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Talk6 min

Your zip code shouldn’t determine your lifespan

Dion Dawson · TED

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About

What if ending food insecurity meant ditching charity models that haven’t been updated since the 1960s? Dion Dawson, TED Fellow and founder of Dion’s Chicago Dream, shares how he turned a spontaneous idea for giving back to his community into a thriving social enterprise, delivering top-quality produce to thousands of Chicago households every week and reaching a million dollars in revenue in just 18 months. He’s proving that it’s possible to replace the outdated food pantry model with a data-driven system that delivers high-quality food — so your zip code doesn’t decide how long you live.

The talk

  1. Your zip code shouldn’t determine your lifespan 6 min · TED's player

Credits and licence

Institution
TED
Department
TED Fellows Films 2025
Speaker
Dion Dawson
Year
2025
Level
For everyone
Language
English
Subjects
Medicine and health, Earth and environment, Business and management
Source
TED
Licence
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, as TED states it. Non-commercial use only, and no changed versions. TED's terms
Attribution
TED Talks are licensed by TED under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International and are shown here in TED's own player, as TED's usage policy asks.
Who can watch
TED gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from what the source says about it. How courses are placed