Month: October 2024

How We Talk About Hunger Matters

At one of my past food pantries, I worked with a collection of predominantly older, wealthy, white volunteers without lived experience of hunger. They were interested in addressing hunger, as demonstrated by serving at the pantry, but many entered our organization centering fault and responsibility for hunger on the individuals experiencing it.

Working in this job gave me valuable experience learning how to teach these volunteers to reevaluate their assumptions, but also showed me the importance of developing a framework to facilitate this growth. Few people change their mind after a few conversations, but can slowly internalize and adopt ideas they are consistently exposed to.

By repeatedly emphasizing important concepts of fighting hunger, I found I can incrementally change their interpretation of food insecurity.

The more I do this work, the more I recognize the value of being thoughtful in how we frame hunger. How we think about it directly impacts the decisions we make when choosing how to address it, and if we are tactical, we can amplify our impacts through the words we use to discuss it.

Concepts to embrace:

  • We never know the whole story, and it’s never our business. It’s important to start having these conversations before a situation occurs where volunteers need to be redirected. I want my volunteers to react with empathy rather than judgement for every person who walked up to our door, and that means spending a lot of time brainstorming all the possibilities and challenges that can force someone into food insecurity. (Situations such as someone driving up in a nice car or carrying expensive belongings often prompt the need for this conversation.) It’s also a good opportunity to discuss the situations that force people into food insecurity, rather than their choices.
  • The resources offered by food pantries/ banks/ emergency assistance programs are ALWAYS inadequate. I regularly remind our volunteers of all the essentials we don’t have, which encourages them to treat our shoppers more empathetically. This helps our volunteers respond with greater compassion when working with someone dealing with panic, trauma, or fear whose needs can’t be met by the organization. It also produces an extra sense of accomplishment and pride when we are able to provide more of the support that someone needs.
  • Everyone deserves to eat. It’s a simple concept, but one that needs to be continuously reinforced by fighting cultural assumptions that food must be earned. People without jobs deserve to eat. People dealing with addiction deserve to eat. People with criminal records deserve to eat. My volunteers and I, and indeed, any food pantry or food bank staff, have no right to make judgements otherwise. Exploring the qualifiers we carry in our own minds can help volunteers reassess this value.

Fundamentally, we need food to live, and basing our work in this idea makes it harder to oppose.

Concepts to avoid:

  • Anything relating hunger to food shortages. Hunger is not a food shortage problem. Even in famine-stricken areas, the wealthy still eat. In my food pantries, I make sure to regularly have conversations about the barriers to getting food to the people who need it, including the inefficiencies and indignities of food banking itself. This helps center the conversation around poverty and oppression rather than bad luck or personal responsibility.
  • Treating hunger as an individual choice. No one makes bad decisions that leads them to food insecurity. People often make decisions different from how I would make them, but that is based on our different backgrounds, circumstances, and understanding of the world around us.

We all have to make tradeoffs, and it’s important we not penalize people for making the best choice they can.

Everyone is looking for a way to make enough money to thrive, and everyone has different tools helping or hindering them from doing so. Consistently talking about hunger as a systemic problem helps redirect our societal tendencies to treat hunger as a personal failure.

  • Relating poverty and work ethic or effort. Our society embraces the idea that hard work begets success, which allows us to pat ourselves on the back while ignoring the struggles of people we don’t think are working hard enough. This attitude justifies choosing not to support others with the idea that they need to “earn” their basic needs. The reality is, most people experiencing hunger and poverty have very few opportunities to work harder or earn more money. As long as wages fail to match up with costs of living, discrimination continues, and inequality persists, all the hard work in the world will have little opportunity to lift people up.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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Healthy Foods Aren’t Always Fresh: Improving Access

I recently found myself wrestling with the use of the words “healthy” versus “fresh.” In the food access (and wellness) fields, we often use these terms interchangeably when talking about diet, but my ruminations made me consider how it might not always be the best practice in the context of food justice.

Fresh foods are those that have undergone minimal processing, and usually need to be consumed shortly after harvest or collection. Fresh foods are generally considered healthy because they are generally whole foods without any of the additives that define our industrial food supply. They offer the simplest opportunity to consume our daily nutrients.

While most fresh foods are healthy, not all healthy foods are fresh. When it comes to fighting hunger and building food access, this is an important distinction.

Fresh foods can be hard to access. The weather in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, has quickly transitioned to fall, which means my garden is rapidly declining in productivity and many farmers’ markets are soon closing for the winter. Fresh foods will become harder to access as the season progresses, and the options at the grocery store will have to travel greater distances with variable quality.

When we place an emphasis on healthy foods being exclusively fresh, we add extra barriers for individuals who may not be able to access this option. At every food pantry I’ve ever worked at, I’ve encountered shoppers who were apologetic about their “bad diet” because they didn’t have a refrigerator or cooking capacity to choose fresh foods, regardless of what else they were eating.

