Meet Sara Continenza | City Councilwoman and Nonprofit Founder/Executive Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sara Continenza and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sara, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
Food Strong’s mission is to use fresh foods as a tool to educate, empower, and cultivate health throughout Northeast Ohio. We offer numerous programs to achieve this goal:

School Gardens and Culinary Arts Programming: We visit schools and other institutions to guide young learners through the process of planning, building, planting, maintaining, and harvesting fresh food, herb, and native flower gardens. We emphasize STEM, the arts, environmental and community stewardship, nutrition, and entrepreneurship. We also teach our students how to cook healthy food from scratch. We focus on promoting minimally processed whole foods and teaching through showing that healthy food can be inexpensive, quick to prepare, and delicious.

Youth Entrepreneurship: We fold the concept of entrepreneurship and food-based businesses in all of our educational programming. We also offer a series of workshops that teach our youth business skills such as marketing, financial literacy, elevator pitches, and product development. We bring in mentors from various sectors to inspire, support, and educate our students whenever possible. As we assist with business incubation, we will keep a portion of sales revenue for the first few years before we phase out.

Food Strong Learning Garden: This is our urban farm located at our partner organization’s site, the Coit Road Farmers Market. We use this space to host field trips and learning experiences, and use the food we grow in our culinary education. We also allow our students to help to sell freshly-grown produce at farmers markets to gain valuable entrepreneurial skills. We host monthly volunteer events to help us plant, develop, and maintain our Learning Garden, and assist the Market with much-needed maintenance and repairs.

Fresh Food Retail: In 2023, we hired a farm manager to oversee Learning Garden operations in order to produce enough food to sell in underserved, low-access communities. We will be accepting SNAP benefits and other incentive programs in return for our freshly-grown produce. We received a grant to purchase a food trailer which will serve as a pop-up “farm stand” to sell our food in a variety of community locations (with an emphasis on low-income, low-access communities)
Care-A-Van: This community initiative brings people together to eat, learn about, and support local foods in vibrant, multicultural atmospheres. We create linkages to a holistic array of vital community health and wellness programs and services provided by participating partner organizations.

Care Strong Project: This partnership with the Case Physician Assistant program and University Hospitals Department of Family Medicine brings free health screenings, education and information to clients of emergency feeding programs. Clients are incentivized with PPE, health products, and coupons to spend at nearby farmers’ markets.
Farmers’ Markets: We partner with different community development groups and municipalities to bring farmers markets to life. In 2020 and 2021 we partnered with the Flats East Bank to support, recruit for, and promote the new Market. We also partnered with the City of South Euclid to launch a new weekly community farmers’ market which is entering its 3rd year of implementation.

Vacant Lot Restoration Initiative: This is our newest endeavor. We are partnering with the Rid-All Green Partnership and Cuyahoga County to guide community groups through turning vacant spaces into vibrant agricultural and gathering spaces. This support will also allow Food Strong to utilize dollars toward staffing and supplies in our own endeavors to acquire and revitalize vacant lots.

Fresh Food Connect: This is an anti-food waste app that assists in the redistribution and allocation of excess locally grown food sourced from small scale home gardeners. We use food obtained through this app to supplement our school culinary arts program as well as distributing the food to students in our program for them to take home and share with their families.

We utilize nutritious, locally-sourced foods as the common ingredient to:
Bring people together in vibrant atmospheres
Educate and empower communities to adopt healthier lifestyles
Support economic growth and economic development
Inspire the consumption and cultivation of healthy local food amongst low-income youth across the region
Revitalize our land and environment through sustainable agricultural practices that incorporate green energy, permaculture, native planting, and regenerative agriculture/composting
Engage the community in meaningful ways to earn buy-in and support for our work

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Food Strong seeks to foster food sovereignty in all of our work. We take it a step further from food security, which assures that people have enough to eat…food sovereignty assures that consumers of food are actively engaged in the production and policies around food systems.

The journey of building Food Strong from the ground up (no pun intended) has been exciting, challenging, and a lot of (fulfilling) work. My entire life’s journey has contributed to my passion for fresh food access. Ever since I lived in Burkina Faso, West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, my passion for food sovereignty has grown. I saw firsthand the toll hunger can take on a community. After my world travels, I settled back down in Cleveland and learned how hunger works here. People are overfed and undernourished. I worked at a local food rescue organization for 4 years before becoming an entrepreneur. This job taught me how important it is to not only give people band-aids but help them heal their wounds. I’ve had a lot of struggles. When you are a new organization, you are hard-pressed to find help- I relied on interns for many years, and the turnover and, sometimes, lack of consistency can be quite challenging. Since starting Food Strong in 2018, I’ve been able to raise funds, and get a brick-and-mortar office, and a staff. We are now in 15 schools and more are interested in our programs. While it’s challenging when you don’t have a lot of money to pay people what they are worth, and when you’re a new organization requiring flexibility, we’ve landed with a core team of kind, passionate, amazing people who help us propel the mission. Sometimes it can be frustrating…sometimes difficult…but it’s always rewarding to do this work and see our progress.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would definitely take a visitor to our urban farm in East Cleveland to show how we’ve been able to cultivate a beautiful, productive space in the heart of the city. I’d also go to the art museum and show off our amazing Metroparks…amongst the best of park systems in the Country!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I want to shout out a good friend and my nonprofit organization’s Board President, Nicole Salerno. I was introduced to Nicole when I was just starting my organization, Food Strong. I was nervous to talk to Nicole and ask her to get involved, especially knowing how well-established she is in the Cleveland community. She owns multiple successful restaurants with her husband Fabio and knows everyone. When we began talking, I became acquainted with a humble, down-to-earth, passionate person with a heart of gold. As she told me about her journey launching a school catering program to counteract the processed foods served at her children’s school, I knew it was a match made in heaven. Her work aligns perfectly with Food Strong’s school garden and culinary arts programming. I was still astonished when she agreed to serve on my small board. That was 2019. Since then, she stepped up after a tumultuous 202o to serve as our President. She and Fabio have hosted 5 annual galas at their catering space, Lago Custom Events. She has stood by my side, both as a nonprofit Executive and as a friend. She has connected me to countless amazing humans and supporters. I know I wouldn’t have gotten this far without her. It is challenging to be an entrepreneur. It takes a village to see the change we all hope for. Nicole Salerno and her whole Lago family make a difference in this world, my life, Food Strong, and the thousands of students and clients we serve every year.

Website: www.fooodstrong.org

Instagram: instagram.com/foodstrongcle

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/food-strong/

Twitter: twitter.com/foodstrongcle

Facebook: facebook.com/foodstrongcle

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsc2eH7xX5ZpNK9CRcjdlXg

Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@foodstrongcle