suma friends, we couldn’t let August wind down without updating you about our summer hacking with the suma app. That’s right – together with partners like St Johns Farmers Market, King Farmers Market, Lime, Hacienda CDC, Home Forward, Verde and Community Cycling Center – we’ve been making it easy for suma app users to get to their local farmers market and save money on market products.

Since our July 15 kickoff with St Johns Farmers Market and Home Forward’s New Columbia community, suma app users have saved hundreds of dollars on fresh fruits, vegetables, breads, and other farmers market products using their suma vouchers.

^shout out to FLI Social for the amazing fotos, you definitely want to hire them^

Here’s the deal: first-time buyers load $5 in their suma wallet and receive $24 in suma vouchers for use at the market, and returning buyers are matched 1:1 up to $30 in suma vouchers per market visit. We’ve been posting up at St Johns every Saturday and King every Sunday, and it’s been amazing to see suma users leaving these markets with bags and backpacks full of fresh goodness.

We want to continue stocking those refrigerators and pantries until the end of market season (last day for St Johns: October 28; last day for King: November 19), so please connect with us if you know of or are part of a partner community that could benefit from our summer special. We welcome your accommodation requests.

And while we have your attention, we want to make sure you know about a couple other summer suma happenings:

• ¡Help Guide City of Portland’s Surveillance Policy & Inventory (Spanish Survey, English Survey)! Over the last few months, suma has participated in a City of Portland Surveillance Steering Committee. This Committee has designed a survey to gather community priorities for the City of Portland’s upcoming surveillance technologies inventory. Community feedback informs what the City will prioritize in this inventory process, ultimately providing Portlanders with the data we need to understand whether City of Portland technology – purchased by community tax dollars – is working for us or against us. Please fill out the survey if you have a moment! The survey is in Spanish and in English, the deadline is September 15th.
• ¡Join us in welcoming Denilson Velasquez!, hired in July to serve as suma’s *first* Chief Technology Officer. Denilson has actually been working with us since 2022, beginning as an apprentice at suma partner Code the Dream, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that offers free intensive training in software development to people from diverse low-income backgrounds. Click here to learn more about Denilson and Code the Dream.