Are You Really Fighting Hunger if Your Staff Can’t Afford Food?

At the very first food pantry I ever worked at, our parent organization (one of the biggest nonprofits in the region) was enthusiastic and vocal about prioritizing the client experience. I was excited to partner on this mission, until I learned that this focus on client services was achieved at the expense of staff. Our leaders were adamant that the organization could only afford the most minimal wages and benefits to ensure maximum support for our clients. Because I could not afford groceries on this wage, I became a client at my own food pantry.

Although this happened over a decade ago, it is a pattern I have seen repeated at every food pantry I’ve worked with since. Full-time staff members unable to support themselves or their family on their wages become clients of their own services, which the organization provides without a second thought.

Can you really be an anti-hunger advocate if you’re not willing to make sacrifices for the mission? This attitude is pervasive, and perpetuates a culture that actively inhibits people from thriving while doing this work.

Why is food insecurity accepted within anti-hunger organizations?

American society has narrow attitudes about nonprofits. The belief persists that nonprofit employees should do the work out of the goodness of their hearts rather than for the money.

I once had a Board member brag that our organization paid staff in “heart” to make up for low wages, as if that was an achievement to be celebrated that employees would appreciate.

Paying individuals less than a living wage is a primary cause of food insecurity.

Whether or not money is a motivating factor for nonprofit professionals, it does not mean that we are somehow exempt from paying rent, buying gasoline, or the rising cost of groceries.

When organizations advocating for food justice perpetuate food insecurity, it should throw serious doubt on their commitment. Denying employees the resources to buy their own food while employed at an anti-hunger institution demonstrates a perversely performative interest in fighting hunger.

While every organization benefits from leadership who knows what it’s like to be food insecure, we should not tolerate those that force lived experience upon their employees.

Food banks and pantries who recognize hunger as a systemic problem rather than an individual responsibility are slowly beginning to demonstrate it by working towards institutionalizing living wages.

This is not a simple or easy change. Nonprofit culture uplifts and celebrates low overhead costs and strong client services, an attitude deeply internalized by funders. My previous food pantry regularly received donations specifically allocated for food to ensure that it was spent on clients rather than staff. But this is short-sighted. Who do donors anticipate will do the work if no one should be paid?

Most nonprofits already lean heavily on volunteers, and have paid staff for the jobs that require additional expertise, reliability, or confidentiality. The nonprofit field is one place where these professional individuals are regularly degraded for seeking a comfortable wage that appreciates their skills.

Developing effective solutions to social ills requires that we have the most creative, passionate, and enthusiastic people working on the problem. But the nonprofit field as it currently exists offers weak incentives for attracting or retaining these individuals.

Ending hunger is a complicated and multi-faceted challenge. Amidst the complexity, it’s easy to ignore how we treat the people doing the work. Paying anti-hunger advocates a living wage requires changing priorities, educating funders, and adjusting budgets. But the long-term implications are higher retention rates, improved productivity, stronger competition, and one less client waiting in line at the food pantry.

Next steps:

Check out some resources for starting these conversations from the Next Shift, a campaign encouraging anti-hunger organizations to examine internal processes and attitudes about social justice parallel to their external goals.

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

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How We Get Started Solving Hunger

Hunger has long been a part of the human experience. Throughout history, our ancestors endured starvation enough that our physiology adapted to withstand periods of abundance and of scarcity, which is why we struggle so in our current calorie-rich environment. Despite the abundance of food in our world today, hunger remains so normalized that eliminating it tends to be added to lists of aspirational-but-unobtainable goals like world peace and time travel.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) framework for food security identifies four essential conditions necessary for an individual, community, and nation to be food secure- access, availability, knowledge, and stability. An evaluation of these conditions can help inform us on why hunger persists, and provide a starting point for action.

Is hunger really inevitable?

To eliminate hunger completely in the US, we need to ensure that every resident has each of these conditions fulfilled:

Availability: We (as a nation and as a world) have all the food we need to keep our population fed. Our policies and systems certainly skew production towards less healthy options, but it’s widely accepted that American hunger does not originate from a shortage of food.

Access: This is our biggest hurdle. Inflation and high costs of living severely cut into food budgets. Even living in close proximity to grocery stores, too many people cannot afford to nourish themselves. In isolated or rural regions, the higher costs associated with accessing it make food even harder to maintain food security. People experiencing discrimination have further reduced access because of lower wages, poorer housing, or a lack of physical safety in their community.

High food costs force many people to work longer hours or multiple jobs, which further cuts into time and energy available for cooking. Inadequate and unaffordable housing necessitates survival with substandard kitchen and restricted cooking capabilities, which further impacts the ability to safely store and prepare food.

Knowledge: People living in poverty are regularly condemned for lacking budget-friendly cooking skills, as if knowing how to cook dry beans can somehow extricate them from poverty. Knowing how to cook is a powerful way for improving quality of life and adding fun to the process of nourishment, but the idea that a lack of cooking skills is a cause of hunger comes from the assumption that hunger is personal failure rather than systemic problem. Further, programs that uphold this idea often teach cooking a precise way, or use specific ingredients, which ignores cultural traditions and identity. By dictating that there is a “right” and “wrong” way to eat, it implies that those who don’t use these specific practices perpetuate their own poverty. A lack of knowledge is not a contributor to food insecurity in the US.

Stability: Although the US has experienced greater instability recently with disruptors such as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, overall, we have a strong and reliable food supply. As a nation, we largely have the means and wealth to maintain that stability.

Improving food access is the primary solution for solving hunger in America.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is our primary tool for addressing food insecurity (although there are many others). SNAP provides families with an allotted amount of money every month that can be spent on food at participating retailers. The amount of money received assumes that household costs for food are much lower than they actually are. As a result, even those receiving food assistance still experience food insecurity.

At the onset of the pandemic, when millions of people lost their jobs or had their hours reduced, hunger loomed. In response, the government both expanded the amount of benefits as well as the flexibility of anti-hunger programs, and it worked.

Effective policy action has shown us that hunger is not inevitable. We have the resources, the knowledge, and the policy mechanisms to end hunger. We simply lack the political will.

As the Covid-era programs implemented to fight hunger expire, we see the need once again rising. Fears of welfare fraud and belief in individual responsibility have overridden our commitment to ending hunger as supports are reduced or eliminated.

Next Steps

We must change the way we think about hunger. The cultural assumptions we carry and the policy tools we use perpetuate the attitude that hunger is a personal failure rather than a systemic problem.

To facilitate the evolution of our policy solutions, our discussion on this issue must evolve too. By adjusting how we frame and talk about hunger, we can significantly impact the anti-hunger environment around us to transform this nebulous issue into a tangible problem with a practical solution.

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

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Why We Need Summer EBT

I am a 2023-24 FoodCorps Alumni Advocacy Lead, and am working to increase engagement on school food policies at the local and national level.

As the Oregon representative, I am writing a short blog series on local opportunities for supporting stronger, healthier food policies in schools. Oregon’s short legislative session this February revolves around the budget, and legislators face a powerful opportunity to positively impact students food access with Summer EBT. This first post of the series explains the value and importance of this program.

When the Covid-era SNAP Emergency Allotment benefits expired in March 2023, anti-hunger advocates saw an immediate increase in the need for food assistance. Even before the expiration of the additional $90 per person that the program contributed, inflation left people struggling to afford food. When these benefits disappeared, households abruptly faced the choice of paying their rent, receiving healthcare, feeding their family, or meeting other necessary needs. Overwhelming demands on an already overburdened food banking system has led to a noticeable increase in American hunger rates.

