Stories from the National Hunger Hotline:
A Place at the Table
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The National Hunger Hotline (NHH), a service of WhyHunger's National Hunger Clearinghouse, provides real-time referrals for people in need across the US to emergency food and assistance programs. The NHH is a portal to information, assistance, and resources, ultimately empowering families and individuals to meet their vital needs including fresh, healthy food. In Stories from the Hotline, we share some of the experiences of callers and our efforts to support them.
The National Hunger Hotline 1-866-3 HUNGRY and 1-877-8 HAMBRE (1-866-348-6479 and 1-877-842-6273) refers people in need of emergency food assistance to food pantries, government programs, and model grassroots organizations that work to improve access to healthy, nutritious food, and build self-reliance. Help is available on Monday through Friday from 9am-6pm EST. Hablamos español. The Hotline is funded in part by the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.
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Addressing the Root Causes of Hunger
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Earlier this month, WhyHunger attended the Anti-Hunger Policy Conference and presented at the Hunger Free Communities Summit in Washington, DC. A common theme through many of the speeches, workshops and panels was the importance of acknowledging the root causes of hunger, such as economic and racial injustice.
To address hunger, many emergency food providers and anti-hunger organizations have become more engaged in advocacy efforts. Some are even providing voter registration opportunities to their guests.
There are currently opportunities to advocate for causes that have the potential to decrease hunger:
- An increase in the minimum wage, which, if increased to $10.10 per hour, would provide 30 million workers and their 17 million children with a raise, and
Other presenters spoke about the connection between race, hunger and negative health outcomes. For more information, check out the Race in the Food System topic in WhyHunger's Food Security Learning Center and recent posts on the Connect Blog that discuss economic inequality and what youth in Oakland, CA are doing to address community health and food disparities.
Pdf files of workshop presentations from the Anti-Hunger Policy Conference are also now available here.
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Fighting Hunger in the Capital
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Washington DC is our nation's capital and according to the US Census Bureau, the city with the third highest poverty rate in the nation. On our recent trip to DC, the NHC staff had the opportunity to visit two organizations that work hard to help support some of the 110,000 residents of the nation's capital who struggle with hunger and poverty.
DC Central Kitchen
Our first stop was at DC Central Kitchen, an organization that, in their own words, "uses food as a tool to strengthen community." DC Central Kitchen works to address hunger and poverty from all angles. They salvage leftover food from restaurants and local farms and cook and serve fresh, healthy meals to transitional houses, homeless shelters, halfway houses, drug rehabilitation programs, schools and after school programs around The District. They give people job training through the 14-week Kitchen Culinary Job Training program, which prepares unemployed, underemployed, previously incarcerated persons and homeless adults for careers in the food service industry. They offer a place for students to volunteer and they address the root cause of hunger- poverty- by training people in job skills to make a livelihood. They are working to improve healthy food access in low-income neighborhoods in partnership with local neighborhood corner stores. They educate children about the food they eat. They offer food and referral services to people who are homeless. You name it, they do it.
What is as remarkable as the work they do, is the space in which they do it. We were taken on a tour of the kitchen by Carolyn Parham, the volunteer coordinator who has been supplying the kitchen with a steady stream of volunteers for 11 years. Carolyn is also a graduate of the Culinary Job Training program. Their industrial kitchen is surprisingly small for one that churns out 5000 meals a day. On this day, it was packed with 35 volunteers (mostly students on spring break) and 10 kitchen staff, all of whom are graduates of their culinary training program. Even their office space is compact, with four to five staff sharing an office adjacent to the student computer room, which itself was quickly put up for the culinary students to learn computer literacy and to job search.
For Carolyn, there is always room for more, "someone needs to contribute to opening up another DC Central Kitchen or maybe we can shorten the [Culinary Job] program to 7 weeks so we can have more people trained and go through the program and help people get out of the situation they are in."
Capital Area Food Bank
Our second stop was at Capital Area Food Bank and when you step inside their building, what is striking is that the open layout mirrors the openness the Food Bank wants to convey to its partner agencies. In this new LEED certified facility, the Food Bank hopes to be an open and welcoming resource for its partner agencies to develop their capacity in a more comprehensive way: "we've always worked in the community but now we have more space on site to be more educational." Even the Food Bank break room and kitchen rests between the office spaces and warehouse, so staff from different departments interact more.
The building also houses their gorgeous new demo kitchen and classroom instruction space. Fitted with new appliances and beautiful décor, partner agencies come here to take two different categories of classes: A3 classes and Top Shelf classes. Their A3 (agency achievement academy) classes offer a myriad of 101 level, one time classes on topics like gardening, recipe testing or grant writing. Top Shelf classes are a sequential series of workshops where agencies delve into more complex topics that help them improve their operations and serve more clients.
What is also striking is that in every area of the Food Bank there is an opportunity for volunteers from partner agencies to learn. If you are coming to the warehouse to pick up your food order, you can come to the volunteer welcome center fitted with comfortable couches and coffee machines where you can pick up recipes, learn about upcoming classes, use a computer or watch one of their weekly cooking demos. In their warehouse, there is a shopping area where volunteers can pick up smaller orders right off the shelves. This room will eventually become a model pantry based on client choice where agencies can learn how to set up in their own pantry. Still to come is a demonstration garden where volunteers can develop skills around growing food.
