The Ponckhockie region of Kingston has long been recognized for its vibrant and diverse community, but that sits beside an unfortunate problem — food scarcity. Fresh and healthy food isn’t easy to get; for some residents, the issue may be that they can’t get transportation to bigger supermarkets.

Because of Ponckhockie’s status as a “food desert,” leaders at Thrive On, a network of leaders helping small communities reclaim their economy, are supporting a small team of dedicated interns, Ahmad Shoaib Jalil and Trent Larsen, to make their dream of bringing food availability to Ponckhockie a reality via the new PonckHockie Market.

Equitable access to food and food suppliers is an essential step towards helping a community thrive — that’s the vision of Keyvious Avery, founder of Thrive On who started the organization while he was still in college at Bard. His relationship with the neighborhood of Ponckhockie started around three years ago while he was still studying. “I learned of Ponckhockie and Kingston and quickly had a love for Kingston and Rondout. The community has been through so much and that really got me, so I came into Kingston and got a tour of Ponckhockie and that’s when I learned that it is a food desert and that historically the residents are of color. At the time I worked at Hudson Valley Current, and I bought a market in Ponckhockie while I was there. I kept in touch with distributors, and with Thrive On they [interns] saw that they needed a new market and the stars aligned.”

Candace Garnes, the deputy organization lead and facilitator of the Early Thrivers program at Thrive On, works to provide opportunities for Kingston’s young adults age 18-24 to teach them the necessary skills to become “agents of change,” and helping them start social initiatives like the PonckHockie Market. Jalil and Larsen are students from Kingston who were interested in food policy and security and thought that Ponckhockie would be the perfect area to start their first market. Garnes aided them in tasks like crafting emails to vendors, helping them apply for grants and anything else to support them until Thrive On can eventually pass the baton to these young entrepreneurs so they can continue the market on their own.

This inclusive approach to Thrive On’s involvement in the market is akin to their mission. “Our vision is trying to take everyone’s vision into one big picture. What is the community asking for and can we provide an avenue for that?” said Garnes, adding that “too many things have come and gone [in Kingston] and not come to fruition. We don’t want to fall into that paradigm. We want to fulfill what we said we’d do.”

The market works as a type of co-op, a model Avery described as “we have vendors come in who pay us a fee, offer groceries income at base prices and the price from vendors covers bottom end.” The first market begins on Saturday, Feb. 24 but the team hopes to offer it bi-monthly and eventually weekly, with the hope that one day the market could be open daily.

Thrive On said they’ve done a lot on crowd-funding for this project, along with acquiring funding from NoVo in Kingston and from the Ritualist Shop in New Paltz. The facility they are using was offered to them for free from Community Action of Ulster County, and they have received help from volunteers, vendors and more to make this project actualize.

To become a member of the co-op is completely free, according to Avery, because “the model pays for itself.” Beyond this, the market will be offering ride shares or requests for grocery drop-offs in the immediate area, exclusive deals and other events. Another selling point is becoming a produce partner with the market, which will enable patrons to become vendors themselves. There will also be an on-site chef and nutritionist, Dr. Ashanda Saint Jean, who is the chair of obstetrics and gynecology at HealthAlliance Hospitals and an associate professor in the Department of OB/GYN at New York Medical College.

Each month, the market will highlight a different identity pertinent to the month itself. The first market at the end of February will invite local black vendors in for Black History Month; beyond this, March will highlight Irish and women vendors, and so on. The market will also donate its profits to local not-for-profits each month, with the first market donating funds to the Pine Street African Burial Ground, who will also be at the market to share information about their ongoing efforts there. Two of the vendors who will be at the first market include Di Sweet Spot and We Got the Juice.

Thrive On and the Market have also received generous help from locals such as Devon Wood Media, YWCA, Kingston Land Trust , Kingston Digest, who has helped with marketing for the market, and County Legislator Gregory McCollough, who’s also a board member of Thrive On and whose program, Beyond 4 Walls, will be offering free clothing at the market.

The market will be located at Community Action of Ulster County at 70 Lindsley Ave., in a small room inside the building. The hope is that the market will eventually outgrow this space and will need something bigger to accommodate more vendors.

The most important thing, Garnes and Avery said, is that, “We’re really looking for input from community. We don’t want to do a market that no one wants. We want to get the best products and we want to hear from the community if they’d like to see something else.”

To learn more about Thrive On, check out their website here, and to learn more about the PonckHockie Market, their website can be seen here. You can also find social posts spotlighting the interns and the market on their Instagram and Facebook pages.