“What’s your name and language?” McGee asks invitingly. “Write the language you speak, please. We need accurate information.”
McGee, Director of Chronic Disease Prevention & Health Promotion in the Health Department, views much of her work through the lens of community-building. This is why, since returning in early August from a month-long trip visiting family in Liberia, she spent the following four Sundays in the parking lot that is home to REACHing US: People's Market, hosted by Play Grow Learn.
REACHing US: People's Market, located at 18480 S.E. Stark St. in the Rockwood neighborhood, is open noon to 4 p.m. every Sunday through Oct. 27. And, McGee says, attendance shows the community’s appreciation and need: there were 410 market goers on Aug. 25; 385 on Aug. 18; and 310 on Aug. 11. This Sunday, Sept. 15, Hispanic Heritage Month will be celebrated.
The market is a product of a five-year partnership between the Health Department’s Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) program and Play Grow Learn. The Gresham-based organization is run by Anthony Bradley, a Grant High School alum, and co-founder Germaine Flentroy, a Jefferson High School alum.
Bradley says Play Grow Learn was started to provide youth “a program that gave them something to do other than being in the streets.”
“Both of us are coaches — he coaches football, I coach basketball,” Bradley says while walking around the community market with Flentroy and three teens. “So, giving kids a safe place to exercise and workout is kind of how we started.”
And, McGee adds, Play Grow Learn’s mission has a broader community reach.
“Play Grow Learn was born as a result of folks who have been displaced out to East County because of gentrification,” she says, with a nod to REACHing US: People’s Market.
“We’re cultivating this placemaking initiative in a culturally rich area to increase access to locally grown, culturally appealing produce, address food insecurity, and spur economic development opportunities for the food entrepreneurs and vendors.”
Indeed, more than half the nearly two-dozen booths are food vendors, most selling local, farm-grown fruits and vegetables. On Labor Day weekend Sunday, a range of vendors offer honey, cabbage, jalapeno peppers, corn, fresh eggs, baked sweets, free smoothies, chips and other light snacks, barbeque, haircuts, jewelry, and a pop-up food pantry.
“There’s a lady from Mexico who does bee harvesting,” McGee says. “You have a group of African women from five different countries, who are growing food from their respective countries and selling it at the market. There are farmers from Bangladesh.”
“By virtue of this being in East County — the most diverse part of the county in a lot of ways — you have farmers, food entrepreneurs, and vendors who are of all races and ethnicities.”
It’s these people and their emerging successes, and community leaders like Bradley and Flentroy, that keeps McGee talking and smiling about REACHing US: People's Market.
“I love seeing the resilience of the community, including immigrants,” she says. “And there’s a lot of immigrants in this space.”
