Stories from the National Hunger Hotline: Finding Summer Meals for Students
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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.
Stephanie called the Hotline to get a list of Summer Meal Sites in her area. She is the Principal of an elementary school in Maryland who was worried about her students. The county in which she works has a large low income community. Stephanie knew that many of her students will go without food during the summer, since school lunches are the only meals they regularly eat. Many educators, like Stephanie, call the Hotline to obtain information so they can prepare their children for the summer.
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 espaņol. The Hotline is funded in part by the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.
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Take Action! Farm Bill on the Move
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The Food and Farm Bill is a massive piece of legislation that shapes just about everything about how we eat, from farm to plate. It includes funding for SNAP (formerly food stamps), support for farmers, provisions for conservation and much more. Usually, the bill is rewritten every five years, but Washington hasn't done anything in the usual way lately. A new Food and Farm Bill was expected to be passed in 2012, but instead Congress passed a one-year extension to the 2008 bill-an extension which cut many programs supporting local and regional food systems. After many months of uncertainty about when movement might start on a new five-year bill, we have an answer: Now!
Read more on WhyHunger's Connect blog.
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USDA Announces Results in Ongoing Effort to Improve SNAP Integrity: New Procedures Help States Identify SNAP Fraud through Social Media
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USDA Under Secretary Kevin Concannon today announced the department is making significant progress towards achieving greater integrity in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In efforts to identify and reduce fraud, USDA took the following actions through the second quarter fiscal year 2013:
- Imposed sanctions, through fines or temporary disqualifications, on 336 stores found violating program rules; and
- Disqualified permanently 536 stores for trafficking SNAP benefits (i.e. illegally exchanging SNAP benefits for cash) or falsifying an application.
"USDA continues to take an aggressive stance on fraud to preserve the integrity of the nation's largest nutrition safety net," said Concannon, Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services. "We have realigned our retailer operations function to further our national compliance efforts, and are working more closely with our state partners to hold bad actors accountable and fight fraudulent activity whenever and wherever it takes place."
USDA's Food and Nutrition Service is also working with states to strengthen their ability to monitor social media web sites for attempts by individuals to buy or sell SNAP benefits online. USDA is providing information to state investigators on how to use free publically available tools to search for posts attempting to buy or sell SNAP benefits. By using such tools, states will be alerted via e-mail of potentially illegal activities so that they may be further investigated and appropriate actions taken.
To read the rest of the press release, click here.
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Closing the Hunger Gap: Cultivating Food Security
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Join with other anti-hunger advocates, key allies, and food banks from across the country to engage in meaningful dialogue around our role in achieving resilient community food systems.
Food banks and hunger relief organizations are feeling the tangible strain on resources as they work harder to meet the growing demand, using the same day-by-day strategies that have been used for decades. And yet, food banks are uniquely positioned to be hubs of resilient community food systems that provide long-term access to healthy food for all people. Some food banks are already emerging as leaders in the national movement to address the root causes of hunger and malnutrition, and have expanded their scope to include activities like nutrition education, community organizing, policy advocacy, economic development, and supporting local food production. Momentum is building in the hunger relief sector to move towards these new strategies as part of a strategic shift in how food banks serve their communities.  For these reasons, the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona is hosting a conference to bring together food banks and hunger relief organizations from around the country to engage in meaningful dialogue around our role in achieving resilient food systems, share practical strategies, build a collective vision, and move towards a unified agenda in closing the hunger gap in America. This event takes place September 18th-20th in Tucson, Arizona. Early bird registration is available through July 17th and regular registration closes August 18th. Click here for more information and to register. |
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Mississippi Delta School Gardens
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 The Mound Bayou school district is participating in the first Delta Farm to School project with the support of the Delta Fresh Foods Initiative. This summer, DFFI will partner with Teach for America interns and Delta teachers to develop the first comprehensive Mississippi-focused school garden curriculum, and align it with the new statewide core curriculum guidelines. By the time the school bell rings next fall, Delta students will be growing fresh fruits and vegetables for their school cafeteria and learning critical math, history, reading and life skills each step of the way!
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USDA Summer Food Service Program
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The Summer Food Service Program website offers comprehensive information to help communities feed kids during the summer months, including nearly two dozen training videos for summer feeding sites and sponsors.
