GBOIC has been offering job training in Bridgeport CT for more than 25 years. We partnered with the East End Neighborhood Revitalization Zone's effort to bring a small store to the longest standing food desert in CT in 2016 and serve as its fiduciary. Since then we have secured a site, partnered with dozens of for-profit and non-profit partners to renovate the location. Just this month we won the Healthiest Cities and Communities Challenge Grant from the Aetna Foundation, the American Public Health Association, and NACCHO. We will be operating a small store which offers job training to those with long-term unemployment - business development to small food entrepreneurs offering both support in licensing and expansion of their food businesses, and a small cafe run by young people in the community who have lost friends or family members to gang violence. This small store is a beacon of hope in our East End neighborhood. We seek resources to support a youth leader for cafe efforts for this summer. Given we will not be opening until April of this year the youth leader will take on the work of convening youth volunteers - and they will work to market the store. The college student who has done this work for the past two years has done this work for a small stipend - we look forward to offering her a living wage this summer and to stipend the young people who will operate the cafe nightly.