Month: December 2024

Food is a Right, Not a Gift

Because gift-giving is voluntary, our society expects us to express gratitude for that honor. We appreciate the intentions of the gift-giver even when the gift itself is not something that is useful or wanted. In general, this is not a bad expectation. It emphasizes the value of relationships over the value of the gifts themselves.

However, when this attitude carries over into food banking, it can quickly grow toxic and counterproductive.  

Everyone deserves to eat.

Food is necessary to live, which means if we treat it as a gift, we construct a framework that makes the survival of our neighbors’ dependent upon gifts bestowed by others. While we can certainly argue that American capitalism grants a few powerful individuals the authority to determine who lives or dies, an ethical society shouldn’t accept this attitude.

When fighting hunger, providing food is more urgent than manipulating the relationship of the pantry and shopper.

Historically, this relationship in emergency food assistance has been defined by reinforcing existing inequalities and outdated assumptions about poverty. Food banks and pantries often emphasize their services as a gift to recipients, which undermines the right of our community to be nourished and healthy with no strings attached.

Food banks and pantries provide a vital service for our neighbors who are prevented from accessing food elsewhere. In nearly all circumstances, organizations depend upon volunteers “gifting” their time, labor, and funds to fulfill their mission. It can be quite easy for nonprofits to embrace language around gift-giving to echo the holiday spirit and evoke compassion from their communities.

But when we frame the giving of food as a gift when fighting hunger, we perpetuate harmful assumptions that ultimately inhibit our efforts. It unintentionally constructs a scenario where staff and volunteers expect their efforts to be treated as a gift- which means believing that recipients should express gratitude, and that they aren’t entitled to what they are given. But no one should ever be expected to be grateful for food.

This language reinforces the power imbalance of giver versus receiver and entirely disregards the individual needs of people experiencing hunger. Because our society expects the recipients of gifts to be grateful, it often means any comments or concerns about how the gift doesn’t serve them are unwelcome or ignored.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard food pantry staff or volunteers complain about how a client asked for different options because they wouldn’t or couldn’t eat what they were offered, and were annoyed that their gift was not accepted with humility.

The food that food banks, pantries, and meal sites provide is not a gift. It is a human right, attempting to fill a very big hole created by the inequalities built into our society. While anti-hunger organizations do not have the capacity to meet the full scope of the need, they are still vital for helping millions of people make it through yet another hungry day.

We fail ourselves, and each other, as empathetic creatures by maintaining a paradigm that denies everyone the right to be nourished by healthy, culturally sensitive foods.

There will be no new blog post next Monday, December 29. Who Deserves to Eat will return on January 6, 2025.

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

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The Distinct Challenges of Rural Hunger

I started my food justice career increasing access to healthy foods in several rural communities in eastern Montana and then in eastern Oregon. These towns were small enough that there was little industry, and no local grocery store. Residents had to drive at least twenty miles to buy groceries, and the high cost of fuel meant that this was a trip that few people could afford more than twice a month. The consequences were that food insecurity rates were high.

Both of my communities had small food pantries, one which depended primarily on donated game and beef from local farmers, and another which was stocked with canned goods. While these little organizations might have prevented starvation, they lacked the resources and capacity to really serve the needs of neighbors with dignity and abundance. One of them was well-known for the handsy coordinator who would grope any woman who visited. Many people chose not to seek food assistance rather than endure his harassment, while others had no other option.

While hunger is a problem everywhere, the challenges that my neighbors faced in these isolated, rural communities were different than the obstacles I see for my urban clients. While the root causes are universally barriers to accessing wealth, effective strategies for addressing them are very different.

What are the barriers to rural food security?

  • Poverty rates are higher in rural America with less access to wealth. Wealth, resources, and industry tend to be concentrated in urban centers.
  • Transportation needs are higher, and more limited in rural regions. Without easy public transportation, rural living demands use of a car. For people who don’t have one or can’t drive, this means they must entirely depend on other people or delivery services for food access. Obstacles increase with weather disruptions, like snowstorms or extreme heat, which makes communities even more vulnerable to hunger.
  • Fewer support services. Food banks, pantries, health clinics, and other services generally concentrate in urban centers. While some isolated communities have food pantries, like the ones I worked with, a lack of education, oversight, and increased racism and discrimination often makes them less accessible or useful.