Capital Area Food Bank is always thinking about how they can best serve their clients. Jody Tick, Senior Director of Programs states, "We are always thinking about how we can be a resource for our partners to come in and use this space. What information is going to best help them help their clients because they are the closest to their community."
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USDA Summer Food Service Program
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During the school year, many children receive free and reduced-price breakfast and lunch through the School Breakfast and National School Lunch Programs. What happens when school lets out?
Hunger is one of the most severe roadblocks to the learning process. Lack of nutrition during the summer months may set up a cycle for poor performance once school begins again. Hunger also may make children more prone to illness and other health issues. The Summer Food Service Program is designed to fill that nutrition gap and make sure children can get the nutritious meals they need. To learn more, check out USDA's free webinars offered in English and Spanish here.
WhyHunger partners with the USDA to ensure that more children and their families have access to free, nutritious food during the summer months by registering and promoting the Summer Food Service Program through an online database and the National Hunger Hotline 1-866-3 HUNGRY (1-866-348-6479). Once a site is registered, it's accessible to the thousands of Hotline callers and online visitors looking to find summer meals for their children.
Registering your summer feeding site is easy!
- If you are a sponsor organization with multiple OPEN feeding sites, please fill out the Excel file located on the Summer Food Service Program website and then email the file to NHC@whyhunger.org. We will upload your list to the database, so you don't have to enter each site manually. Please make sure you include the name of the feeding site, address (especially the zip code) and a contact phone number in each entry.
If you have questions about the Hotline or need help registering, please email NHC@whyhunger.org or call us at 1-866-3-HUNGRY (1-866-348-6479).
Help spread the word! We have promotional materials for the Hotline, including posters and web banners available here.
Thank you for the work that you do each summer to feed hungry children! Together we can increase participation in this vital program.
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Resources for Faith Communities
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Last weekend, WhyHunger attended the Food & Farm Justice Consultation: Strengthening Alliances to Help Build the Movement. Leaders from over three dozen food, farm and faith organizations convened at Pendle Hill outside of Philadelphia to discuss the connections between faith communities and the movement for food sovereignty, which is the right of peoples, communities and countries to define their own policies regarding their seeds, agriculture, labor, food and land. Several of the groups at the Food & Farm Justice Consultation provide resources for faith communities that work on food and hunger issues. Here are two guides that may be of interest: The Come to the Table: How People of Faith Can Relieve Hunger and Sustain Local Farms in North Carolina is a 40-page downloadable publication that includes an overview of the theology and issues surrounding farming and food security in North Carolina, perspectives from faith leaders, easy tools for identifying the needs and resources in your community, example projects for congregations to relieve hunger and support local food production, and a resource list. Come to the Table is a project of the Rural Life Committee of the North Carolina Council of Churches and The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI-USA) that works with people of faith to relieve hunger and sustain local agriculture. Food Sovereignty for All: Overhauling the Food System with Faith-Based Initiatives is a 25-page handbook that outlines how to start and maintain community gardens, community kitchens, buying clubs, farm stands and other projects harnessing faith community resources. It offers tips for project success and effective collaboration with low-income populations. It is a project of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon and has been adapted with permission by the Presbyterian Hunger Program.
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The First Ever Farm to School Census
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In 2010, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHFKA) formally established the Farm to School Program within USDA in order to assist eligible entities, through grants and technical assistance, in implementing farm to school initiatives that improve access to local foods in eligible schools.
In order to establish realistic goals with regard to "increasing the availability of local foods in eligible schools," in March 2013 USDA will conduct a first of its kind nationwide census, surveying over 13,000 school districts to determine how many schools currently purchase local foods. The Farm to School Census will prioritize gathering procurement data related to local sourcing, with documentation of additional farm to school activities (e.g. the prevalence of school gardens, promotional activities, and curriculum integration, etc.) as a secondary objective. Procurement data will include the types and frequency of local products purchased, the percentage of overall food budget spent on local foods, and the degree to which local purchasing is expected to increase, stay the same, or decrease.
How will the data be used?
Data from the Farm to School Census will be used by USDA's Farm to School Program to develop a baseline assessment of the prevalence, geographic distribution, and characteristics of farm to school programs in order to set priorities for USDA outreach and technical support. Three data products are planned for this purpose:
- A web-based map of all responding school districts will demonstrate areas accessing locally produced foods through the school meal programs, which will be categorized by percent of total school food expenditures that are sourced locally;
- Estimates of state-level prevalence of purchasing locally produced foods for school meal programs; and
- Estimates of state-level profiles of local purchasing programs, i.e., the proportion of districts operating a given method of purchasing local products and operating various farm to school efforts.
How will the data be collected?
The Farm to School Census is being conducted via SurveyMonkey. For a link to the survey, please contact the Farm to School Census Help Line at (888) 633-8345 or email farmtoschool@mathematica-mpr.com. Click here for more information.
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CONNECT WITH US
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The Clearinghouse newsletter is meant, among other things, to encourage conversation and dialogue about transforming communities, community food security and the emergency food system. We see critical thinking, lively debate and reflective practice as a necessary part of systems change. We want to hear from you! Email us at nhc@whyhunger.org. Contributors: Suzanne Babb, Christine Binder, Francesca Hyatt (Come to the Table), Andrew Kang Bartlett (Presbyterian Hunger Program) and Jessica Powers. |
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