The Crookston Marketplace theme this Thursday is the Power of Produce Club. The marketplace will be celebrating the first day the $2 produce vouchers can be used. Below is more information on the PoP Club from a story KROX ran earlier this month.
The University of Minnesota Extension, RiverView Health, Polk County Public Health and the Statewide health improvement partnership have teamed up to offer the Power of Produce (PoP) Club at the Crookston Marketplace every Thursday from 4 to 8:00 p.m. “The University of Minnesota Extension, particularly Megan Hruby is awesome. We work together a lot and try to augment our funding and our programs we have to seamlessly serve the communities as best we can,” said Kirsten Faglerund of Polk County Public Health. “The University of Minnesota Extension is the actual grantee for the majority of the funding and RiverView Healthcare has also donated some money toward this and we also had opportunities for people to sign up to help with running the program through the summer.”
You can register for the PoP club every Thursday at the Crookston Marketplace at the Downtown Square and the program will start on Thursday, July 12. “The PoP program actually started at an Oregon Farmers Market in 2011,” said Megan Hruby of the University of Minnesota Extension. “People from Minnesota caught wind of it and they wanted to replicate it in our state. It started in the metro area at the farmers markets there and now we have it in Crookston.”
The PoP Club is a farmers markets incentive program for children offered at farmers markets throughout the nation, including Crookston. Each week, children ages 0 to 18 receive $2 in vouchers to spend on fresh fruits and vegetables at the farmers market. The University of Minnesota Extension office in Crookston received a grant of $1,500 and RiverView Health added $250 to help the program. Over 75 kids signed up at the first Crookston Marketplace last week. “Families are asked to come to the market to sign up their kids. It is a quick little sign up that asks basic information and that way we can also keep track of the days the kids visit the market,” said Hruby. “They sign up and after that, they can come to the PoP booth each market, tell us their names and we mark it down. It is really simple.”
Hruby said you don’t have to spend the vouchers the day you get them. “They don’t have to spend it that day they get the voucher,” said Hruby. “You can accumulate it over time and get a big purchase at the end or the middle or whatever they are looking for.”
The intent of the PoP Club is to engage children at farmers markets and empower them to make healthy food choices. It also aims to increase family participation at farmers markets, increase vendor revenue, and build healthier communities. The PoP program will go until the voucher money runs out. “It will run every farmers market until funds run out starting July 12,” said Fagerlund. “There is no income guidelines and we want everybody at the market shopping, having a good time. This is a good example of the community pulling together to create a different culture and having conversations about where our food comes from, healthy eating and local foods. We will have a lot of different partners with service organizations and businesses having the opportunity to help us out each week and if anybody is interested you can contact us for more information.”
To contact Megan Hruby, call 218-281-8688 or email jans0221@umn.edu.
To contact Kirsten Fagerlund, call 218-289-4032 or email Kirsten.Fagerlund@co.polk.mn.us.