How can we fight rural hunger?

SNAP empowers people to make their own food choices, and is efficient because once a family is signed up, they are able to receive and use benefits without additional costs or demands (beyond the state expectations for maintaining eligibility.)

One of the biggest barriers to using SNAP is that the application process can be invasive, and many people may be deterred by the fear that they aren’t eligible for enough funds to justify the effort. Leaning into tools like SNAP Screener that can help people see how much they are eligible for and connect with support on their application are effective ways to encourage participation.

  • Mobile pantries. This is a solution that I both love, but also recognize as vastly inadequate and inefficient. A mobile pantry offers a temporary solution for bringing quality food to areas that otherwise might not be able to reach it. (There are increasing models of mobile grocery stores which bring affordable produce to areas that otherwise can’t access it, which is another great option for people who have the capacity to buy it.) This solution is vulnerable to disruption and may not offer appropriate options for the specific needs of the community, but can also be a powerful way to start a conversation about access, and get people the food they need to eat today.

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

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How to Help Children Fight Hunger

The winter holidays are approaching, which means many parents are looking for ways to engage with their children during the long vacation. My previous food pantries always saw a noticeable increase in the number of families, or parents reaching out on behalf of their older children, looking to volunteer at this time of year.

When it is done well, parents and children leave their volunteer service feeling enriched and impactful. When it is not handled gracefully, it can be harmful to everyone.

As a food pantry manager, I’ve fielded calls from dozens of parents looking for opportunities to help their children “appreciate how fortunate they are.” Essentially, the lesson they are trying to convey is how lucky their children are that they don’t have to use a food pantry. Framed this way, it emphasizes an “us/them” dichotomy that rarely fosters empathy or understanding of hunger. This attitude reinforces the attitude that visiting a food pantry is shameful, and further perpetuates the myth that poverty is a matter of luck or hard work, rather than systemic oppression and inequality.

I also regularly hear from families wanting to spend December helping the “less fortunate members of their community.” Again, this language emphasizes the differences between them and food pantry clients and may cement them in the minds of their children. Without thoughtful guidance, attitudes like this can perpetuate harmful attitudes around racism, poverty, and inequality.

This type of volunteering is performative and biased, even if well-intentioned. Poverty is not something to be gawked at, and this attitude is harmful to anti-hunger organizations working to emphasize dignity and the belief that everyone deserves to eat.

Volunteering as a family can be a hugely positive and formative experience, but service must be treated with delicacy and respect. Far too often, the people using services like food pantry clients are treated as a vehicle for volunteers to complete their “good deeds” or as examples to illustrate a specific assumption.

There are specific steps that parents and nonprofit organizations can take to fight these tendencies, increase the impact of their volunteer services, and help children develop an understanding of social justice that empowers them to be future changemakers.

For parents:

The post office dock in Lake Oswego, OR
  • Find volunteer projects that your children are excited about. I grew up volunteering for the National Letter Carriers Food Drive for over a decade, sorting food at the post office into boxes as the mail carriers brought it in during the annual event. My family had so much fun that we took over management of our post office and staffed the team exclusively with our school friends and their families. Finding activities that your children enjoy can foster long-term interest in volunteering and passion for the issues you’re working on (twenty years later, I’m doing the same work!)
  • When children are old enough to do direct service with clients, it needs to be voluntary.  The youth who thrive while volunteering are the ones who want to come. Sullen and grumpy children working with people living with hunger degrades the experience for everyone. When parents focus on the lesson or morality of service with reluctant children, it furthers their disengagement and disinterest, and I’ve seen this manifest many times as disrespect towards clients.

For pantries and anti-hunger organizations:

  • Be clear about and enforce age restrictions for volunteer roles. Almost every time I have been instructed by leadership to make an exception for a donor or volunteer’s grandchild, I find myself acting more as babysitter than pantry manager, or doing damage control with clients. It’s not worth it. If you can make some positions child-friendly- awesome! It’s also okay to have roles that are exclusively for adults.
  • Model language that combats the idea that you’re helping the “less fortunate” or “needy” in your marketing, literature, and conversations with volunteers. Your community will repeat your words, so deliberately discussing the systemic nature of poverty helps volunteers and potential volunteers adopt this idea over outdated assumptions.
  • In your volunteer orientation and training materials, introduce the root causes of hunger using language accessible to a twelve-year old. When there are children present, you won’t have to make any changes, and it’s likely that your adult volunteers will also benefit from the simplest framing of this immensely complex issue. This ensures everyone has a clear understanding of your mission and goals in a way that empowers your community.

