Gem City Market Celebrates Fourth Anniversary!
Newsletter May 15, 2025
It’s the Gem City Market’s fourth anniversary and that deserves celebrating! Join us at GMC on Sunday to mark this milestone for one of our community’s most amazing accomplishments!
The Gem City Market project is a perfect example of how to build community food security. It was designed by the community, for the community and led by the community. It creates good jobs around healthy food in an area that has seen decades of disinvestment.
Tony Hall was recently asked “What’s the most important project the Hall Hunger Initiative has worked on in its ten years?” He immediately answered “The Gem City Market.”
Tony served as Capital Campaign Chair, working with members of the community to raise the $5 million needed to get the market built and opened. HHI staff has provided behind the scenes support and HHI staffer Amanda Hernandez is currently on the board and executive committee.
Hope to see you there Sunday and be sure to shop Dayton’s own Gem City Market!
People Make the Gem City Market!
Gem City Market is a living testament to the power of community. It was created and driven by the people and for the people.
Mama Nozipo
No one personifies that more than Mama Nozipo and it’s great to see her efforts featured in the Dayton Daily News Local Voices. She’s at all the events, smiling and greeting everyone. Along with her ever-present smile is a deep strength and love of community. She was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and expelled for her anti-apartheid activism. She rebuilt a community in Dayton but was alarmed when she saw the grocery stores disappear from the neighborhood. She brought that same determination and energy to the Gem City Market movement.
“We didn’t rely on the media, and we didn’t depend on social media,” Mama Nozipo recalls. “A lot of people in our community didn’t have computers or the internet. So we did it the old-fashioned way—we knocked on doors.”
She talked about her joy when the store opened.
“My goodness, we just couldn’t believe it. I was on cloud 99. This was mine. My sweat and blood. My knuckles knocking on doors. My smile to a stranger. And their smile back,” she said.
Mama Nozipo and so many people in the neighborhood worked for years to turn the dream of a community-owned grocery store into a reality. Now it’s up to all of us to shop there, take our friends there, and work to ensure the Gem City Market celebrates many more anniversaries.
