Tag: food-bank

Who Doesn’t Deserve to Eat?

My news feed is increasingly full of conversations examining frightening cuts to SNAP, the glaring hypocrisies of MAHA policies, and rising costs that make it more difficult for everyone to access the food they need. Additionally, food pantries and other emergency food assistance programs face growing client numbers and food shortages. All these conditions increase the difficulty of distributing a limited food supply to growing demand.

While the food pantry struggle to meet community demands is real, it also risks pushing us towards some toxic thinking.

When we implement policies determining who to distribute food to, it also means we decide who doesn’t receive food.

This is the binary I’m committed to fighting.

This blog is called Who Deserves to Eat because I want to examine the ways that the anti-hunger movement engages with the question of deservingness, and how we can move away from it.

When your pantry makes decisions about what zip code disqualifies a shopper from entry, what income limit makes them ineligible, or what identification they need to provide, you choose who will eat tonight and who will go hungry.

This is a slippery slope. There are many ways that our society already catalogues our fellow human beings based on circumstances beyond individual control. When we accept without question that it’s also okay to choose who deserves to eat, it opens the door to believing that we are justified in obstructing food access for those deemed undeserving.

Whose humanity should we recognize? Who should we punish for past transgressions? Who do we think has earned the love and support of their community, and who hasn’t? What do people have to do to earn this support? Too often this deservingness is assigned via identity, such as being a child or a senior or a single mother. Other times it builds on a history of oppression, qualifying those who “work hard” as the rightful beneficiaries to support based on their skin tone, religion, employment status, sexual orientation, or other identity.

The question, “who deserves to eat?” is rhetorical. Few people argue that anyone doesn’t deserve to eat. But it’s important we actually implement that same attitude while we do anti-hunger work. It’s too easily lost amongst all the other challenges of being an anti-hunger advocate.

While your pantry might rightfully run out of food before every person gets what they need, it’s important you remember that no matter what, every human deserves to eat, and your organization doesn’t have the right to make a judgement call otherwise.

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

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Building a Better Food Pantry Website

When I’m nervous about doing something new, I try to learn as much as I can in advance. This usually involves reviewing websites and reviews that allow me to plan and strategize. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

This is why it’s so important for food pantries to present clear information on their website. With such a strong stigma against receiving food assistance, pantries should assume that people are nervous about visiting, especially for the first time. One of the most effective things we can do to ease anxiety is to be explicit about what to expect at a visit.

This seems straightforward, but if you review almost any food pantry website you’re likely to notice they tend to highlight volunteer shifts and pantry supply needs rather than user information. (If you have an example of a pantry website focused on shoppers, please comment!) For many pantries, there’s only a short bulletin about the shopping experience, with more information dedicated to the community supporting the organization like donors and volunteers.

This is not surprising, given that most pantries have focused their outreach on volunteers and donations since they established their internet presence. It’s hard to move away from this model because of chronic shortages of both volunteers and resources.

But we’re currently facing an increase in food pantry shoppers as economic stability ebbs and hunger rates rise. Many people may soon be contemplating visiting a food pantry for the first time. If they’re anything like me, they’ll spend some time looking up websites and trying to understand what the experience will look like before they take the plunge and actually visit a pantry. Like any business, a website that demonstrates dignity and respect will look far more attractive to potential shoppers than one that is dismissive or condescending.

This is why it’s so important that food pantries have outreach materials that prioritize people experiencing food insecurity. Done well, it won’t deter any donors or volunteers with a genuine interest in helping, and can improve the shopper experience. Done poorly, it’s easy to deter someone from ever even trying to visit and getting food.

Food Pantry Website checklist:

  • Place visitor information front and center. If shopper information isn’t on the home page, have a large tab with a clear title (Need Food? Find Food, Visit our Pantry, etc.) that clearly directs people seeking services.
  • Share information about the food supply, like whether you can accommodate special diets or cooking capabilities, whether you carry perishable products, how often visitors can come, and how much food is available to each household. Include everything that is shared at a new client orientation in the pantry.
  • Include an FAQ, with information about parking, whether they should bring their own shopping bags, if there are volunteers able to help carry items, or whether people are allowed to shop for others who can’t come to the panty themselves.
  • Share your pantry schedule, including holiday closures or any adjustments to your operating hours. Whether or not someone eats dinner literally depends on them knowing your schedule.