Summer EBT (Electronic Balance Transfer)

Starting this summer, many states will have a new and valuable tool for supporting food insecure residents with the rollout of the Summer EBT program.

This program provides $40 in SNAP benefits to each child every summer month (for up to four months) for households receiving free or reduce price school lunches.

Why is this important?

Many sites that offer summer meals as an extension of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), but they often require traveling to a specific site to pick it up. For many working families this is an insurmountable hardship, even with waivers allowing children to eat offsite.

Summer EBT provides dignity and autonomy to these families. It allows them to make their own food purchases and find the options that are tasty and appropriate for their families. Guardians can access the food their kids need to eat on their schedule. While it’s important to recognize that $40/month doesn’t go far enough, it is an encouraging start.

It’s also important to recognize that the EBT format facilitates food access for all family members. Far too often, parents eat less or skip meals to keep their children fed. Giving a family more money to buy food helps everyone eat better.

The summer EBT program is federally funded but requires states to pay half of the administrative costs. Some states have declined to participate, while others scramble to find essential funding.

In my home state of Oregon, the legislative session begins February 5^th, and this short session will focus on the budget, including considering sourcing the $35 million necessary to implement Summer EBT.

Fellow Oregonians, please consider sending a message to your Congressperson letting them know why this program is important.

Send a message to your representative

For non-Oregonians, investigate whether your state, Territory or Tribe is participating. 15 states have opted out.

Consider looking into any upcoming policy and funding bills for your state that may include antipoverty or antihunger resources, and let your representative know that policy change is far, far more effective at fighting hunger than any action we take individually or through charity.

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 Modernize Food Banking

When I worked as a coordinator at my very first food pantry over a decade ago, I prepared for distribution by heading down to my local food bank to “shop the dock.” I picked up our order, and also got to browse through their unrestricted options that were up for grabs. One of my favorite things to dig into was the bread- they usually had an abundance of beautiful, fresh loaves from one of my favorite local bakery chains. I always enthusiastically loaded up our cargo van.

At the end of my pantry distribution, we always had too many of these loaves left over. Clients didn’t want it. Our shoppers were looking for softer, sliced bread, to make their children’s lunches or for toast with breakfast. This bread was too heavy, went stale a little faster in its paper bag, and it was likely that many of our households lacked bread knives suitable for slicing.

Ten years later, recollecting some of the food choices I made for this pantry makes me cringe. I loaded up on the bread that excited me, rather than recognizing the bread that my clients wanted.

Unfortunately, this rookie mistake is common in the emergency food assistance world.

Food banking was primarily designed to focus on the giver- to create the most convenient system based on our assumptions of the needs of those experiencing hunger.

Until recent years, little attention was given to the other side of this transaction (by mainstream anti-hunger institutions. Alternative food systems have been doing this work for ages.) Finally, we’re starting to have discussions about how we can develop effective ways for people experiencing hunger to access the food they need in a way that works for them.

If we started over from scratch on designing a model to end hunger, few individuals would likely choose a system where participants are scrutinized and deemed worthy before someone else allows them access to a selection of the foods the giver decides are appropriate.

Although it’s absolutely time that we start finding and developing new ways to respond to hunger, we can also reassess how we do food banking. There is tremendous opportunity for progress and empowerment by adapting our thinking and operations.

How can we transform this charity-focused system into something that truly empowers our community to thrive?

We must work with the resources we’ve got, which means we must turn our existing emergency food assistance program into something that focuses on the people we serve, rather than facilitating our own efforts.

It’s popular to throw around the term, “client centered.” Here’s what that can mean in practice:

Offering informational and outreach literature in the language spoken by shoppers and having someone available to speak their language in person.
Scheduling hours that are convenient and accessible for clients, which are almost always not the most convenient or accessible for volunteers. (This may demonstrate a need to depend more heavily on paid employees than volunteers).
Offering culturally appropriate foods that shoppers want and are excited about- which are quite possibly not the same thing that pantry staff wants to eat.
Having people with lived experience of hunger in leadership roles, on staff, and among volunteers, and systems that ensure their perspectives are celebrated and integrated into practice.

No matter how well educated we are, or how long we’ve worked in the field, we all carry prejudices about hunger that impact how we provide services. The only way to overcome this barrier is by designing structures and systems under the leadership of individuals with lived experience so that we don’t implement models based on our assumptions.

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

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Food Justice IS Social Justice

I spent the last three years working at a food pantry committed to fighting hunger. My efforts centered on ensuring as many people as possible left our facility with as much food as they wanted while prioritizing access to culturally specific and healthy options. I firmly believe this pantry could have served as a national model of excellence, but I also recognize that even the best food pantry in the country can’t solve hunger through food distribution.

The public generally assumes that we need more food to fight hunger. People experiencing hunger don’t have enough, so we must develop solutions that offer more. Too often, anti-hunger advocates focus on how to access and distribute more food through uplifting programs that reduce food waste and increase agricultural production.

Although this is logical (and an effective piece of a much larger strategy), it oversimplifies the problem and neglects to consider the conditions that produce hunger in the first place.

Food insecurity is a result of systems of oppression.

Racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, and other forms of discrimination stop people from accessing the resources they need to thrive and the food they need to live.

Racial discrimination keeps people of color from amassing wealth at the rates available to white Americans. The gender pay gap ensures that women have less buying power than men. LGBTQ+ individuals face employment and housing discrimination that makes them more vulnerable to job loss and houselessness.

While all these individuals absolutely need food to survive today, they will also need food tomorrow. Rather than maintaining a system that perpetually provides emergency food assistance, why aren’t we addressing the problems that leave them food insecure in the first place?

Undeniably, this is the more complex solution.

It is much easier to contact grocery stores for donations than to overcome systems of oppression. And it demands a focus on equity that we’ve repeatedly seen many of our neighbors are not comfortable with.

Food banks and pantries provide a convenient and accessible way for people to give back to their community and support their neighbors. These programs impose limits on services to ensure users don’t have access to everything they need under the mistaken assumption that offering stable food access will foster “welfare queens” and abuse of benefits.

This is why so many food access organizations prefer to offer food as the only solution to hunger. It doesn’t challenge the biases of volunteers, won’t upset the politics of donors, and still allows them to “do good” for their community. It also doesn’t end hunger.

Food justice, on the other hand, recognizes that we don’t have the capacity to perpetually fight hunger this way, and that a much smarter, more equitable, more just, and more effective solution is to eliminate it altogether.

Food justice forces us to recognize and address injustice around us.

This requires fostering an organizational environment that encourages learning, growth, and humility; the confidence to turn away from donors who don’t share these values; and a profound respect for the dignity of the people utilizing these services.

This is no small task, and I don’t mean to minimize the difficulty of transforming from an anti-hunger to a food justice mindset. But the one thing that anti-hunger organizations can do every day to facilitate this transition is to recognize the human right to healthy, delicious food without judgement or conditions.

Today is MLK Day, which means every organization with a social media presence is sharing a feel-good message about nonviolence, social justice, and hope. The challenge for food justice advocates is to find the organizations that actively practice those values every other day of the year.

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

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Do You Advocate Like Everyone Deserves to Eat?

When I say that “everyone deserves to eat,” no one argues with me. This statement is lauded as commendable, generous, and noncontroversial.

But when I start to discuss individual populations and how to make sure they have the food they need to thrive, I regularly encounter resistance. Even with mission statements about universally ending hunger, many individuals and organizations have confidential qualifiers about who is really included in their anti-hunger efforts.

Who is regularly excluded from the idea that everyone deserves to eat?

