Giving Compass' Take:

• My Social Good News profiles a student-run program at San Diego State University that delivers fresh fruits and vegetables to small stores located in underserved communities and food deserts.

• This program (called BrightSide) effectively acts as a conduit between produce suppliers and small businesses, so that healthy food is readily available to the people in these communities. Could this nonprofit model be scaled or does it work best staying local?

• It's also worth looking at the food desert problem in general throughout the country. Here's one article that discusses how supermarkets can help.

Students at San Diego State University, guided by Iana Castro, associate professor of marketing in SDSU’s Fowler College of Business, are working to tackle food insecurity in low-income communities — one produce delivery at a time.

It’s been less than a year since Castro started BrightSide Produce at SDSU. Based on a model developed in 2014 at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, the program distributes fresh fruits and vegetables to small food stores and liquor stores in underserved communities. This includes shops located in food deserts, where residents do not have access to supermarkets.

“The BrightSide Produce program was developed as a direct response to two needs: a need for an innovative, pedagogical approach that could elevate the student experience while preparing students for the workplace; and a need to develop a solution to a pressing issue that is affecting communities nationwide, including many San Diego communities,” said Castro.

BrightSide, which operates as a non-profit, acts as the workaround for small shops that can’t afford to purchase the minimum order requirement from produce distribution companies. BrightSide buys the produce directly from produce distributors and then delivers the produce to participating stores. It’s a solution that allows small business owners to successfully and profitably stock produce.

Read more about tackling food insecurity by Api Podder at My Social Good News