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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Freedom 90: Fifty Ways to Close the Food Bank
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Freedom 90 is a union of food bank and emergency meal program volunteers based in Ontario, Canada. Its members write: Volunteers at food banks and emergency meal programs have earned the right to speak out about poverty in our communities. Freedom 90 Union members are a new and powerful voice for change. We are forming the Freedom 90 Union because we want to retire from volunteering at food banks or emergency meal programs-before we are 90 years old!
Though their theme song, Fifty Ways to Close the Food Bank, is a tongue-in-cheek parody of Paul Simon's 1975 hit - it drives home the serious point that their goal is not to continue increasing the number of people they reach or the amount of food they distribute, but to advocate for an end to poverty.  | | Fifty Ways to Close the Food Bank: A Community Video Project in Sudbury, Ontario |
These are Freedom 90's demands: - Lay us off! The Government of Ontario must ensure that social assistance and minimum wage levels are sufficient for everyone to have adequate housing and to buy their own food.
- Mandatory retirement by the age of 90! Many of us have been volunteering for twenty years and there is no end in sight. The Freedom 90 Union demands the Government of Ontario take urgent action to end poverty and make food banks and emergency meal programs unnecessary.
- Freeze our wages! Or double them! It doesn't matter because we are unpaid volunteers.
Check out their website to read their charter and FAQ, sign up for their newsletter and more.
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Client Data Management Software
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National Hunger Clearinghouse staff visited the Interfaith Pantry of the Oranges (IFPO) in Orange, New Jersey last week. This volunteer-run pantry has found a great, low-cost solution to help register their pantry clients. BENTO is a Mac-compatible, customizable database software with multiple templates that can be used to organize contacts, track projects, and manage lists. For IFPO, BENTO was an easy and inexpensive way for them to capture the number of clients coming to the pantry each week, compile yearly statistics, and keep track of their food inventory. Click here for more information on BENTO.
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Bridges Out of Poverty
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The California Association of Food Banks conference, Ending Hunger in California: Many Voices, One Vision, took place in Sacramento last month and featured a keynote and workshops about the Bridges Out of Poverty training. Bridges is a framework for understanding socioeconomic differences, the underlying codes and rules of each, and how to understand these as a way to further dialogue and, ultimately, to create policy changes. Many food bank volunteers and staff find this training to be thought-provoking and useful for their work, as it helps them to recognize and correct assumptions. Click here for more information on Bridges Out of Poverty. Materials and slides from the 2013 CAFB conference are also now available for download here.
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Food Sovereignty Prize Call for Nominations
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The US Food Sovereignty Alliance (USFSA), of which WhyHunger is a founding member, is proud to announce that it is accepting nominations for the 2013 Food Sovereignty Prize. Food sovereignty is the "right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems." Nominations are due by May 20th; click here to learn more.
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USDA Seeks Applications for Grants to Provide Technical Assistance to Help Rural Businesses Grow
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Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that USDA is seeking applications from qualified organizations to provide technical assistance to rural businesses to help them expand and create jobs. "These grants will help businesses get access to planning, mentoring and other services that can help ensure their success," Vilsack said. "This assistance will provide development and managerial services that often are not readily available to businesses in rural areas, part of the Obama Administration's effort to accelerate the resurgence of manufacturing and create jobs across the country." The application deadlines for Rural Business Opportunity Grants are June 30th for partnership funds and June 28th for all other requests. Click here to learn more.
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Robert Wood Johnson Foundation E-Newsletters, News Digests and Funding Alerts
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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the nation's largest philanthropy devoted solely to the public's health, generating grants approaching $400 million a year. RWJF focuses its efforts in areas such as childhood obesity, equality in healthcare, and the intersection of health and social factors like housing, poverty and inadequate education particularly as they affect society's most vulnerable people: low-income children and their families, frail older adults, adults with disabilities, the homeless, those with HIV/AIDS, and those with severe mental illness. MyRWJF is the portal for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. By registering and setting up a profile you will be able to:
- Sign up for free e-newsletters, news digests on topics such as childhood obesity, public health or vulnerable populations and funding alerts in specific program areas.
- Review active calls for proposals, recent news releases and publications.
- Apply for funding in program areas promoting a current call for proposals.
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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, Siena Chrisman, Jessica Powers, Patricia Rojas, India Rogers, and Brooke Smith. |
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