The idea that children are helpless to fight hunger makes them a high priority for food assistance programs. Adults without children, less so. In 2019 the anti-hunger community had to aggressively rally to prevent SNAP rule changes increasing the burden on individuals without children to continue receiving food assistance. The assumption is that people able to work can make enough money to be self-sufficient if they just try hard enough, regardless of the mountains of data demonstrating otherwise.

For the same reason, seniors are a primary focus of anti-hunger efforts. Living on fixed retirement incomes, they are vulnerable to economic fluctuations and sudden changes in circumstance.

As a result, many anti-hunger organizations seeking noncontroversial community backing will emphasize through their mission statements, goals, and donor outreach that they support and nourish families, children, and seniors. But this comes at the expense of people who don’t fall within those demographics.

To maintain the impression that anti-hunger efforts only support individuals truly deserving of help, few food justice organizations are brave enough to advocate for people living in poverty just because they live in poverty. Even fewer are comfortable identifying the racial and systemic injustices that produce this condition.

Beyond the anti-hunger community’s preference for serving families, there are several other demographics who are consistently judged as undeserving of healthy food and food access.

The quality and health of food in prisons is a growing topic lately, with many people promoting the assumption that breaking the law exempts an individual from the right to healthy food and a healthy body.

Further, people with criminal convictions may be restricted or banned from receiving food assistance long after they complete their sentence, again justified by the idea that breaking the rules exempts them from privileges.

Regardless of your opinion on whether these demographics really deserve to eat as much as anyone else, it demonstrates that the concept that ‘everyone deserves to eat’ is far more loaded than it appears.

If we’re committed to being true anti-hunger advocates, then we need to make sure there is alignment between our words and our actions. Here’s how to check:

Who does your organization serve? Are there specific groups or demographics targeted more than others? Is that specifically identified in your outreach efforts? Does your mission statement and/or vision reflect this?
How narrow or broad are your advocacy efforts? Do you only act on childhood hunger, but offer food access services to adults?
Do you use data to inform your policy actions? For example, does your organization prioritize demographics like families or children even when your region has uncomfortably high hunger rates among other, deemed “less deserving” demographics?
What relationships will you gain or lose if you’re honest about who your organization does or does not prioritize/serve?

Ensuring anti-hunger advocates and organizations have a clear alignment between their mission and actions ensures we’re building trustworthy leaders. It is hard to let go of preconceived ideas about what our community wants to support, what our leaders are comfortable fighting for, and the easiest ways to achieve our goals. Transparency in how we think about and act on our anti-hunger aspirations is the only way we will build a truly effective and motivated coalition that can actually end hunger.

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

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2023 Recap

In the spirit of the New Year, this week I’m reflecting on my accomplishments of 2023. Having spent years looking for and thinking about the resources that I wanted to see as an anti-hunger advocate, I’m proud to have started filling the gaps with my own ideas.

There is enormous opportunity for the anti-hunger community to advance how we talk about and share our services.

I’ve been excited to learn that there is interest in my content, and I’m motivated to continue sharing my strategies on advancing anti-hunger action in the coming year.

In 2024, I am enthusiastic about dedicating more time to food justice philosophies and exploring how they can change our implementation. You can still expect weekly posts about this work, but I am also looking for insights from readers. I’d love to hear if you have an anti-hunger question that you’re like to start a discussion on. Please reach out and share your ideas!

To recap 2023, here are the three posts that resonated with my readership the most. Be sure to check them out if you missed them the first time!

Learning to Cook Won’t Solve Hunger

November 27, 2023.

The Problem is Never Just Hunger

December 4, 2023. 187 views

How to Make Your Food Donations Count This Winter

October 16, 2023.

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 Build a Friendly Environment in Any Food Pantry

Last week I was privileged to take a tour of a local food pantry that is part of a relatively new and rapidly growing program. As a result, the food pantry has bounced around in several different physical spaces as office needs have evolved and rooms became available. The current space was the smallest grocery-style food pantry I’ve ever seen.

Approximately 12 x 12 feet, this pantry had room for three standing fridge/freezers, a wall of shelves for canned goods, and counter space for displaying fresh produce. Pantry policy is to check in clients at the door and allow up to three shoppers to browse the space at once. To facilitate this, the organization has prioritized establishing a play area with volunteer supervision for the children of clients. Parents are thus able to shop at their leisure, and the pantry doesn’t have to navigate extra bodies in the room. It is an efficient and elegant system, despite all the disadvantages that come with a room barely bigger than a closet.

There are very few food pantries who occupy their ideal facility. Instead, they live in basement rooms, neglected offices, and vacant closets. Having to depend on unwanted and undesirable spaces can be challenging and discouraging, but there are still ample opportunities for organizations to make their services as respectful, desirable, and functional as in a purpose-built facility.

Here are three essential qualities for turning any food pantry space into one that is dignified and functional for everyone:

Abundance. Whether the pantry is a tiny closet or a cavernous warehouse, keeping the shelves piled high with food fosters an abundance mindset that provides a sense of security and comfort to people seeking assistance.

When people are confident that they have access to essential resources, they are more likely to just take what they need. When they are fearful that there isn’t enough (and especially if there’s any sense of competition among shoppers), they are more likely to fall into a scarcity mindset which often motivates them to take more food. A smaller room facilitates the presentation of abundance, but attention to how food is displayed can simulate a sense of plenty in any space.

Autonomy. There is a real sense of helplessness that comes with depending on a food pantry.

No one wants to be at a food pantry in the first place, so developing systems that empower shoppers to make their own choices can help address the inherent power imbalance in using emergency food resources.

Grocery-style pantries that allow their visitors to browse as one would do at any store are an effective way to add dignity to the experience. Many food pantries continue to depend on systems where clients must proceed in a line past their food options. While this system is primarily successful at increasing the speed at which people shop, it also can evoke a sense of powerlessness. Letting shoppers get out of line or step ahead of a slow shopper may be a simple option for restoring a little bit of autonomy.

Institutionalize dignity and respect. While few people will argue that food pantry volunteers and staff shouldn’t be friendly, I hear frustrating stories every day about how my clients have been treated at other pantries. They often share with me stories of being disrespected, humiliated, demeaned, and patronized. As a result, the kindness and friendliness of our volunteers is one of the main things that sets us apart. This success depends on a carefully thought-out and deliberate attitude of respect. We tell our clients we’re glad they came in. We don’t mandate a particular path of travel through the pantry. I set as few limits as possible (and make them as high as I can), and we monitor them as little as possible. We enthusiastically and graciously accept criticism.

While every food pantry deserves a big, beautiful room with airy windows, a play area, and ease of access for everyone, we must work with the options available. By considering these factors, we can still transform any space into an experience that helps our community feel welcome, nourished, and dignified.

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

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Developing My Own Food Justice Lens

In the summer of 2019, I made the mistake of eating a slice of pizza.

More than a year previous, I spent nearly two weeks in the hospital for a burst appendix and subsequent infection that did serious damage to my body. I had limped along in slow recovery for eighteen months, but for some reason that slice of pizza was a destructive catalyst.

The first symptom was nearly debilitating arthritis in my feet, and a day working at the food bank left me in absolute agony. Next, eating almost anything left my body increasingly uncomfortable. Even more than upsetting my digestion, it left me feeling depressed and fatigued for days. My energy levels plummeted.

Over the next six months, I ate every specialized diet that exists to determine what was triggering my symptoms. I tried AIP, FODMAP, SIBO, gluten-free, and even an elemental diet (three days of a foul-tasting formula delivering nutrition in its most digestible form) to try and pinpoint what foods were making me so sick. Nutritionists, naturopaths, doctors, and gastroenterologists had no insight.

