It started out as a request for wholesome and nutritious food for rural community members by the Mohave County Health Department. A few years later, the Rural Foods Pathway Project (RFPP) created by the Sustainable Communities Program at NAU has developed several linked projects to address food security in northern Arizona.
Rural areas like Mohave County and the Navajo Nation often lack healthy food due to the shortage of grocery stores and the vast distances between them. As a result, residents are more dependent on processed foods that are often expensive. The RFPP has stepped in, implementing projects to increase awareness and provide access to nutritious and affordable foods.
Thanks to partners like the Sustainable Economic Development Initiative of Northern Arizona (SEDI), the RFPP is finding solutions to food distribution problems among these rural communities.
The funding provided by SEDI helped NAU students like Reilly Caldwell, ’23, conduct field research to understand existing food quality and address questions from community members. Part of Reilly’s role as a graduate student in the Sustainable Communities Program involved working with Community-University Public Inquiry (CUPI), a collaborative research program that works with community partner St. Mary’s Food Bank to supply fresh produce and staple groceries to rural areas.
“CUPI is a program that brings together juniors and seniors to work on community-based research projects as undergrads,” said Peter Friederici, professor in NAU’s School of Communication who also teaches in the Sustainable Communities program. “The students help fill gaps for community-based research that benefits not only us but also St. Mary’s Food Bank.”
“St. Mary’s Food Bank has had a wonderful collaboration with NAU and an interdisciplinary group of students in the CUPI program,” said Ceara Chirovsky, senior programs manager at St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance. “The students conducted boots-on-the-ground outreach and surveying of our agency network in some of our most rural communities. The feedback we have received from these communities has been extremely valuable.”
Learn more about RFPP and the projects they are leading by visiting the Sustainable Communities website.
