Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Food Desert in Kansas City's East Side

Today while sitting in on a nutrition class at Emancipation Station women's shelter, I was thinking about "food deserts".  There is a disparity in the number of grocery stores on the East Side of Kansas City.  The choices for food for anyone who walks or rides the bus is limited to pharmacy type stores, convenience stores, fast food chains and liquor stores.  A fresh vegetable or fruit is hard to find.  It seems ironic that the woman speaking to the homeless is trying to teach nutrition and good choices for food.  But with this new knowledge, these women have very little chance of actually practicing it.  The food stores that supply the produce and non-processed foods have already evacuated the neighborhoods.  Some clients mentioned that there was a "Piggly Wiggly" store that went out of business last week over on the Kansas side.  Their experience with shopping there was that things were expired.  Often over 2 months expired.

Why are there no grocery stores?  Was there no demand?  It seemed from my small sampling of the poorest of the poor in Kansas City, that these women had a desire to cook with these raw foods.  They shared tips on how to handle chili peppers and store homemade soups and prepared meats.  It seems they had the knowledge.  Was the food simply too time consuming?  Too expensive for a population who individually must work several jobs to make ends meet?


Friday, March 18, 2011

Kansas City has more than 40% dropout rate in schools...

"... Research shows that high school dropouts are three and a half times more likely than graduates to be arrested and eight times more likely to be incarcerated. Nearly 70 percent of all inmates in our nation’s prisons failed to earn a high school diploma.

In Kansas City area schools, more than 40 percent of students fail to graduate from high school on time.... "



Sunday, March 13, 2011

Stories from the East Side


Lizzie was a prostitute in the 1980's on the East Side of Kansas City during the same time serial killer Terry Blair was killing prostitutes. One of his victims was a friend of hers. She tells a story of a hard childhood, struggles with addiction, abuse and nearly losing her life before coming clean at a recovery house. Her one year anniversary for being sober will be August of 2011.