It became easier to essentially stop eating rather than risk how food made me feel.

As a result, my weight dropped nearly a pound a week, for months. Medical professionals were dismissive, unconcerned, and at times blatantly disrespectful (which is why I lived with a burst appendix for three months before getting a diagnosis in the first place). A growing fear of food, comments about my weight, and gaslighting by medical professionals had me flirting with an eating disorder.

I was too weak to continue my hobbies of rock climbing and hiking. I struggled to socialize. I was penalized at work for talking to HR about disability. My family and I began discussing what life looks like with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and how that would impact my professional goals. Discovering Spoon Theory gave me better tools to talk about my experience but didn’t make it any easier to live with.

Luckily, a friend of a friend recommended a book about a diet that cuts out lectins- a protein contained in foods with seeds. Desperate for any solution, I eliminated all remaining grains, legumes, fruit, grain-fed animal products, and preservatives from my already-scarce diet, and began feeling better within three days. (It’s important to note that the creator of this diet, Dr. Gundry, practices weak science and makes dubious medical claims. I have found great value in eating this way, but I do NOT recommend it to anyone else.)

Over the next eight months, my strength began to return. But it requires almost fanatical attention to the foods I choose. Any little mistake, even eggs from my family’s happy and healthy free-range but grain-consuming chickens, pushed me back into a cloud of depression and fatigue that took days to shake off.

Four years later, I am doing much better. My sensitivity has dropped so I’ve been able to reintroduce white rice and can snack on the occasional blueberry. But despite this, food remains a constant struggle.

Every day, I navigate what my body is craving and how to access it. Sometimes I get it right and feel great, but often I get it wrong and pay with several days of fatigue. Anxiety is a primary symptom, and as fostered my understanding of the relationship between our guts and emotions. I constantly assess whether my stress levels are from diet or an external circumstance.

This experience heavily influences how I think about and discuss food access and justice. With every bite, I analyze how food makes my body feel and see how the wrong foods impact my quality of life. Although most people are not quite as sensitive as me, too many people depend on the options that are available rather than what their body needs, and daily suffer the consequences. I was a food justice advocate before I got sick, but this experience radically changed my understanding of why it’s important.

This week, December 19, is the anniversary of when I first checked myself into the ER, insisting that something was wrong. Over the past several years, I’ve celebrated my “Sickaversary” as a monumental turning point in my life. Although I don’t wish this experience on anyone, the lessons I have learned have made me a better advocate for food justice and are a constant guiding force in how I fight for food access in my community.

We are defined, and limited by, the foods we eat. Having experienced first-hand the damage that the wrong foods do, I’m motivated to ensure that everyone in my community has what they need to be their best. And that food may not be the ones everyone thinks they need. My diet is highly unconventional, but it keeps me healthy. I don’t know anyone who I would trust to manage my diet for me, and I know that food pantry clients deserve that same privilege.

Everyone deserves the privilege to make their own choices about what food their body needs. Politics and systems of oppression heavily influence how we eat and how we expect others to do so. Internalizing the concept that everyone deserves to eat demands that we start by recognizing the systems and assumptions that we have about diet, and toss them out the window in favor of autonomy and health, no matter what it looks like.

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

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Quality is Just as Important as Quantity in Food Pantries

My food pantry often receives donations of food from other organizations that are unable to distribute it for a variety of reasons. Recently, staff from one of these pantries stopped by with a donation as I was loading up a cart of butter. Several of the cases had been crushed, and butter was oozing out of the packaging. It was a mess, and the ruined boxes were inappropriate and unsafe for anyone to eat. I quickly sorted through them and tossed them in the garbage without a second thought.

The staff from this other pantry watched me do this with horror. “You’re just throwing it out? Can we take it? I can’t believe you threw it out!”

This request was an uncomfortable surprise. As the packages were clearly damaged and leaky, they were not safe to distribute according to food banking guidelines. I did not let them take the butter.

This incident makes me reflect on the bigger question of what exactly our two food pantries are trying to accomplish, and how we use wildly different strategies to pursue those goals.

For many years, the traditional food pantry model has operated under the idea that quantity of food distributed is the primary measure of success. Pounds given away is the easiest metric available, and combined with the attitude that people should be “grateful for what they get,” has produced a culture that encourages and rewards the process of giving as much food away as possible, prioritizing quantity over quality. This results in food pantries eager to share ruined packages of butter with their clients.

Luckily, the food banking industry is slowly transitioning towards a focus on dignity, which challenges the assumption that quantity trumps quality. This requires anti-hunger organizations to consider the quality of the food they are distributing and how it impacts the people who eat it instead of focusing on our need to give it away.

In many cases, this means throwing out food that you might salvage in your own kitchen, but is inappropriate for a food pantry.

This dichotomy is why I am wary about conversations celebrating the reduction of food waste by donating to food pantries. It perpetuates the idea that it’s okay for people experiencing hunger to eat food that should be thrown away.

Food banks and pantries depend on these donations, but we must be incredibly careful about how we frame these discussions.

If an onion has a little mold on it, it’s quite easy to cut and peel the bad spot off and use the rest. However, no one has ever left a food pantry with a moldy onion and felt excited, respected, or supported. Volunteers and leadership may baulk at the idea of throwing the onion out, citing fears that clients won’t have enough food. A single onion will never make-or-break someone’s food security. But when we make a habit of distributing food of poor quality; slimy lettuce, mushy bruised pears, and packs of butter that look like they were run over by a truck, then we are hurting food security and obstructing food justice. Quantity can never overcome poor quality when it comes to food.

When our goal is to distribute as much food as possible, we fail to offer the support our community really needs while also disrespecting our shoppers.

As hunger needs rise, food pantries must prioritize increasing our food supply. But when that is our only measure of success, it focuses entirely on our side of this transaction.

Saving food from the garbage and giving away as much as possible looks great to donors, volunteers, and supporters, but it entirely disregards the needs of our shoppers.

When food pantries make empathy our primary focus, examining what it’s like to receive our own food options can be transformative. We will always need to prioritize seeking more resources, finding new donors, and building a stronger food supply (until we solve the root causes of hunger). But if we don’t intentionally and deliberately examine what food we are distributing and why, food pantries can lose track of our common goal to ensure that everyone has the food they need to thrive.

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

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The Problem is Never Just Hunger

“I just need food- I didn’t know I had to fill out any paperwork!” This woman’s vehement opposition to completing our food pantry’s new client intake form took me by surprise, which increased as she abruptly strode off with tears running down her face. I’d never had this happen before.

I followed her into the parking lot, and after some hesitant discussion, it became clear that she was a survivor of domestic violence. This woman was terrified at the prospect of any documentation that might enable her ex to find her. Respecting that fear, we did not record her visit, and ensured that she and her two children got the food they needed to survive a couple more days.

Nearly three years ago, this incident remains lodged in my memory as an early catalyst for my food pantry’s transition to practicing trauma-informed care, with the recognition that no one comes to our organization facing hunger as their only challenge.

Hunger was only one obstacle among many for this woman as she struggled to access the resources she needed while keeping her family safe. Even though our mission is to meet the nutritional needs of our community, it is essential that anti-hunger organizations always recognize our visitors carry many other burdens when they walk through our doors, whether they share them with us or not.

This is why it is so important for every food justice advocate to deliberately plan, script, and implement strategies that focus on compassion and respect, and not just food access. This can help transform the process of seeking emergency food assistance from one of panic and humiliation to one of dignity and empowerment.

