The Market - a Program of the Food Bank of Delaware

What do you get when you put an innovative food bank together with the need for less expensive foods in a low-income "food desert?"  The answer is The Market!

As Ed Matarese, contact person for The Market, (and Facilities and Fleet Director, and our host at the Food Bank of Delaware) explained, The Market was originally colocated with the food bank's Newark facility.  But in that location, it was not serving its intended population.  Therefore, The Market was moved to a low-income community in Wilmington, where it is housed in the Catholic Charities Thrift Shop.

The Market is open a few hours a day, Tuesday-Friday. Its small room (perhaps 15 x 15 ft) contains items such as spaghetti sauce, pasta, canned vegetables, diapers, and household cleaning supplies, as well as a few refrigerated and frozen items such as ground beef and turkey, bacon, eggs and milk.  All items are bought at wholesale rates through the food bank and are sold at wholesale cost plus 10-15% to cover transportation costs.  Shoppers may use cash or their SNAP electronic benefit cards for food items.

JoAnne Hawkins, the principal volunteer, runs the store, handles sales, and keeps everything neat and clean.  The day we volunteered there, she put us to work cleaning shelves and dusting.  JoAnne keeps track of stock and when her supplies get low, orders more. Although the number of customers is not high, many of those who use The Market depend on it, as getting to the nearest full grocery store is difficult.

As with many hunger-related programs, JoAnne gives much more than food.  She knows many of her customers by name, understands their individual situations, and has an easy chair next to the desk for them to use if they want to chat.  As she listens to their situations, she may refer them to other agencies such as Kingswood Community Center, across the street, where they might get help with outstanding bills and other needs.

Plans are underway to add a similar market to the Milford branch of the Food Bank of Delaware as it expands to meet the needs of the southern counties.

Food Bank of Delaware

Delaware may be a small state, but food insecurity looms large. Last year, about 242,000 people, 44% of them children, received food from the Food Bank of Delaware. That’s well over ¼ of the state’s population.

It takes energy and imagination to meet that level of need, and we found it when we visited the Food Bank of Delaware and met President and CEO Patricia Beebe and her energetic staff of 37.  They run many programs and have even more new program ideas in the works. While not all ideas succeed, Pat and her staff seem to keep working at them until any impediments are overcome and the programs can go forward.

For example, Pat described an idea to put a food closet (what Delawareans call their food pantries) into each of the 18 State Service Centers, the offices where people go when they need help and financial benefits such as WIC, Medicaid, and mental health services. Why make people go to yet another location when they need food?  Pat persisted for years until a new Secretary of Health and Human Services was interested in the idea. Pat agreed to raise the money, buy any needed equipment, and train the volunteers to do it all. What could they say? Now food closets are in operation at all but 3 of the State Service Centers. Since opening in April, they’ve distributed about $60,000 worth of food.  (read more)

In addition to the two programs we’ve chosen to highlight in later postings (The Market and Nutrition Education), here’s a sampling of other programs we saw at the Food Bank of Delaware:

• Distributing food to partner agencies. This is, of course, the main operational program of the food bank. Here, volunteers make it all happen. We met Volunteer Coordinator Jason Begany, who said that over 10,000 volunteers a year provide the equivalent labor of about 19 full-time staff members. He’s a master at motivating the volunteers, saying “This is your food bank” and incorporating their good ideas into making operations run more smoothly.
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  Children's Nutrition Programs. Up to 1,000 sandwiches a day are prepared by busy volunteers in the kitchen each morning and distributed to after-school programs and summer feeding programs.
• The Culinary School. This program consists of 10 weeks of in-house training in cooking skills and life skills, plus a 2-week paid internship. We were privileged to attend the graduation of the 25th class of 8, and to interview Executive Chef Tim Hunter. Tim came to the Food Bank of Delaware 1½ years ago to teach in the Culinary School; he described the amazing transformation that the culinary school has had on the lives of many of its graduates.
• Mobile food pantries.  A Food Bank truck delivers boxes of food to underserved areas.  Some mobile food pantry times and locations are scheduled ahead of time.  Others occur when there are perishable foods such as dairy products, fruits and vegetables, that need to quickly get to those who can use them; in these cases the truck might just arrive in a neighborhood and the food given to whoever comes.

