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

"But she started doing research about the tax and how it was meant to address public health concerns, such as diabetes. She was shocked to learn that 50% of Black and brown children in Oakland were predicted to have diabetes in their lifetime. For Ghanem, who had recently been diagnosed with pre-diabetes herself, the problem was also personal. And she started wondering how she could help, and how those tax dollars could be put to good use."

"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. She began pitching an idea to corner store owners: What if we use some of this tax to replace soda with produce?"

After Oakland's 2017 one-cent-per-ounce soda tax, Lina Ghanem researched its public-health intent and learned that half of Black and brown children in Oakland were projected to develop diabetes. Diagnosed with pre-diabetes, she built relationships with Arabic-speaking corner store owners and discovered fresh produce shortages resulted from supply-chain failures rather than low demand. Ghanem proposed reallocating soda tax revenue to replace sugary beverages with produce and advocated at City Hall for addressing structural barriers in the fresh food supply chain. In 2019 she co-founded Saba Grocers Initiative with Dhaifallah M. Dhaifallah, securing initial municipal funding.

Read at www.berkeleyside.org