Every day, our food pantry welcomes people who are houseless, who have recently arrived from nations ripped apart by war, are facing imminent financial emergencies, or are experiencing a mental health crisis. Food pantry clients are never just facing food insecurity, but there is ample opportunity for us to provide support beyond just food.

Here’s how food pantries can build environments that support all their shoppers and the backgrounds they bring:

Trauma-informed training for staff, leadership, and volunteers. Recognizing and respecting the trauma that people carry helps us develop systems to support them. Foster systems that accommodate those needs, such as ignoring the administrative responsibilities for the woman escaping a violent ex or packing a personalized food box for an individual who is overstimulated by the crowd and long line.
De-escalation training. We serve clients who arrive stressed and emotionally charged every day, and it requires tact and sensitivity to help them find stability. For example, we occasionally encounter clients who haven’t eaten for several days. Finding them a snack and a bottle of water before they shop is often the most effective way to set them up for success shopping in the pantry.
Focus on an attitude of abundance. Even if food supplies are running low, a sense of abundance helps shoppers feel more food secure and supported. When our food pantry line grows especially long, people worry that we won’t have enough food for everyone. Reassuring them helps quell anxieties before they even get inside.

Wrap-around services. Although we don’t provide additional programming, we network with health clinics, organizations that deliver food, free clothing, and housing assistance so we can direct clients in the right direction. We partner with several nursing-student programs who have provided us with meal planning projects, recipe development, and other resources. This semester our students have developed information on wound care to share with our clients who are living outside. Although we rarely have exactly the resources our shoppers need, being able to point them in the right direction can save them from the overwhelming fear of solving these challenges alone.

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

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Learning to Cook Won’t Solve Hunger

Americans love to judge what people are eating. We have complicated and contradictory expectations about what and how people experiencing hunger should eat. One of the dominant assumptions I hear far too often is that people living in poverty make poor food choices, and that different decisions would improve both their budget and health. A common solution to this assumption is to teach people to cook.

Identifying a lack of cooking skills as a root cause of hunger transforms it into an individual rather than a systemic problem. It shifts the responsibility of solving hunger from policy-level to one of individual responsibility.

It’s also completely wrong. Hunger has very little to do with the individual choices anyone makes.

People experiencing hunger do not have worse cooking skills or nutritional knowledge than individuals who are food secure. They face greater barriers to accessing and cooking healthier foods.

Every day at my food pantry, I engage with clients who admire our fresh produce but then explain how their 16-hour workday, or lack of refrigeration in their apartment, or disability that keeps them from standing too long, prevents them from utilizing these foods.

When people aren’t using emergency food assistance programs, fresh produce is more expensive and primarily available at larger grocery stores. It can be hard for low-income communities inundated with gas stations and convenience stores to find fresh options, and what is available is often more costly.

Even when whole foods are accessible, cooking from scratch is time-consuming. Many households experiencing food insecurity work long hours and/or multiple jobs, which limits both time and physical capacity to prepare fresh meals. Anyone who has worked a long day knows how hard it can be to get home and assemble a labor- and time-intensive meal.

Cooking Education is a Solution to the Wrong Problem

Many anti-hunger organizations host or facilitate cooking classes. I love to cook and believe that everyone benefits from being comfortable in the kitchen. However, it is important to not foster the narrative that better cooking skills can end hunger. Teaching a family how to prepare dry beans does not help them escape poverty. Even if this saves a couple dollars, it is unlikely to make a meaningful impact on anyone’s budget (Millennials tired of avocado toast condemnation will sympathize).

And far too often, cooking classes focus on foods and meals familiar to program leadership, which may not be the same as their clients. Creating a culinary curriculum intended to save money or improve health can easily dismiss the practices and foods important to the community being served.

Most people know the essentials of healthy eating, but face enormous systemic barriers to actually changing how they eat.

How to effectively partner cooking education with anti-hunger advocacy:

Present cooking classes as a community activity, a social event, and an effort to help people have fun in the kitchen. Improved skills and confidence in the kitchen can greatly increase quality of life, but they are not an anti-hunger solution. Organizations that present cooking classes as budget savers should tread carefully, recognizing the tradeoffs in time spent and cultural relevance. (Learning to cook with dry beans is a dominant theme of anti-hunger cooking classes, but it requires extra time that people might not have and neglects the fact that many cultures don’t eat beans. It’s great for people to try new foods, but we never want to dismiss them as less valuable than what people are already comfortable eating.)
Practice community leadership. Ask food pantry clients to teach how to make culturally relevant dishes. Celebrate their traditional preparation methods. Make sure the foods available are appropriate, useful, and accessible to participants.
Don’t ever waiver from the concept that hunger is a systemic problem and that it requires systemic solutions. Our individual efforts can make an individual impact, but they don’t change how inequality is structured. Cooking classes should be treated as a supplemental option, rather than a targeted solution.

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

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Respecting Culinary Traditions: I Don’t Want to Eat What You Eat

Years ago, at one of the first food pantries I managed, I had an organizing problem. For some reason, I kept finding canned goods in the wrong sections, despite my careful signage and meticulous sorting. My assistants were high school students, mostly immigrants from a certain region in Africa, who were committed to helping the pantry run smoothly, so I was unsure what was going on.

One day, I had a student ask me to explain what broth was as they didn’t know what shelf to put it on. This led to the discovery that they had never eaten soup before. Soup was not a part of their culinary tradition. Suddenly, it made sense why I kept finding chicken noodle soup in the pasta section, minestrone on the vegetable shelf, and chili among the beans.

The foods we grow up eating and the culinary traditions our cultures practice are deeply ingrained in our identities. They are so much a part of us that it can be exceptionally easy to forget that they are not shared by everyone around us.

I had not considered that these students might not recognize all the foods we were distributing. Since many of them were also food pantry clients, this also taught me that my food pantry was offering up foods that their families didn’t eat. This is an easy mistake to make, and one that is seriously detrimental to how we fight hunger.

It is essential that we ensure people experiencing food insecurity have access to foods that are comfortable for them, and not just easy for organizations to distribute.

Food pantries, and nonprofits in general, tend to be led and managed by people of homogenous backgrounds. This means that services will always skew towards the traditions and practices of their specific culture, even when clients have a different background. Although anti-hunger advocates have made great strides in developing a diversification of services, we still have a long way to go.

This past week, my current food pantry moved into full Thanksgiving mode.* We are lucky enough to have turkeys for everyone, along with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and canned pumpkin. This abundance is immensely popular- it was our busiest week in history.

But we also served hundreds of households who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving and came to us for cabbage, and peppers, and stew meat and the day-to-day foods that make them happy. It takes deliberate and conscious effort to ensure their needs are not subsumed by the demand for Thanksgiving foods, since our organization’s leadership and volunteer community are overwhelmingly celebrants who haven’t considered that anyone might not be mashing potatoes or baking pie this week.

How Food Pantries Can Prioritize Culturally Specific Foods:

Encourage clients to volunteer (all food pantries should do this anyways, for a thousand reasons). Clients will have the best insights into what foods work and what doesn’t, and what their community wants more of. They may also recognize these foods when they’re donated, since they can be unfamiliar to other culinary traditions.

Examine the demographics of your clientele. Even anecdotal information will give you valuable insight- if you serve a significant population of a specific community, you should discuss with them what foods they might be looking for.

Let people take what they want, and as much as they want. Many of my eastern European clients are thrilled to take 5-6 cabbages, while our Latinx families are particularly enthused by bags of peppers. Mandating that everyone gets an equal amount of both only ensures that everyone’s cultural preferences are denied, while letting them take what they needs empowers them eat how their culture practices.