And then, of course, there’s fund raising. We happened to be in Delaware at the time of this year’s “Blue Jean Ball” fund raiser, which had a 1960’s theme of “Love, Peace, End Hunger.” We helped decorate the warehouse on Friday and were graciously invited to join the fun on Saturday – and FUN it was. We sure hope lots of money was raised to support the vital programs of the Food Bank of Delaware.

Feeding America Works to End Hunger

Feeding America’s mission is to “feed America's hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger.” We’ve written about how the nationwide network operates. But what about “the fight to end hunger” in more systemic ways?

On Friday, September 24, we visited the Washington DC office of Feeding America. There we spoke with George Braley, Senior VP of Government Relations, and Lindsey Baker, Child Hunger Corps Coordinator.

 

George had a long career with the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, administering programs including SNAP, WIC, and Child Nutrition. He came to Feeding America because CEO Vicki Escarra wanted to increase the ability of Feeding America to influence federal legislation and to better assist eligible people in obtaining federal food benefits. “We see a lot of people who would qualify, but who don’t receive the benefits to which they are entitled,” he said. Nationally, only about 2/3 of those eligible actually receive SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps). Reasons include

• Difficult application processes
• Long waiting times due to states being overburdened with applications
• Limited trust by applicants in government workers or processes
• Applicants unaware that they (or some household members) qualify for benefits
• Sense that the benefit is too low to make the application process worth it
• Unwillingness of some people, particularly seniors, to take what they see as “welfare”
• Mistaken belief that if they take SNAP it will leave less for others

Food banks try to help qualified people receive SNAP benefits. But simple outreach is sometimes not appreciated by states whose resources to process applications are already strained. So some food banks (George mentioned Northern Nevada, Central Florida, and others) have offered to take over or assist states with the processing of applications for SNAP benefits. There are federal matching grants for states to use in improving their SNAP processes, and in some cases Feeding America has offered to provide the state match, just to help make the improvements actually happen.

Lindsey Baker told us about another area in which Feeding America food banks are increasing their efforts -- improving child nutrition. What do children from hungry households do for dinner, for weekends, for school vacations and summers, when they don’t have access to school lunch and school breakfast?

Feeding America's Child Hunger Corps is working on increasing the availability and nutritional content of food for kids after school hours. Through a partnership with ConAgra Foods, Child Hunger Corps members will work with specific food banks to identify gaps and either expand existing programs or establish new programs to fill those gaps. 

One example of a program that might benefit from expansion is the kids backpack program (giving hungry kids single servings of nutritious food to take home on the weekends). The child nutrition bill (if it passes) would provide some federal funding for backpack food, but currently food must be bought by private donors or through partnerships with corporations.

Finally, as we’ve found to be true of the other national organizations we’ve contacted, Feeding America increases its influence on governmental organizations by actively participating in coalitions with other hunger relief agencies (e.g., the Congressional Hunger Center).  Feeding America actively encourages its 1,000,000 volunteers and 80,000 Hunger Action Center members nationwide to convince friends, foundations, corporations, legislators, and government agencies to end the disgrace of hunger in America. YOU can be an advocate, too.

Child Nutrition Act???

The Child Nutrition Act is set to expire on September 30. That’s just a few days away. What will happen? Will Congress act to expand the school nutrition programs that are funded under this act, and thus help move toward President Obama’s goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015 and toward the First Lady’s goal of reducing childhood obesity?

The Senate has passed its version of the bill (S. 3307 - Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010). After talking with legislative aides for Senator Stabenow (MI), Representative Tsongas (MA), and Representative Upton (MI), here’s our understanding of what the House could do:

• The House could vote on the Senate bill as it stands. The Senate bill includes an increase in the reimbursement rate for school meals, allows schools nationwide to offer supper to children in after-school care, requires more nutritious meals, and makes it easier for children to qualify for free and reduced cost meals.
  
  However, many House members and hunger advocates dislike the Senate bill because it partially pays for the increased cost by taking money away from the SNAP program. SNAP is arguably the best program to end childhood hunger, so the Senate bill is seen by many as having the potential to actually make childhood hunger worse in the long run.
  