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

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Food Pantries Fighting Hanger: Bring Snacks!

Have you ever been hangry?

A combination of hungry and angry, hangry is the perfect term for the short temper and dysregulation that accompanies the stress of hunger. I am the ultimate hangry person. When I get too hungry, my tolerance level for everything drops, and I essentially check out until I get some food. My friends and family know that once I’ve hit hangry, we’re not going to get anything done until the situation is rectified.

I know I’m not alone. Hangry is an increasingly popular term because it captures the peevishness that grows alongside hunger. We all know that no one is their best self when they are hangry.

This especially goes for food pantry clients and people facing food insecurity. Hunger amplifies stress, which can be further sparked when facing the indignities that can accompany seeking out food assistance.

Every food pantry I’ve worked at regularly served people who hadn’t eaten in too long. Whether they didn’t have an easy way to travel to the pantry or postponed their visit for as long as possible, it was not unusual to serve clients who hadn’t eaten in twelve hours or more. (I’ll never forget serving a young man at one of my first food pantries who hadn’t eaten in two days. That level of hunger and stress brings enormous urgency to everyone at the pantry.)

Asking someone feeling hangry to wait in a slow-moving line, fill out a tedious intake form, and pay attention to a boring orientation on pantry rules is a big and unfair ask.

Interactions between clients and volunteers can be tense. Volunteers are trying to adhere to the policies they’ve been taught as efficiently as possible, potentially without awareness of the other issues clients might be experiencing.

Clients are often trying to get in and out quickly with as much dignity as possible, which can run contrary to the systems volunteers seek to enforce.

Imposing strict rules on people dealing with hunger, stress, and other challenges can make these interactions harder.

Food pantries and meal sites all experience their fair share of challenging interactions. Our shoppers come with complex stories and high stress that can amplify triggers. But there are few scenarios where getting someone the food they need doesn’t make it better.

How can pantries do better at meeting clients’ immediate needs?

  • Provide snacks or small bites, like granola bars or an apple, at check in. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, but the opportunity for someone to eat before heading into what is regularly a stressful situation can alleviate some of the anxiety. It also helps build a more welcoming atmosphere.
  • Allow people to eat in the pantry. This doesn’t mean you have to let people assemble a meal right then and there, but snacking while shopping should be welcomed! Snacking at one of my previous pantries made a big difference in keeping children calm and quiet, which enabled their guardians to enjoy a more relaxed shopping experience and alleviate everyone’s stress.

It’s not too much to ask people to clean up after themselves, and your pantry should already have several waste bins distributed throughout the room. While you may still have to clean up an occasional mess, it should be preferable to escalating unnecessary conflict.

  • Teach volunteers to check for clients who might need extra support. Even if you don’t have enough snacks for everyone, having something available when necessary can make an enormous impact. I can’t count the number of times where my pantry saw an escalating situation, but getting our shopper a granola bar and a juice box immediately relieved the tension. Also, recognize the emotional labor that goes into diffusing these difficult situations.
  • Food pantries often serve high numbers of people with specific nutritional requirements. Being equipped to support someone with low blood sugar with emergency snacks should be an expectation rather than an aspiration of all anti-hunger organizations.
  • Model healthy self-care by ensuring that staff and volunteers also get breaks for snacks and lunch. I once worked at a pantry where I rarely got a lunch break, and it was often my volunteers who pointed out that I needed to eat when my mood started to go south. Modeling self-care helps ensure that everyone is better-prepared and more thoughtful about supporting our neighbors through the next challenge that arises.

I often see pantries seeking to develop a more efficient, professional atmosphere through increasingly strict rules and official looking paperwork. It’s these same pantries who experience increased conflict by placing unreasonable and inflexible expectations on their community.

Food pantries strongly benefit from a friendly, casual attitude over formality. It is entirely possible to develop a professional, respectful food pantry that has best practices for supporting their clients rather than asserting their authority. Offering snacks is a great first step.

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

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