Staff and trustees from The R. Howard Dobbs, Jr. Foundation, the Ray C. Anderson Foundation, and the Reilly Family Fund recently visited Thomasville Community Development Corporation (TCDC), a Drawdown Georgia (DDGA) Climate Solutions & Equity Grantee. They are implementing a plant-based diet pilot that includes medical monitoring, and they’re offering free produce giveaways to seniors. They’re helping provide sustainable systems for getting locally grown, fresh, healthy food into neighborhoods that have been officially designated as food deserts.
Community-based Plant-Forward Food Program for Dewey City
TCDC is applying plant-based diet principles to scale their work of improving health outcomes for priority populations in the historic Dewey City neighborhood in Thomasville, Georgia. Rendall Mash, owner of Marathon Market, a Black-owned food market, is working with TCDC to facilitate the design and implementation of a neighborhood plant-based food program.
Mash returned to his hometown a few years ago, seeking to use his skills as a builder to help improve the lives of residents in the Dewey City and Stevens Street communities of Thomasville. Since then, he’s been building affordable homes and renovating legacy homes. At first, he was returning to Thomasville only on weekends, but his passion eventually took him back home full time.
Mash began to sense the absence of many things he remembered from his childhood. One of the most important things he noticed was the absence of a grocery store in the center of the community. The closest grocery store with fresh meats and produce was five miles from the center of the community, and it was inaccessible to many residents that don’t have cars. He also noticed that an increase in blighted, vacant buildings invited crime.
That’s when he began working with TCDC to create a system-based solution that started with opening a small grocery store in the center of the community. He opened Marathon Market in an existing building that served as a grocery store more than 20 years ago. In recent years it had become a liquor and vape shop that put crime right in the center of Dewey City. By converting the property back to a safe, community-centered resource and by getting creative with the deliverables, Mash has been able to turn things around considerably. Now residents have a safe and reliable source of fresh, affordable food in the center of a walkable community.
Mash sources his produce from local farmers, who also provide produce for subsidized food boxes that are delivered regularly to 40 local residents.
Local chef and TCDC partner Alvin Davis also sources the produce he needs to provide free plant-forward meals for seniors that gather at the Scott Senior Center four times a week as part of a year-long pilot Plant-Based Diet Program. His culinary creations are part of a program that allows participating seniors to access bloodwork diagnostics and medical monitoring to see how an increase in plant-based meals affect their blood tests for markers of diabetes, hypertension and other common diseases that often affect seniors. There are currently 28 participants in the pilot, and the average participant age is 74. Sixty-four percent are female and seventy-one percent are Black.
Before starting the program, Kuluvanda Cason, a mobile nurse that owns ARK Diagnostics, tested each participant with baseline bloodwork and counseled them individually to set specific diet goals that could lead to better test results at the end of the pilot project. Her role in the pilot is health outcome monitoring. The participants don’t just receive free food, they also receive educational seminars, recipes and suggested grocery lists for when they visit Marathon Market and other local food stores. The goal for the participants is not to make them vegetarians or vegans. It’s to reduce the percentage of meat in their diets and to replace it with vegetables, fruits and legumes.
Jasmine Calhoun, a consultant with Johnson Public Health, works with Davis and Cason to provide the health outcome reporting for the project. All three of them grew up in the local community, so they are working with their parents’ and grandparents’ peers. Many of the pilot participants knew them as children.
“Behavior modification is a big part of the project, and probably the toughest hurdle to overcome,” said Pat Howard, Executive Director of the Scott Senior Center. “At first they were all asking, ‘where’s the meat?’ and some would taste the food–some wouldn’t. If they tasted it, they made no commitment to integrate it into their diets beyond the four free meals per week at the Center. Now, some of them are coming around and some are actually get excited.”
The funding team also had the chance to visit the community garden while visiting with TCDC. Eventually, the raised beds there may provide some of the food for Marathon Market and the Senior Center.
Cason also mentioned a separate outreach program in Thomasville that evolved after success at the senior center. She said transient residents at a local Motor Court are now able to sign up for free blood tests, subsidized by TCDC, with options for additional, affordable, routine health monitoring. Many have taken advantage of the new offering.
The funders also had a walking tour of the old Douglass High School property in the center of Dewey City, where plans are already underway for a building reuse project that will provide 50 affordable senior apartments by Q4-2027. There are still hopes to provide a portion of the electricity there from on-site solar, but it will need to be introduced in a later phase. The original school property where the senior apartments will be constructed is centrally located with plenty of greenspace, and it’s convenient to the community gardens, the Marathon Market and the senior center.
The Drawdown Georgia grant to TCDC is funded by a collaborative of foundations with roots in Georgia. Funders for this project include: the Atticus Fund, The Wilbur and Hilda Glenn Family Foundation, the Ghanta Family Foundation, the Ray C. Anderson Foundation, the Reilly Family Fund, and the Tull Charitable Foundation.
