 18.
The neighborhood Martha O’Bryan serves is considered one of Nashville’s food deserts. Many residents there don’t have cars, and with no grocery stores within easy walking distance, healthy food is hard to get. As a result, people make the easier food choices, which are usually high in fat and low in nutrition. Those choices put them at higher risk for health problems like obesity and diabetes.
A group of Martha O’Bryan Center volunteers, the Young Professionals Committee, organized a fundraiser in April to pay for the bus transportation to the grocery store. The fundraiser raised about $3,500 toward the goal of $5,000, and Kroger made up the difference.
The Young Professionals Committee began as a grass-roots effort to engage young professionals in East Nashville to educate the community and advocate on behalf of the Martha O’Bryan Center. These young leaders set out with the holistic goal of addressing poverty in East Nashville by focusing in on targeted issues, such as the food desert in the Martha O'Bryan Center serves.
About the Martha O’Bryan Center
On a foundation of Christian faith, Martha O'Bryan Center empowers children, youth, and adults in poverty to transform their lives through work, education, employment and fellowship. Martha O’Bryan Center enables vulnerable families living in Nashville’s most distressed neighborhood overcome the many obstacles limiting them from living healthy, full lives. Experience shows that communities are healthiest when parents are working and children are succeeding in school. To help achieve these aims, we provide a highway of integrated services for the entire family that engages schools and community partners along the way.
The Martha O’Bryan Center is located in Cayce Place, the oldest, largest and poorest public housing development in Metro Nashville. About 2,400 residents live in 710 rental units on 63 acres. Half of the residents are children, and the average annual household income is $5,000.
