Lauren Melodia

Have you seen an eggplant before? What about an acorn squash? I have, and you may have, too. But Lauren Melodia has found a lot of people who haven’t.

In an effort to help her community eat healthier and fresher foods, she started a Community Supported Agriculture project. Every week, Melodia gives Bedford-Stuyvesant residents the opportunity to buy food they can’t get anywhere else in their Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood: fresh produce. She encourages her neighbors to stop eating food out of a box that has ingredients they can’t pronounce.

CSAs are popping up countrywide because they’re a mutually beneficial partnership between a local farm and a community. The residents provide a stable financial base for the farm. In turn, the farm provides affordable produce for the people — food they might have never seen before, but can certainly pronounce.

Update: Watch the CNN.com Live interview

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