The Refresh Project
About Our Partner
The ReFresh Project is a collaborative partnership that nourishes and changes lives—a fresh food and wellness hub for New Orleans. A 60,000 square foot grocery store abandoned after Hurricane Katrina, the restored building now houses diverse groups with a common vision of wellness.
A Whole Foods Market store anchors the project. Down the hall at Liberty’s Kitchen, youth gain culinary and food-service job experience and life skills while making healthy lunches for public schoolchildren. At the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine, a teaching kitchen, Tulane medical students learn how to cook and counsel patients on nutrition and community members enjoy free healthy cooking classes. At Broad Community Connections, organizations collaborate to revitalize the historic neighborhood and create new economic opportunities. Out back, at the ReFresh Farm, neighbors can take gardening classes and lease space to grow food for their families.
Other partners in the building include charter school network FirstLine Schools and Boystown Louisiana, which supports families and at-risk youth.
Learn more about how Whole Foods Market Team Members get down and dirty with the Volunteer Garden Party.
About the Project
Community Health Outreach Program
The Community Healthy Outreach program trains neighbors as health and wellness advocates. They talk with residents of the Lafitte community and guide them through the many offerings of the ReFresh NOLA coalition. With an advocate’s encouragement, a parent might take classes in cooking at the Goldring Center, learn gardening at the ReFresh Farm, apply for SNAP/WIC benefits online, buy affordable fresh vegetables at Whole Foods Market, enroll their teen in afterschool job skills program at Liberty’s Kitchen, and get help quitting smoking at the community health center.
The larger ReFresh NOLA Coalition includes many more innovative community organizations:
- ReFresh Project
- Liberty’s Kitchen
- Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine
- Broad Community Connections
- Sojourner Truth Neighborhood Center
- Ruth U. Fertel / Tulane Community Health Center
- Tulane Prevention Research Center
- Sprout NOLA
- Harambee Community Gardens of New Orleans
- Share Our Strength/New Orleans No Kid Hungry
- Friends of Lafitte Corridor
- Second Harvest Food Bank
- Grow Dat Youth Farm
- Latino Farmers Cooperative of Louisiana
- Louisiana Public Health Institute
- NEWCITY Neighborhood Partnership
- Providence Community Housing
- Brinton Family Health & Healing Center
