Cairo, IL has a population of just over 1600 people and a 59% child poverty rate. This rural community has been a food desert for eight years with a dollar store and a gas station serving as the only nearby place to get limited groceries and with the nearest grocery store more than eight miles away – an impossible distance as many of Cairo’s residents do not have reliable transportation. Their story is a familiar one all over the US in rural communities, but this community has done what few of their peers have – opened a cooperatively owned grocery store after just two years of organizing.
Rise Community Market (RCM) opened Saturday, June 16th, 2023.
Sean Park, Program Manager of the Illinois Cooperative Development Center has been a key piece of the RCM organizing team and will join us to share about RCM, and about the social dynamics of organizing a food cooperative in a small rural community that is located in a federally recognized persistent poverty county.