The Columbia Heights Community Marketplace works to ensure that the community can buy and produce fresh, healthful, locally grown food.
Festibucks
The Columbia Heights Community Marketplace, aka the CHFestivus, offers bonus dollars for shopping for healthy foods at our market. These matching incentives, called Festibucks, improve and increase access to healthful, nutritious and delicious locally grown and produced foods for recipients of federal nutrition assistance, increase market attendance, and promote sustainable food systems by supporting local farmers. The program works by matching, up to $10 per weekend, the benefits of WIC, Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP), and SNAP (food stamp/EBT) recipients.
Learn more about federal nutrition assistance benefits.
In 2011, we distributed over $17,000 in Festibucks to market shoppers, thanks to our generous donors and sponsors and want to thank them for their continued support of the Festibucks program in 2012.
Youth Market Garden
Fruit & Vegetable Prescription Program
The Columbia Heights Community Marketplace is proud to partner with Upper Cardozo Unity Health Center and DC Greens to launch a Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program in Washington, D.C. The FVRx Program is developed and supported by Wholesome Wave to track the effects of increased fresh fruit and vegetable consumption on health indicators among low-income, obese patients.
Here’s how it works:
Doctors at the Upper Cardozo Health Center select program participants at high risk for obesity-related chronic illnesses. These patients receive a Fruit and Vegetable Prescription that can be redeemed at five area farmers markets. The participating “farmacies” are Columbia Heights, 14th & U, Mount Pleasant, Bloomingdale, and Glover Park-Burleith. Patients’ redemption rates and health metrics are carefully tracked and entered into a secure portal. At the end of the season, Wholesome Wave will analyze the data in aggregate from their 11 partner sites nationwide.
