Our Story
We are Aiyo and Nakeshia Jones. We met online, married a year later, and have three children (we don't have a photo with all five of us yet). That's our short intro.
I, Aiyo, am the one writing the contents on this website. I'm a health coach at NutritionFit NC. My wife does all the behind-the-scene stuff, including outreach and fundraising. She's also a hardcore food prepper and a kitchen gadget enthusiast. We have lots of kitchen gadgets at home and every one of them is being used.
My daughter, Jolayna (Jo-LAY-nah), is an aspiring artist and author. My son Houston is an aspiring composer who makes his own electronic dance music (EDM). And my newborn Dean is -- well -- he's still learning how to work his arms and legs.
This mission was started when I lost my job back in 2009.
I was an intermediate emergency medical technician (EMT-I) for a local EMS agency. I planned on staying in EMS for a very long time, hoping to move my way to paramedic level and teach in community colleges. But on August 7th, 2009, I was literally halfway to work when I get a call from the shift supervisor that I wasn't allowed to work until further notice. On the next day, I get a termination letter. To this day, I'm not sure why they canned me.
So comes the financial stress and the uncertainty of life.
Money was so tight that we only put in a few bucks of gas in the car, hoping that it would get us through a couple of days. My wife went back to work as a dental assistant while I stood home taking care of two young children. Sometimes, money was good, but many times, money was tight.
Paying rent was a struggle and we often times had to ask for financial assistance.
One of the first things to go after I lost my job was my gym membership. Unfortunately, when money is tight, our health is usually among the first things we sacrifice. We eliminate gym memberships and stop buying healthy food, especially fruits and vegetables, because they were expensive.
So, we know how hard it could be to be healthy when you have little to no income.
This was "ground zero" of our mission: understanding what it's like to struggle and knowing how hard it is to afford healthy food when money is tight.
While working in EMS, I took classes to become a certified personal trainer. After losing the EMS job, I put that training to use by training individuals in person and online. This led me to getting another gym membership, which led me to training as a group fitness instructor, which led to teaching group fitness classes at the gym.
Finally, in 2012, I became a licensed ZUMBA fitness instructor and attempted to teach classes at my church for $5 a person.
But, I consulted with my wife about offering these classes on a donation-only basis.
Why donation only? The idea was that instead of having a fixed price that could eventually discourage people from attending (5 bucks a class adds up really quick!), we wanted people to decide how much they wanted to give. And if people didn't want to give anything, that was okay.
This payment method actually worked out and the amount we got from people helped pay some bills.
I offered ZUMBA classes twice a week at my church, the Brooks Avenue Church of Christ on 700 Brooks Avenue in Raleigh, NC. I eventually started offering strength-training classes twice a week, again on a donation-only basis. Finally, I moved into offering an accountability fitness program -- again, at no cost.
During this whole time, I dreamed of giving out free fruits and vegetables to my participants.
Little by little, some class participants donated a few items to give to the class. But this didn't happen all the time -- until I landed a food delivery gig with a food company. From then on, I started bringing free produce to class participants more often, because that company often had excess produce that they had to discard.
Then in 2020, a very historic year for many, I started bringing so much produce to the class that people went home with bags and bags of produce.
We offered so much produce that we started reaching out to other families, to those who weren't class participants. Then my wife and I decided that we had something special going on and thought to do this mission on a full time basis. We even purchased a truck so that we could haul more food.
We call ourselves NutritionFit NC, a name we registered years ago, but never really used until now. This name shows three things: 1) we're about nutrition, 2) we're about fitness, and 3) we're located in North Carolina. Most of all, we're about offering our services FREE OF CHARGE to our community so living healthy could be easy and cheap for everyone that we serve.
You do not have to be "poor" to benefit from our services. You simply need to have the desire to live healthy. But, if you are financially blessed, we do ask that you heartfully consider donating to our cause.
Since we are NOT a nonprofit, we do not get any funding from big corporations. We are 100-percent funded by ordinary people, some of which do benefit from our services. Every donation count and we notice donations from every single person. This means that your donations do matter to us.
