City Market/Onion River Co-op in Burlington, Vt., has been working on making its products and services more accessible for members of the community. One of the outcomes is that the co-op now offers information about its “Food for All” food access program in six different languages. The new brochures are available at the customer service desk at both of City Market’s stores. 

“We’ve been doing a lot of outreach around our Food for All program this year, and translating the brochure is something we have wanted to do for a while now,” said Caroline Aubry, City Market’s membership manager. “The motivation for translating the brochures was wanting to be more inclusive to our community and recognizing that language could be a barrier to participation.”

Aubry said the co-op reached out to get input from its partners to translate English language brochures into the most commonly used languages in their community: Spanish, Swahili, Somali, Burmese and Nepali. “Our partners that we work with were really appreciative of the multiple languages that they can now use to share with their families,” Aubry said.

This project was just one piece of City Market’s larger organizational approach to equity, belonging, inclusivity and accessibility (EBIA) work. The co-op also has been focusing on staff trainings; starting a justice, equity, diversity, inclusion (JEDI) committee; and building a lending library of books for staff.