  Others defend the Senate bill, saying that the actual dollars removed from SNAP actually wouldn’t have taken effect until 2013. And since Congress is finding it so difficult to come up with funding for any programs, it’s better to use this SNAP money to feed hungry kids than for some other unrelated program.
   
• The House could vote on its own version of the bill (H.R. 5504 - Improving Nutrition for America's Children Act), which increases benefits more than the Senate version, and does not take benefits from the SNAP program to pay for any of the increase in benefits. However, if the House bill is passed, it would then need to go to a conference committee to iron out the differences in the House and Senate bills, and come up with a compromise funding mechanism for the bill. Whether this could be accomplished before the end of the legislative session is questionable.
   
• Congress could pass a one-year extension of the bill, which would delay any improvements in the current childhood hunger legislation and let the next Congress deal with improving the bill. This option has the risk that the next Congress will be even less willing to work toward ending childhood hunger than the current Senate bill. 

Given no perfect options, we believe (on purely practical grounds) that the House should pass the Senate bill, ideally with an agreement to restore SNAP funding in the future. We’re waiting with bated breath to see if they agree!

Maryland Meals for Achievement

How can you make a difference in children's learning? Feed them breakfast in the classroom at the start of the day!

This is what Maryland has found, in a program called Maryland Meals for Achievement (MMFA). Although many schools offer breakfast to students in the cafeteria before school, MMFA offers breakfast to every student, right in their classroom. No rushing off to the cafeteria at the start of the day.

MMFA cuts down on the number of tardy students, decreases suspensions, increases the number of students meeting their yearly progress goals, and increases test scores. The teachers find that, although it lengthens the school day slightly, it settles the class down and gets the day off to a good start. The teachers often use this time to speak with individual students about general topics, take attendance, etc. Most teachers wouldn’t want to give up MMFA now that they’ve experienced the difference it makes in their students.

To learn more about MMFA and see the program in action, we visited New Hampshire Estates Elementary School in Silver Spring, MD. This school houses Head Start, pre-Kindergarten and K-2nd grade. We met with Montgomery County Food Services Director Marla Caplon (seated on the right), as well as Bruce Schenkel (seated on the left), Brenda Schwaab (center), and Adrienne Burroughs (second from left) from the School and Community Nutrition Programs Branch of the Maryland State Department of Education, and Principal Marinda Evans (second from right). They are passionate advocates for MMFA.

The students arrived at 8:30, and instruction started at 8:50. During these initial 20 minutes, the students put away their backpacks and homework, washed their hands, and ate their breakfast.

Federal rules say that breakfast includes at least 3 of 4 offerings. The day we were there, the entrée was Bagelfuls (which counted as 2 offerings); beverages milk and orange juice were also offered.

Classroom teachers keep track of who receives breakfast and who doesn’t.  Each student takes a bar-coded card with their name on it, and puts it into the “yes” or “no” envelope to indicate whether they took breakfast or not. The cards are then swiped into the computer by cafeteria staff, because state and federal funding depend on accurate accounting of who receives breakfast.

MMFA has been growing in size and popularity since 1998 when it began as a pilot program in six schools. All those we interviewed would love to see MMFA expanded to cover all schools, but it does cost the state of Maryland money. Today, MMFA is only offered in schools in which more than 40% of the students qualify for free or reduced cost meals. The federal government buys breakfast for those students, and the state buys breakfast for the remaining students who eat breakfast. Today, state funding is only enough to support MMFA in 206 schools of the more than 700 that are eligible.

We left with Brenda’s words forming the theme of our visit: “Education is expensive. If a child is hungry, we’re wasting education dollars.”  We agree.

Research backs up the observations of the MMFA teachers. For example, see “Evaluation of the School Breakfast Program Pilot Project,” “Breakfast for Learning,” and “Classroom Breakfast Scores High in Maryland” for more information on the benefits of breakfast (and breakfast in the classroom).

