Saba Grocers awarded $2M to expand fight against 'food apartheid'

"At the time, Ghanem was working at a research institute in Berkeley, gathering information from corner stores about the impact of alcohol, tobacco and other legal substances on local communities and knew "nothing about the soda tax," she said. But she started doing research about the tax and how it was meant to address public health concerns, such as diabetes."

"As an Arabic speaker, she was able to form deep relationships with Oakland's corner store owners, many of whom are from Yemen or other Arabic-speaking countries. She learned about the barriers to healthy food in Oakland, and that the lack of fresh produce in corner stores was not because of low demand, but was instead a failure of the supply chain."

Lina Ghanem encountered customer complaints after Oakland implemented a 1-cent-per-ounce soda tax and researched the tax's public health intent. She learned that 50% of Black and brown children in Oakland were predicted to develop diabetes and discovered her own pre-diabetes diagnosis. Fluent in Arabic, she built trust with many Yemenese and other Arabic-speaking corner store owners and identified supply-chain failures, not low demand, as the cause of limited fresh produce. She advocated using soda tax revenues to overcome structural barriers, co-founded the Saba Grocers Initiative in 2019 with city seed funding, and Saba distributes over 150 produce varieties to corner stores.

Read at The Oaklandside