Experiment. Don’t shy away from foods just because you don’t know what to do with them. You may learn that no one really wanted that specific food, or you may realize it’s in high demand and you just hadn’t heard the requests for it. This can be a fun opportunity for staff and volunteers to learn about new foods.

*While I respect the importance of culinary tradition, it’s also important to remember that the origins of Thanksgiving are found in a myth crafted to obscure a history of colonization and the genocide of millions of Native Americans. For many, this day is a day of mourning.

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

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Keep Calm and Fight Hunger

Historically, the week before Thanksgiving is the busiest of the year for our food pantry. Combined with the growing need and fears of yet another government shutdown, it will likely be the busiest week in our organization’s history. Record-high attendance last week attests to this.

High demand and even higher stress levels add to the difficulty of maintaining a space that feels welcoming, abundant, and respectful. Such high numbers deplete our food supplies and adds to the stress felt by staff and volunteers alike while fostering fears of scarcity in our shoppers. Yet it is still possible to ensure that everyone feels welcome, seen and nourished despite the chaos.

Here’s how other organizations can replicate this success.

How do we maintain an attitude of abundance in a high stress environment?

We encourage our clients to take as much as they want of as many items as they can. At the beginning of every day, we’ll ensure our shelves are filled to bursting with canned goods and pay special attention to items that feature in holiday dishes like canned pumpkin, green beans, and cream of mushroom soup. It is more work to keep the shelves full, but pays off in the relief we can see in our clients’ faces as they wheel full shopping carts out the door. It can also help make up for the essential ingredients we generally don’t have- like evaporated milk, sugar or flour.

We are excited and enthusiastic to welcome new clients. As soon as they walk in the door, they are greeted with “I’m so glad you made it in today! We’re excited to help you out!” This makes a huge difference in ensuring people feel welcome, even after waiting in a long line outside in the cold. We’ve created a specific volunteer role dedicated to providing a welcome and orientation for first-time shoppers, which both improves flow and gives our new shoppers confidence that we are truly pleased to welcome them.

I make sure my team feels appreciated. We’re working harder than anyone else I know, and at the end of the day it’s easy to see the fatigue in everyone’s faces. It’s essential that anti-hunger advocates celebrate and highlight our individual contributions. Too often, nonprofit organizations take for granted the enormous burdens that their staff shoulder in order to foster success, which is an easy way to burn out your best people.

Hunger is a systemic problem and can’t be solved just by offering food to those who need it, but at the same time, hundreds of families will enjoy a bountiful holiday dinner thanks to the efforts of food pantries across the country. By making simple adjustments in how we display food, treat our clients, and appreciate our contributions, we make enormous progress in building more effective, dignified, and welcoming emergency food assistance programs.

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

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No One Needs to Be Grateful For Food

“They should just be grateful for what they get!”

If you spend enough time around food pantries, you will inevitably hear this comment. Most often, it’s a default response to an individual in need expressing any level of discomfort, asking for accommodation of a dietary need, or even just pointing out a spot of mold on a loaf of bread. Anything that can be perceived as criticism of emergency food services is often interpreted as a lack of gratitude, and subsequently condemned.

While the practice of gratitude can be healthy and fulfilling, demanding it at a food pantry is neither.

Gratitude cannot be required. That’s why it is a beautiful and powerful emotion- it must be voluntarily fostered and practiced.

Demanding that someone experiencing food insecurity be grateful for otherwise discarded food is the ultimate assertion of dominance.

There is an enormous power differential between team members and clients at food pantries. Staff and volunteers determine what type and how much food clients can get. We grant or deny access to foods that reaffirm their culture, traditions, and health. We choose when and how rules are enforced, and we determine what behaviors can strip someone of the privilege of receiving food altogether.

Emergency food access programs have a long history of seeking to control behavior. Work requirements, drug testing, and other policies embody the assumption that hunger results from poor decision making. This reasoning is used to justify strict programs limiting individual choice. Knowing that food is necessary for survival, it’s a powerful way to assert authority and mandate specific behaviors (even though they’re not found to have much effect). Somehow, the idea persists that demanding gratitude from a person in need can also be a tool to help them succeed.

We all need food to live. The question of “who deserves to eat?” is essentially synonymous with “who deserves to live?”

Every person deserves a healthy, nourished life.

Even though there are an abundance of barriers preventing access to the foods people need to lead that healthy life, they still deserve it unconditionally.

Most of the foods that food pantries distribute have already been rejected by someone else. Cans may be dented, some items are expired, and many of the fresh options are nearing the end of their lifespan. Even the most dignified organizations depend upon reframing the reality that most of their food is salvaged from food waste.

It’s incredibly gratifying when a food pantry client leaves the building with tears in their eyes, effusively gushing about the impact that the food pantry had on their life and the gratitude in their heart. Everyone feels good after that kind of encounter.

But it’s essential to remember that a food pantry has just as powerful an impact on the client who is angry that they need a food pantry at all, who is frustrated from a day of enduring microaggressions, who is resentful of the cheerful person who arrived in a shiny BMW telling them they can’t have an extra can of green beans. This individual is just as deserving of food as anyone else, and food pantries need to ensure that they have systems and practices that do not allow this client to be treated with anything other than respect and dignity.

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

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Ending Hunger: Why You Should Break Down the Greatest Barriers First

Food banks and pantries do essential work. Hunger is a dominant and growing problem in our country, and having the capacity to provide a family with several days’ worth of food makes a huge difference. But it is essential to recognize that the emergency food assistance program, and the systems we’ve built around it, are merely a band-aid. We cannot solve hunger by handing out free food because the conditions that perpetuate hunger have nothing to do with food.

Especially since the surge of racial justice protests of 2020, there has been greater public discussion, although still inadequate, of how inequality is engrained into our daily life.

Anti-hunger organizations and individuals are beginning to acknowledge that hunger is caused by systems of oppression that deny people access to the resources they need.

We live in a world where access to resources and opportunity to thrive are heavily determined by race, gender, sexual identity, and ability, among many other forms of discrimination.

Certain identities face greater barriers than others in finding affordable housing, living wages, accessible healthcare, and communities where they feel safe and welcome. Denial of any of these conditions makes it harder for people to access, afford, purchase, and prepare the food they need to thrive. The higher risk of hunger for demographics who experience greater rates of oppression clearly demonstrates how it is a systemic, and not an individual, problem.

To effectively address hunger, it’s important for anti-hunger advocates to learn who faces greater barriers to food access both out in the world and in their own organization.

As an example, my food pantry has a distinctly religious logo. Even though it has been many years since we were affiliated with a church, it’s impossible to tell that we aren’t a faith-based organization. In the past three years, I’ve heard from multiple LGBTQIA+ clients that they were initially hesitant to use our services due to fear of the attitudes they might encounter and a history of hate from religious institutions.

LGBTQIA+ individuals have experienced hostility, poorer service, or even violence when seeking social services from religious-based charities. It has only been through a very slow process of establishing our reputation as an inclusive space that we’ve seen an increase in our LGBTQIA+ clientele, since changing the logo is not an option. Although this evidence is anecdotal, it’s clear that fear of discrimination is a significant barrier to food access for many in my community.

Before I began deliberately welcoming LGBTQIA+ individuals to our pantry, it would have been easy to assume that this demographic didn’t need our services since they weren’t coming. Without considering why people aren’t utilizing our resources, we may completely ignore the needs of the community.

