Innovation Through Prototypes

Ardmore Food Pantry

The Center
The Center at Ardmore Food Pantry will  be a place where pantry guests can get information connecting them to services and resources  in the community in a friendly and relaxed environment. The Center hopes to help alleviate stress for guests and continue to build trust with everyone that walks through the door. Ardmore Food Pantry’s The Center will be successful when guests feel a greater sense of connectedness instead of loneliness, increase accessibility to local resources, stress is reduced, and continue to build a community.

Bean Bag Food Program

Share, Learn, Succeed – Working Together to Create Healthy, Successful Live
Bean Bag Food Program will provide guests with experiences to learn about health, education, finances, and other skills  which aid in living healthy and successful lives during their monthly family grocery giveaway and breakfast events.

College Student Basic Needs Program

Pilot Program to Test Feasibility of Regional Expansion of CSBNPs Food Ordering and Delivery Program for College Students
Our project will test the feasibility of expanding CSBNP’s food ordering and delivery program to nursing students at Jefferson University’s Abington campus.  One cohort of willing students will be registered to order food remotely on-line from Manna in Lansdale and a second cohort of willing students will be enrolled to order food manually from Family Promise’s food pantry at Salem Baptist church for delivery to Jefferson’s Abington campus. A successful pilot with lessons learned and adaptations could form the basis for a model to replicate across the County in collaboration with other full-service food pantries and colleges. ​

ICNA

Nutrition Education
We hope to “spark” interest with the guests to look at the nutritional value and evaluate the foods they are consuming to nourish themselves and their families.  Many of our guests have migrated from Mexico and Guatemala where their local food system looks much different than ours. We would like our guests to deepen their knowledge and understanding of common cooking ingredients (oils, flours, etc.) and how to choose healthier options.  We want guests to understand our food system in their language, how it can impact their health, as well as have knowledge about better, healthier choices.

Martha's Choice Marketplace

Simpletexting- Community Led Food Security
Martha’s Action Squad (MAS) aims to continue building long term trust with guests, provide real time communication, high quality translation, utilizing various approaches (other than surveys) to solicit guest feedback through increased texting capacity, and facilitates an ongoing, authentically community led and equitable program development strategy.

Narberth Community Food Bank

Build a Better Network of Outreach and Communication
​At the end of the prototype project, Narberth Community Food Bank aims to have unified programs and approaches to receiving guest feedback that could be scalable and approachable for other smaller nonprofits and food pantries through various mediums. They will be able to present the data they receive to make more informed decisions and continue to reach those who have been unreachable through translation services.

Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line

Growing with Neighbors: NHN Garden and Community Cookbook
Through Neighbors Helping Neighbors on the Main Line's prototype project, Growing with Neighbors: NHN Garden and Community Cookbook, our team will continue efforts to change the stigma that equates low income to low nutrition. Through the creation of a neighborhood garden and community cookbook, along with stakeholder conversations and surveys, we will monitor our success in bridging the gap between various cultural and economic divides; thereby creating a more inclusive, healthy community of neighbors.

Pottstown Area Food Council

Testing Methods of Providing Cooking Demonstrations and Fresh  Produce to Improve Consumption
Trellis for Tomorrow and other Pottstown Area Food Collaborative Partners will collaborate to  test three different variations of a combined cooking demonstration coupled with the provision of  subsidized/heavily discounted or free produce at community locations in Pottstown. ​

Norristown Hospitality Center

Empowerment through Mobile Outreach & Social Services 
The balance between providing basic needs services and social services to the unhoused of Montgomery County, specifically the Norristown area, needs further exploration.  By the end of the prototype project, the team aims to gain an understanding of the current access and availability of basic needs services coupled with the current access and availability of social services for this vulnerable population.  The basic needs distribution and needs assessment will help to determine if pairing basic needs street outreach with mobile social services will be effective in our county. The hope is to see the success and provide weekly social service pop-ups in Norristown, where most people convene. ​