Consistently accessing fresh foods requires easy access because it has a limited shelf-life. Food pantry clients often limit their shopping excursions to once or twice per month to minimize time and transportation costs, which means they only eat fresh food for a couple days after each trip.

Fresh foods also often require refrigeration and extra preparation to use, which can be beyond the capacity for someone with limited storage, inadequate tools, no time, or physical limitations. When we insist that eating fresh food is the only way to eat healthy, we mislead too many of our neighbors into believing that they are eating wrong.

When we teach people that their only options are inadequate, we foster discouragement and defeat. Food shaming never improves outcomes.

It is entirely possible to eat healthy without fresh foods. In many scenarios, preserved options are more nutrient dense because they were harvested and preserved at the peak of ripeness.

How can we foster access to healthy foods without focusing on fresh?

  • Many pantries have started to implement systems for helping clients recognize healthier options, like the Supporting Wellness At Pantries (SWAP) system. It’s a simple and efficient way to uplift the nutritional qualities of shelf-stable goods common to pantries. This helps highlight the value of preserved options without comparing them to fresh foods.
  • Start these conversations with staff and volunteers to ensure they’re familiar with barriers to fresh food and the value of preserved options. Our world is very eager to find a magic bullet for health, and it’s important that volunteers don’t reinforce this idea in the pantry. Presenting a challenge to develop healthy choices from the shelf-stable section can be a great learning experience for volunteers, and help them think about the nuances of food insecurity a little more.
  • Embrace frozen foods. It was revolutionary when one of my previous pantries recognized the potential of frozen options. Our supply constantly changed, but having a spot to consistently offer frozen vegetables and a mix of other options was an efficient option for clients to load up. While this does demand an extra piece of equipment, there are many organizations (and even food banks) that offer funding and grants for the purchase of freezers and other tools to facilitate frozen distribution.
  • Focus less on individual healthy or unhealthy foods, and more on the meals they can create. Healthy food is more than the sum of its nutrients, and we do our communities a disserve when we adopt a black/white perspective. Health comes from the security of knowing where your next meal is coming from, from the joy of connecting with your community, and the confidence of nourishing your body with what it needs.
  • It is important to recognize we should continue increasing access to fresh foods. One option is for pantries to remove their limits on how often clients can visit (whether they be monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly). Food pantry produce rarely lasts very long, so increasing pantry access would significantly improve fresh options, as long as the pantry has the systems, inventory, and paradigm to support such a move.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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Making the Most of Your Food Drive

As we head into the holiday seasons, heralded by the arrival of twenty-foot-tall skeletons and inflatable black cats, most anti-hunger organizations are finalizing plans for their winter food drive. Food drives have long been a staple of food access work- they are a great mechanism for collecting food while increasing community engagement and awareness of their mission. Nearly all food access organizations utilize this tool.

But there are significant shortcomings and challenges that accompany food drives. In this post, I’ll share what some of those are, and ways that organizations and community members can navigate them.

Food drives are fantastic for many reasons. They bring much-wanted variety to a food supply that can often grow monotonous when depending on bulk food bank donations. They offer a tangible way for community members to connect with your organization. Personalizing donations are a beautiful entry point for neighbors to have discussions about the reality of food insecurity. Sorting donations is a great task for the huge influx of volunteers that nonprofits often see during the holiday season.

But these same benefits also present challenges.

Most food banks have specific food needs, based on what items they’ve been able to source elsewhere, and these needs can vary month to month. Unless it’s an incredibly targeted food drive (I’ve seen breakfast cereal or peanut butter specific events), food drives may not meet the food pantry’s highest food needs. While all donations are impactful, targeted aid is the most effective for fighting hunger.

The foods most in demand are often the most expensive, which means they are also the least likely to be donated. My personal mission is always to increase donations of spices and seasonings, but their high cost makes them some of the least donated ingredients. While I enthusiastically encourage people to donate foods that make them happy (because it helps remind them that people experiencing hunger are just like them), this builds community engagement more than an appropriate food supply.

Food drives are also a LOT of work.

My previous pantries supplied donors with donation barrels that we would try to both deliver and pick up. This required a volunteer or staff member to make extra trips during our busiest time of year, generally in less-than-ideal weather conditions. It felt worth it when we picked up hundreds of pounds of food, but often one or two hours of driving and days of coordination yielded little more than twenty or thirty pounds. While the donor absolutely deserved our praise and gratitude, this is not an ideal use of time. Many organizations hosting food drives also like to provide personalized signage and food requests, the development of which often falls on to food pantries. The amount of labor that goes into facilitating a food drive may not produce a similar payoff.

Once the food has been received, it needs to be organized. Delivered in overflowing boxes, bags, and barrels, food banks or pantries must sort it into categories that allow them to efficiently manage their distribution, be it in prepacked boxes or on grocery-style shelves. This responsibility usually falls to volunteer groups, who often sign up for one-time shifts during the holidays.