Thank you for visiting us! Keep browsing!
I, Aiyo, am the one writing the contents on this website. I'm a health coach at NutritionFit NC. My wife does all the behind-the-scene stuff, including outreach and fundraising. She's also a hardcore food prepper and a kitchen gadget enthusiast. We have lots of kitchen gadgets at home and every one of them is being used.
My daughter, Jolayna (Jo-LAY-nah), is an aspiring artist and author. My son Houston is an aspiring composer who makes his own electronic dance music (EDM). And my newborn Dean is -- well -- he's still learning how to work his arms and legs.
This mission was started when I lost my job back in 2009.
I was an intermediate emergency medical technician (EMT-I) for a local EMS agency. I planned on staying in EMS for a very long time, hoping to move my way to paramedic level and teach in community colleges. But on August 7th, 2009, I was literally halfway to work when I get a call from the shift supervisor that I wasn't allowed to work until further notice. On the next day, I get a termination letter. To this day, I'm not sure why they canned me.
So comes the financial stress and the uncertainty of life.
Money was so tight that we only put in a few bucks of gas in the car, hoping that it would get us through a couple of days. My wife went back to work as a dental assistant while I stood home taking care of two young children. Sometimes, money was good, but many times, money was tight.
Paying rent was a struggle and we often times had to ask for financial assistance.
One of the first things to go after I lost my job was my gym membership. Unfortunately, when money is tight, our health is usually among the first things we sacrifice. We eliminate gym memberships and stop buying healthy food, especially fruits and vegetables, because they were expensive.
So, we know how hard it could be to be healthy when you have little to no income.
This was "ground zero" of our mission: understanding what it's like to struggle and knowing how hard it is to afford healthy food when money is tight.
While working in EMS, I took classes to become a certified personal trainer. After losing the EMS job, I put that training to use by training individuals in person and online. This led me to getting another gym membership, which led me to training as a group fitness instructor, which led to teaching group fitness classes at the gym.
Finally, in 2012, I became a licensed ZUMBA fitness instructor and attempted to teach classes at my church for $5 a person.
But, I consulted with my wife about offering these classes on a donation-only basis.
Why donation only? The idea was that instead of having a fixed price that could eventually discourage people from attending (5 bucks a class adds up really quick!), we wanted people to decide how much they wanted to give. And if people didn't want to give anything, that was okay.
This payment method actually worked out and the amount we got from people helped pay some bills.
I offered ZUMBA classes twice a week at my church, the Brooks Avenue Church of Christ on 700 Brooks Avenue in Raleigh, NC. I eventually started offering strength-training classes twice a week, again on a donation-only basis. Finally, I moved into offering an accountability fitness program -- again, at no cost.
During this whole time, I dreamed of giving out free fruits and vegetables to my participants.
Little by little, some class participants donated a few items to give to the class. But this didn't happen all the time -- until I landed a food delivery gig with a food company. From then on, I started bringing free produce to class participants more often, because that company often had excess produce that they had to discard.
Then in 2020, a very historic year for many, I started bringing so much produce to the class that people went home with bags and bags of produce.
We offered so much produce that we started reaching out to other families, to those who weren't class participants. Then my wife and I decided that we had something special going on and thought to do this mission on a full time basis. We even purchased a truck so that we could haul more food.
We call ourselves NutritionFit NC, a name we registered years ago, but never really used until now. This name shows three things: 1) we're about nutrition, 2) we're about fitness, and 3) we're located in North Carolina. Most of all, we're about offering our services FREE OF CHARGE to our community so living healthy could be easy and cheap for everyone that we serve.
You do not have to be "poor" to benefit from our services. You simply need to have the desire to live healthy. But, if you are financially blessed, we do ask that you heartfully consider donating to our cause.
Since we are NOT a nonprofit, we do not get any funding from big corporations. We are 100-percent funded by ordinary people, some of which do benefit from our services. Every donation count and we notice donations from every single person. This means that your donations do matter to us.
Thank you for visiting us! Keep browsing!