Fighting discrimination is hard but if we really want to end hunger, we must address oppression.

It is inadequate for emergency food assistance programs to just offer food. While pantries are an essential service, and one I passionately believe in, providing food to those who come for it only overcomes the smallest barriers. If we aspire to make food justice a priority, it is imperative that food pantries tackle the big problems. This means honestly evaluating what systems are keeping the most vulnerable communities away from our resources, and how our efforts may contribute to those barriers.

Here are three questions for food pantries to examine the potential barriers they may reinforce:

1. What is the makeup of the leadership, staff, and volunteer base?

A homogenous group both looks unwelcoming to others, but also means that your decision-making lacks diversity. If your pantry team is of all the same cultural background, you are unlikely to prioritize foods that you are unfamiliar with, even if they are important for the communities you serve. If there is no one who speaks the language on the team, it’s harder for those clients to even learn about services, let alone utilize them. If there’s no one with lived experience of hunger guiding decision-making, it’s easy to implement policies based on assumption rather than reality.

2. What’s the culture of the pantry?

Are clients monitored for their behavior or choices as they shop? It’s highly probable that implicit bias plays a role in how clients are supervised. The more rules your program implements, the more opportunities there are to enforce them unequally. This is why I advocate for as few rules as possible, and is why my pantry does not require our shoppers to move along a specific pathway. We have more traffic jams, but we don’t manufacture opportunities for people to do something wrong. This is also one reason why I oppose setting limits on how much food people can take.

3. Do they practice trauma-informed care?

People visiting a food pantry never just face hunger. On top of the challenges of paying rent, buying their children new shoes, and maintaining their prescriptions, it’s likely they’re also enduring racial harassment, sexual violence, or ableist discrimination. If your organization is knowledgeable and empathetic to these burdens, your shoppers are more likely to feel respected and welcomed. If you prioritize just giving everyone food, you ensure these clients feel silenced and invisible.

By deliberately evaluating how your pantry can overcome the barriers faced by our most vulnerable populations, we make food more accessible for everyone. If we really intend to end hunger, then we have no excuse for ignoring the communities with the highest needs.

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

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No One Knows What I Should Eat Better Than Me

As someone with an autoimmune disorder, at the beginning of the pandemic I was one of the individuals warned to be extra careful about exposure. To reduce my risk, I initially tried utilizing a grocery delivery service.

Although it was convenient to not make the physical trip to the store, I was quickly frustrated by the choices that my shoppers made, even when I could not have articulated my preferences beforehand. I had envisioned getting a slightly smaller onion. I wouldn’t have picked the lettuce with the wilted spot on the edge. Almond flour was not an acceptable substitute for cassava flour.

Having the power to make our own food choices is important. Not only does it allow me to eat what my body wants and culture practices, but also offers empowerment. Allowing someone else determine our food choices feels infantilizing and undignified.

The emergency food assistance system has long fostered the attitude that people experiencing hunger do so through their own failures, and need an authority to guide them in the right direction which justifies denying them choice in the matter.

For many years anti-hunger programs have offered very few opportunities to people experiencing hunger to select their own foods, or labeled individuals “ungrateful,” if they dared make special requests.

In traditional food pantries, opportunities for individuals to make their own choices can be severely limited. Food pantries are dependent on donations, and rarely have all the options that a family needs. Most also utilize systems that limit what and how much families can take, which means the ability to make decisions based on individual wants is significantly curtailed.

While I passionately believe that food pantries are powerful tools for implementing food justice, it’s important to call out these weaknesses so that we can begin to build better and more equitable systems.

We can do better (and many programs do!)

Food justice requires honoring the needs of every individual. This can only be accomplished by ensuring everyone has the power to choose their own foods. We all know our own needs best, and having the autonomy to make those decisions brings empowerment and dignity to our relationship with food.

It is inadequate for food assistance programs to provide food without allowing choice.

What programs allow people experiencing hunger make their own food choices?

-Grocery model pantries. This style of food pantry allows clients to make their own selections of what foods they want, and an increasing number allow clients to take the quantities they need as well. Although food pantry options will always be limited by their inventory which depends upon donations, this model provides people experiencing hunger with an experience as close to a grocery store as possible.

-Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). SNAP provides dollars for families to make their own food purchases with few restrictions, and are one of the most effective ways to ensure people have access to foods that work for them. SNAP generally can’t be used on hot foods or dining out, but give families essential resources for making their own choices about what they need in the grocery store.

–Double Up Food Bucks. This program matches SNAP dollars (generally up to $10) spent at farmers markets, providing shoppers with $20 to spend on fresh produce. This is a fantastic and growing program, as it makes farmers’ markets significantly more accessible to people with limited funds for food. Farmers’ markets are known for offering high quality but expensive produce that is often out of reach for low-income individuals. Available in 27 states, this program empowers participants to support their local farmers while increasing their power of choice and quality of food available.

I’m sure there are more programs that do incredible jobs of increasing choice and access- please feel free to share!

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 Make Your Food Donations Count This Winter

This week at my food pantry, as I walked by the long line of clients eagerly waiting to come inside to shop for groceries, I heard one woman on her cell phone say, “I’m already three months behind on my rent. I need all the help I can get.”

Unfortunately, this is not a unique story. Particularly as the holiday season approaches and people struggle with the impacts of inflation, more and more families will make hard choices about what they can afford and what they can do without, and far too often food is the easiest to cut.

At about this time every year, food banks and pantries across the country also begin strategizing and planning for the influx of need that accompanies the holiday season and the dark, colder months.

Emergency food access programs are bracing for a crush of clients as the need continues to rise.

We increasingly encounter clients forced to choose between buying food or heating their home, or paying rent, or purchasing new jackets for their children, or staying up-to-date on their medication.

Luckily, the holiday season also tends to bring a huge interest in donating food. Food banks and pantries will soon start to see a significant increase in both direct donations from individuals as well as through food drives. While we can’t solve most of the challenges faced by our clients, we can work to get them the food they need so their money can be spent elsewhere.

The food we offer our clients can make a huge difference as to whether we can really meet their needs, or simply alleviate an immediate crisis, so being thoughtful about your choices can have a powerful impact. If your or your community are contemplating donating to anti-hunger programs, here’s what you should know.

What we love:

Donate foods that make YOU happy. If you love it, chances are someone in our clientele will love it too. We serve an incredibly diverse population, and I’ve yet to encounter a food that someone doesn’t want. Go ahead and donate canned dolmas, giant jugs of chili oil, and bags of dried mushrooms. Someone’s got a recipe they’re excited to try.

Seasonings and condiments. There is a strong emphasis on donating healthy foods right now (as there should be) but even with all the healthy options in the world, it can be hard to make them into a tasty meal without salt, pepper, herbs, or spices. These are more expensive ingredients, which means they are donated less frequently.

Baking ingredients. While boxed mixes are wonderful for many people, we also serve plenty of clients who are delighted to make their own bread, cookies for their grandkids, or sometimes even pastries for food pantry staff! We are chronically low on flour, sugar, baking soda and powder, baking chocolate, and other ingredients for from-scratch baking. These items in particular often help people celebrate their culture and traditions, and we love any chance we have to uplift them.

If you’re planning a food drive and know the specific organization you want to donate to, call and ask what they need! They will probably have some very specific answers, and appreciate your attention to their food supply.

What we don’t love:

Homemade foods. You may be the most accomplished canner in the world, but we don’t know that, and all our foods must be made in a commercial kitchen so we cannot give away your beautiful homemade jam.