Active Service and Prophetic Leadership

Churches have a vital role to play in ending hunger in America. In addition to our experiences in our home congregations, we sought insight by visiting Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington DC. Foundry is a large church (its congregation numbers around 1200) with a very strong commitment to mission programs. Part of Foundry’s "Statement of Call" includes these words: “We at Foundry are called by God to … transform the world through active service and prophetic leadership.” To find out more, we interviewed Jana Meyer, Minister of Missions at Foundry.

Jana comes to Foundry with extensive mission experience, including a childhood in Peru with parents in the Peace Corps, divinity school, work with homeless or abused women and men, and overseas mission work with a hospital in Mozambique. At Foundry, her role is to support the members of the congregation as they live out their calling to service and advocacy. About 350 members take an active part in mission work, from volunteering once for a few hours to serving 10 hours or more every week.

Foundry members serve in 20+ local mission programs. Focus areas come from the passions of those in the congregation and the needs present in the community. Perhaps the strongest focus area is homelessness. As Jana said, “There’s something about working in a church where people are sleeping on your steps at night…“ Foundry is part of WIN (Washington Interfaith Network), which is working hard to end homelessness in the city. They agree with the "Housing First" approach that housing is the need to address first when helping a person to self-sufficiency.

Foundry is also heavily involved with local hunger relief efforts. On the first and third Wednesdays of each month, they make approximately 1000 sandwiches to be distributed by Foundry’s Walk-In Mission and Day Labor Outreach mission, and by McKenna’s Wagon (part of Martha’s Table). They also cook meals every Saturday to help people living with HIV/AIDS, and they participate actively in other great DC programs such as SOME (So Others Might Eat) and Christ House.

We’re continually impressed at the hard work and giving spirit of people of faith who volunteer in so many ways to meet the immediate needs of those who are hungry. But, as Jana said, the economic situation is just doing terrible things to people. More and more people are hungry. Ultimately, people need jobs so they can buy food for themselves. Mobilizing the political will to correct this social injustice should be our focus.

How USDA Food and Nutrition Service Programs Feed the Hungry

Eliminating childhood hunger by 2015 was one of President Obama’s campaign promises, and the USDA Food and Nutrition Service is working toward that, and many other, goals. We talked to Steven Carlson and Duke Storen (right) of the Office of Strategic Initiatives, Partnerships and Outreach, about the programs addressing hunger administered by the USDA. They outlined three major groups of programs:

1. Benefits to individuals, such as SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) and WIC (Women, Infants and Children).
2. Benefits to organizations that supply prepared food to groups, such as school lunches and food in adult feeding programs, day-care programs, etc.
3. Commodity programs that buy large amounts of food and then provide it to other programs.

In all, there are 15 different programs, each with its own reasons for existence and its own target group.

SNAP is by far the largest food assistance program, with 41.2 million people receiving benefits (June 2010), an increase of 6.4 million in just the last year.  That's more than one out of every eight people.  According to Director Storen, SNAP benefits are the most effective economic stimulus there is. Unlike tax breaks or high-income benefits, 99% of the SNAP dollars are spent within 30 days, and every $5 in SNAP benefits generates up to $9.20 in economic activity.

Yet, only 2/3 of those eligible for SNAP benefits are actually receiving benefits. The federal government pays half the states’ costs to administer the program. But just as the economy has increased the need, state budget cuts make it harder to process the increased number of eligible residents. The Food and Nitrition Service is working hard to improve participation by partnering with various non-profit organizations (e.g. food banks, Catholic Charities, Salvation Army), and government organizations (e.g. VISTA, Senior Volunteer Corps) to help with outreach and filling out enrollment forms. They also give states with low enrollment rates grants to improve their systems.

There are still large holes in the system. Besides the 1/3 of eligible residents that qualify for SNAP and don’t get them, many who get SNAP benefits are still hungry. SNAP doesn’t cover the cost of all the food a family needs, even with the 13.6% increase included in the recovery bill. Less than 20% of students who get free or reduced cost meals at school get food through the summer feeding programs, so something different needs to be available during the summer. Children are hungry over the weekends. Some children get food through a “weekend backpack” program (not funded through USDA, but through private charities). During school breaks, there’s no provision for feeding children.

The Food and Nutrition Service would love to fill these holes, but they can only do what Congress authorizes.