Fresh Change

Fresh Change is one of our most beloved programs! We have partnered with Portland Farmers Market since 2014 to make fresh food and the market space accessible to our community.

Traditionally accessible through barter work, we have revamped our programming during our cafe closure. We’re partnering with other local nonprofits that work with communities often left out of the food justice conversation to host market tour events.

Through these events we build relationships, promote dignity, and start important conversations about food insecurity, and equity.

Fresh Change 2024

2024 was our second year of having a tour-based Fresh Change program. We pivoted to a tour-based model when our cafe closed and participants no longer had the opportunity to earn Fresh Change credits.

We partnered with Street Roots, Ground Score Association, and Rose Haven to host four tours this year, and had a wonderful time! We were able to bring over 30 people to the farmers market, and everyone said they’d go again if given the chance.

This year we expanded the Fresh Change currency to cover all food items, including hot food! Fun fact, did you know we were the first restaurant in the USA to offer SNAP as a payment option for our meals?

Although there are still improvements we’d like to make to the program, we are excited to offer this program year after year!

2024 Fresh Change Survey Results

Barriers to the Portland Farmers Market

We are not surprised that a major barrier to going to the farmers market is the perceived price, but we also noted that timing, transportation, and lack of information were also large barriers. Fresh Change seeks to help overcome these barriers by providing an all day Trimet pass, $30 in market currency, and a supportive group event.
Did Fresh Change reduce barriers to the farmers market?

All except for one participant felt that Fresh Change reduced barriers to accessing the farmers market!
Gender Demographics for 2024 Participants

We are striving to make our programming more accessible to minoritized gender identities, so we are happy to see that over half of our participants identify as women, trans, and gender non-conforming!
Racial Demographics for 2024 Participants

We are striving to increase the accessibility of the Fresh Change program to folks with historically minoritized racial and ethnic identities.

10 Years Young

Sisters has always been at the forefront of challenging a food system that does not prioritize the right to “good food” to those experiencing homelessness and poverty.

Fresh Change started with the name “Healthy Plate Project,” in 2014 as a pilot in partnership with New Seasons Market and Portland Farmers Market to once again show there is a way for healthy food to be truly accessible for all of us.

Customers earned barter cards by supporting operations in the Sisters Cafe, and could be redeemed for Fresh Change currency at the Portland Farmers Market. Though the cards could be turned in for delicious meals in our Café, prior to the Healthy Plate Project, there was no other location to redeem these hard earned coupons.

This program was more popular than we could have imagined, and we consistently ran out of our monthly allocations for the Healthy Plate Project. Due to the pilot’s popularity, it became a permanent program at Sisters and was renamed Fresh Change in 2017.

Our customers had the opportunity to increase their monthly grocery bill by up to $90 when using barter cards at these markets from May through September.

We hosted field trips to the market to familiarize folks with how to use their tokens and how to shop at a farmers market. The hope was that many of our customers, who have limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables, will participate in the farmers markets and have the opportunity to make healthier choices for themselves and their loved ones.

This year, we are excited to have representatives from Partners for a Hunger Free Oregon join us to sign participants up for SNAP during the tour! We hope that this will be a long-lasting opportunity.

Moving Forward

We are so excited for our cafe to open so that we can resume Fresh Change as a barter opportunity. We hope to increase our funding for this special program, and, perhaps, add new partnerships where customers can use their barter cards.

Stay tuned!

With the COVID pandemic, we faced the challenge of losing not only our face-to-face community interactions in the cafe, but access to Fresh Change. In 2021 we made some temporary, and some permanent, changes to the program.

First, since we had no barter work opportunities, we decided to make the temporary change to scale-back Fresh Change into a tour-based program. We are partnering with neighboring organizations such as Street Roots, Ground Score Association, and Rose Haven to sign up our community members for tours and gather for the market. During the tour we still learn how to use Fresh Change, and other currencies (SNAP/EBT/Vouchers), to maximize our resources at the farmers market.

Second, we made the permanent change to broaden the scope of Fresh Change currency to include hot food at the farmers market! As the first nonprofit restaurant to accept EBT/SNAP for a hot meal, we recognize the accessibility that ready-made meals can provide. Giving our customers this flexibility allows them to make the best decisions for themselves.