Under the supervision of a staff member, volunteers evaluate the food to ensure it’s safe for distribution (inevitably someone donates homemade preserves, goods without a label, or a bottle of alcohol- all unallowable options that must be discarded). These types of shifts are often fun but highly chaotic and have varying degrees of efficiency for the amount of work that actually gets done. While they are a perfect way to get volunteers into the door of their local food pantry, they are less successful at helping these organizations meet their day-to-day responsibilities of serving clients.

Additionally, this labor- and time-intensive task can mean that donations sit taking up space until they can be addressed. Sometimes this means organizations cannot accept other donations until food drive is sorted and distributed. This can be a significant problem for pantries with limited storage capacity.

How can we make food drives more functional?

Food banks (and some pantries) have significantly more buying power than the average individual, which means donated funds can buy much more food than an individual in their local grocery store.

One of the most efficient ways to maximize capacity is through virtual food drives– where neighbors donate funds, or even choose to buy specific items which ensure the food bank gets the best rates as well as the foods they most need.

Transitioning food drives to virtual, while still leaving room and opportunity for the donation of physical goods, is ultimately more accessible and efficient for everyone.

The one challenge this leaves is it reduces opportunities for large groups to volunteer together with food pantries, who often cannot accommodate their size or offer responsibilities to work together during day-to-day operations. In this scenario, food banks who do still have the capacity and need for larger shifts should step up to ensure these volunteers have a place to channel their energy while also connecting them with impact on the local level.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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It’s Time to Empower Leaders Who Know Hunger

I recently had the opportunity to consider a position as a leader in an anti-hunger organization, but it quickly became apparent that the priority skillset for this position was financial management rather than food security. I am incredibly confident that when the position is filled, it will be by a man with a background in banking or investing rather than nonprofits.

While I recognize the significant financial responsibilities of running an organization, I argue that it’s hard to solve a problem you don’t know much about.

This is one of the reasons why hunger policy so easily goes astray- it’s mostly written by people with no lived experience.

(To be clear, I don’t have lived experience of hunger either. This incident simply highlights for me the reality that this industry is one which rarely prioritizes leadership from subject matter experts.)

Modern day society generally accepts that people are wealthy and successful because of hard work and good choices, and that poverty results from laziness and failure. The result of this thinking is that we deliberately seek leadership from people we view as successful, which excludes anyone intimately familiar with poverty.

More than half of our Congress are millionaires– are we really surprised when they are ignorant of the burden of the cost of groceries or childcare?

This practice facilitates policy decisions based on how these wealthy individuals feel about hunger rather than the reality of the experience. It perpetuates solutions that are often inadequate, ineffective, and sometimes harmful to the people they intend to serve.

Luckily, we are in a time of transition in the movement to end hunger. In the last couple years, the field has made significant progress in uplifting the voices of people with lived experience. When we recognize that poverty is a societal, rather than individual problem, we can appreciate the incredible skills, strategies, and strength of people who live it.

Nonetheless, nonprofit leadership roles in the US continue to be dominated by wealthy, white individuals without lived experience of poverty or hunger.

The transition to elevate those with lived experience into leadership has been slow. This requires a redistribution of power, and few people or organizations relinquish their advantages willingly.

While running a nonprofit requires strong leadership and administrative experience, it’s time we broadened our definition of what a strong leader looks like to ensure we are uplifting the people most capable of addressing society’s biggest problems.

Instead of prioritizing financial success in our leaders and hiring anti-hunger experts, why don’t we prioritize anti-hunger experts and hire the staff who can help achieve their ambitious agendas?

What are the qualities necessary for leading an effective anti-hunger organization, if we’re not focusing on business acumen?

  • A clear vision. Anti-hunger organizations choose from a variety of goals, including ending hunger, preventing starvation, offering temporary aid, or ensuring everyone has equal access to an emergency supply.

Clarity of vision starts with executive leadership undertaking thoughtful reflection, study, and goal setting with the explicit recognition of the privilege and experience on their team. When leadership doesn’t have a reality-based vision, staff and volunteers must create their own which may or may not align with that of the organization.

  • An overflowing well of empathy. Serving people living with poverty, trauma, and hardship every day is incredibly taxing. It can be easy for leaders who aren’t doing the on-the-ground implementation to grow complacent or blasé about the impacts of this experience on clients and staff. Anti-hunger leaders should endeavor to learn about and understand the challenges of this work from both sides if they don’t have lived experience. A leader lacking empathy for the challenges of living with hunger or the emotional fatigue of fighting it does their community a disservice.
  • Trust. It is essential that leaders trust the experience and insight of staff and clients who fight hunger daily. Leaders may have great ideas about how to manage clients or food flow that are utterly impractical, so they need to trust their staff’s expertise. All employees also need to trust the people they serve, which starts with letting go of the assumptions our society clings to about poverty.

When we assume that we know what’s best for someone else, we stop serving our community effectively.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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