Open and partially-used foods. If you’re moving or cleaning out your kitchen, you may be eager to donate half-empty bags of sugar or gently-used spices rather than throw them out. While they may be safe and functional, no one wants someone else’s cast-offs. Give these to your friends instead because we cannot distribute them.

Alcohol. It should be obvious, but it happens too regularly that someone donates a bottle of wine or a couple cans of beer. While it is surely well-intentioned, there are a million reasons (and federal regulations) why we can’t give theses away.

When you package items together. Most pantry models cannot keep your donation together, so while we appreciate the thought that goes into taping spaghetti, pasta sauce, and shelf-stable parmesan together, it is highly unlikely that we can distribute them that way.

Want to do even more?

Donate year-round. Consider signing up for a program like the Portland Food Project (commonly known as Green Bag) that ensures donations come in throughout the year instead of just during the holidays. My household participates, and we have fun every two months loading up our green bag at the grocery store with the food options I know are most in demand. My food pantry is also a recipient, and the program adds essential variety to our food supply, especially in the summer months when donations drop significantly.

Avoid glass options when you can. With the volume of food we’re working with, it can be hard to ensure it is all handled as gently as it should.

Consider adding non-food items like can openers, toothbrushes, diapers (especially bigger sizes) or menstrual hygiene products. Many food banks and pantries also have systems to distribute these high demand items.

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

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The Hardest Part of Fighting Hunger Has Nothing to do With Food

Every day, our food pantry distributes approximately 7,000 pounds of food, all of which is carried or loaded on carts from the warehouse to be displayed on shelves, tables, or in bins. The physical demands of this work are extreme, and volunteers and staff are often exhausted at the end of shifts.

It’s easy to get caught up in these big numbers- our team moves 35,000 pounds of food per week, and we’re extremely proud of it. But tangible statistics like this can also mean that we forget to consider the other forms of labor that are equally essential to keep a food pantry running. For instance, the labor of helping someone facing food insecurity feel more comfortable and at ease while shopping at a food pantry.

Using a food pantry is highly stigmatized, and people experiencing food insecurity may feel embarrassed, humiliated, or simply extra emotional when they walk through our doors.

Welcoming clients to the pantry requires staff and volunteers to put forth extra positive and open energy.

I see this effort each day in how our team practices empathy as we explain the process for an overwhelmed new shopper, patience as we explain it again for individuals who worry about doing something wrong, and sympathy as we confess how our food supply may not meet everyone’s needs.

In part due to the stigma of food assistance, people often wait until their cupboards are completely bare before they seek our services. Sometimes they arrive under massive stress, which at times can manifest in some uncomfortable encounters: disrespectful or abusive language and unpredictable or even scary behavior.

It’s important for food pantries to explicitly recognize that managing client stress levels while offering respectful, dignified food assistance is emotionally exhausting.

Our pantry staff are exceptionally skilled in de-escalation, and when difficult or dangerous situations are diffused with skill, it’s easy for leadership to miss the fact that it was necessary at all. And even harder to recognize the full extent of the emotional labor that goes into prevention rather than reaction.

To build a pantry that prioritizes compassion, respect and dignity requires enormous amounts of effort to ensure clients feel welcome even when they’re rude, or feel taken care of even when they’re dissatisfied, or feel like their needs are heard even when we can’t meet them.

Recognizing that emotional labor is an essential part of fighting hunger, how can leaders in anti-hunger organizations better support their staff and volunteers?

Listen. For many people, even the concept of emotional labor is unfamiliar. I’m confident my female readers, and some men out there, have tried to explain the stresses and demands of emotional labor, only to have them brushed away. Anti-hunger leaders need to listen and learn about the emotional demands of this work.

Be aware of gender roles. Non-profit organizations are predominately staffed by women and managed by men. Men in leadership roles need to engage in structuring a dialogue, recognize, and share the weight of emotional labor in the workplace.

Recognize the extra burden through compensation. Exhaustion due to emotional labor means other tasks may not get done, which can impact performance, promotions, and wages. Leaders must work to avoid penalizing women working just as hard, if not harder than their male peers. Emotional labor is rarely listed on job descriptions, but can easily be a full-time job in itself.

Major thanks to Kern Herron for his contributions to this piece.

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

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Why Are We Burning Out Our Anti-Hunger Champions?

For the past week or more, anti-hunger advocates have been nervously watching the news regarding a potential government shutdown. A shutdown would have had immediate, harmful impacts on programs that are essential for keeping families fed, and left charitable organizations strained to the max.

SNAP, WIC, and the National School Lunch Program are the most effective tools we have for fighting hunger.

SNAP serves nine times more people than American food banks, which is why a pause in funding had this field so panicked.

For an industry that is already overwhelmed with need, the repercussions of this shutdown had my colleagues and I quaking in our shoes. The thought of adding to our already oversized workload was daunting, to put it mildly.

Although I’m relieved to see that the immediate crisis has been postponed, the panic this incited in the anti-hunger field is important to examine.

Several days ago, I had an informational interview with someone who works on national-level anti-hunger program implementation, and I learned that these advocates are equally exhausted. During the height of the pandemic, fears of hunger rates escalating out of control led to the dedication of significant (and needed!) additional funding. But this boost in resources also increased the workload of the people who administer the programs far beyond their capacity.

My colleague and I commiserated on the fact that anti-hunger advocates at every level are burnt out. A perpetually increasing workload (with no end in sight) and the nonprofit industry’s preference for spending as much as possible on clients and programs and as little as possible on staffing and overhead means that staff lack the support to thrive (or even just succeed) in their roles.

We’re reaching a tipping point.

At the end of February 2023, people receiving SNAP benefits lost approximately $90 per person per month to spend on food. Anti-hunger advocates correctly sounded the alarm that we were facing a hunger crisis that could overwhelm emergency food resources.

Several months later, those warnings have been proven correct. My food pantry has seen a significant increase in the number of clients, and particularly in people who have never before used emergency food services. A year ago, we were serving about 110 households per day. Last Friday, we served 181 in the same four-hour period.

Considering the impacts of inflation, we anticipate breaking new attendance and distribution records every month from now through at least December.

It is important that we continue to provide exceptional service to these families, but I’m also realizing that now is the time we need to pay attention to our anti-hunger advocates.

The physical demands of running a food pantry include moving several thousand pounds of food every day alongside the emotional labor of making sure clients feel comfortable and safe, volunteers are welcomed, and as much support as possible is provided to individuals in crisis. Growing numbers of clients mean more food, higher stress levels, and greater administrative responsibilities, all to be completed in the same eight-hour workday.

No matter how much we love the work, we cannot continue to meet the demands being placed on emergency food assistance programs without additional support.

As the holidays approach, we will begin to hear calls for food drives, volunteers, and funds from food banks and pantries who will likely cite the increasing hunger needs of our communities. They may boast about how the majority or entirety of your donation goes to helping people in need. What this claim neglects to include is that they only achieve this by minimizing wages and depriving staff of the resources they need to do their job well.

How can you fight hunger without burning out your advocates?

Research the priorities of your favorite nonprofits. Do they boast about low overhead costs? Does their staff make a living wage? Let this inform your donation decisions and be vocal about it.

Advocate for trust-based philanthropy. The neglect of nonprofit staff is just as much a fault of funders as it is of leadership. When organizations have the autonomy to spend money how they want rather than being told by outside voices, they can make choices that support their mission rather than cater to donor preferences.

Remember that hunger is a systemic problem, based in oppression and poverty, and that long-term effective solutions will address these issues rather than just food access. Support anti-poverty measures by voting, advocacy, and engaging with your elected leaders.

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

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