PR: New Sun Rising Opens Food Hub Incubator: Launch Millvale!
Teams chosen to take part in NSR’s year-long residency are provided with expert-led, community-driven programming designed to move ideas toward impact.
Millvale is host to Pittsburgh’s first-of-its-kind social impact incubator: Launch MODE. The activity of the fresh food hub aims to increase local production, distribution, and access in a community identified as a food desert. With a strategic EcoDistricts plan, bolstered by the Millvale Community Library, Millvale Borough Development Corporation, and Millvale Borough Council, the town is now a growing hub for community-led food security initiatives.
Launch Millvale has a three-level approach to its programming: individual team success through business model planning and funding strategies; teams developing a cohort to improve food system models; and engagement as a food hub in their home community of Millvale.
New Sun Rising Program Manager, Brian Wolovich of Millvale said, “the participating food enterprises were selected based on their abilities, ideas, and their authentic interest in activating Millvale’s community-based vision for addressing its own lack of food security.”
Ten teams developing food-based social impact projects will call the Millvale Food Hub home for the next year: Creative Culinary, Farm Truck Foods, The Gardens of Millvale, 4th River Ferments, Millvale Fresh Food Hub, Sprezzatura, Steel City Soils, Three Rivers Grown, Tupelo Honey Teas, and the creation of an urban growers cooperative.
Each project owner has a dream of food success and Launch Millvale has an engaging team of mentors to lead direct programming and push them to actualization. Participants will develop their business models, funding, and community engagement strategies with the guidance of Brian Wolovich (Program Manager), Leah Lizarondo (food social enterprise catalyst), and Heather Mikulas (agriculture marketing, business & community development specialist from Penn State Extension).
For more information on Launch Millvale or the Fresh Food Hub, and to learn about the teams, please visit http://www.newsunrising.org/launch-millvale-food-incubator/ New Sun Rising programs are made possible by the generous support of the Henry L. Hillman Foundation, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and Neighborhood Allies.
ABOUT NEW SUN RISING:
We are champions for citizens driven by purpose, shapers of social innovation and catalysts of impact. A growing network of impactivists committed to generating opportunity and change.
New Sun Rising is an organization striving to find and support fresh, creative solutions to social problems that are more effective, efficient, and sustainable than what currently exists. We build programs and new models to progress concepts from idea to impact, whether we are a fiscal sponsor, mentor, or community connector.
This process of social innovation is made possible by inspired visionaries who dream of what’s possible and are passionate about making it happen. The collective output of these solutions is defined as our social impact: delivering a positive effect on the societal, environmental, and cultural fabric of the community.
New Sun Rising believes that catalyzing social impact can activate the authentic vision and potential of your community. Building an engaged, diverse, and cooperative ecosystem that results in solutions that improve your community… and that can improve communities around the world.
New Sun Rising’s programming includes: Fiscal Sponsorship, ignite MODE, launch MODE, grow MODE, and, in addition to the above, arts MODE – providing professional services for artists and arts organizations to enhance their sustainability and community impact.
For more information, contact Brian Wolovich, Program Manager, at brian@newsunrising.org or 412-977-7672.