Focusing this information front and center can also enhance the attractiveness of your pantry for those volunteers and donors your hoping to bring in, by helping them get a clearer picture of how your organization operates. Focusing on the shopping experience won’t deter anyone genuinely interested in engaging with your pantry, and can help alleviate the nerves of individuals anxious about making their first visit receiving emergency food assistance. 

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

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Fostering Growth in Food Pantries

I started working at my first food pantry in 2014, and have now managed four different ones. Each pantry in the time I was there doubled their clientele, and two saw a quadrupling in client numbers over 2-3 years.

While I like to believe that the increase in the early days of my career was because I helped these pantries build a reputation for respectful, compassionate, and abundant service, the 2020s increases in pantry visits reflect national trends. Food insecurity numbers remain high, and food justice experts anticipate that they will stay so as we face inflation, an oil crisis, and economic insecurity.

This means that food pantries will likely see increasing visits from new and returning clients. Although many pantries have little control over what or how much food they receive, that doesn’t mean that they still can’t prepare for higher visitor numbers. There are lots of other steps we can take to facilitate the shopping experience as our community needs evolve.

It’s important to remember that efficiency is not the goal of emergency food assistance programs- it’s the comfort, dignity, and accessibility of food assistance. Efficiency is not a component of food justice.

Preparing for growth:

  • What are the limitations for serving more shoppers at once? Is it just the quantity of food, or is it also the check-in system, or number of shopping carts, or a narrow doorway or a bottleneck at the meat freezer? What changes can you make to increase the number of people who can navigate your space at the same time?

It’s easy to convince ourselves that we can’t change our facilities, but there are often little adjustments that can make big differences. Spread out your tables or coolers so there’s more room to go around them, or offer the same food options in multiple locations.

  • What is your volunteer capacity? It’s important to consider what pace and responsibilities your volunteers can handle, and not just how many you have. You probably have a volunteer or two who refuses to rush no matter what, which means they may not be an ideal volunteer for managing check-in on a busy day.

Are your volunteers energized and excited about a busy day, or are their attitudes lackluster? Perhaps now is the time to start recruiting and training higher-energy volunteers able to manage busier shopping days. This often starts with the energy and enthusiasm that staff bring to their roles, which brings me to my next point…

  • How can you support staff? I know most food pantries don’t have the resources to offer significant raises, but it’s important you recognize that more shoppers means more work. I once had a manager who absolutely refused to acknowledge that our staff was working harder since we were still working the same number of hours, even though we were serving twice as many households in the same amount of time. Guess how many of us still work there?

This field is already prone to burnout, so think ahead about what you can do to keep staff feeling positive and supported. Can you offer extra PTO, be flexible on work hours, or make a genuine effort to listen to staff suggestions of what they need?

  • Make it easy for new shoppers, or those who haven’t visited in a while. It’s incredibly intimidating to visit a food pantry, and even more so if you can’t figure out what you need to do. List on your website and on signage outside your doors exactly what information you need from shoppers and how the shopping process works. This will help streamline and simplify your new shopper orientation.
  • Coordinate with other local pantries. Prepare resource lists to share with shoppers in case your pantry can’t provide what they need. See if you can alternate dates with other pantries so that there’s always an option in your neighborhood to access food.

Schedule a pizza party or event with staff from other pantries- it’s important to remember they are allies rather than competitors. How can you coordinate to ensure your community members have access to all the nourishment they need?

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

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Addressing Mission Creep in Food Justice

I once worked at a major food bank during a transition that saw the nonprofit gently pivoting away from direct volunteer service towards more advocacy and community organizing. With this change, the food bank faced intense accusations of mission creep from volunteers, donors, and even staff who believed that food banks should focus on distributing food instead of advocacy. Even though our mission statement clearly expressed the intent to fight hunger rather than just distribute food, the change in tactics triggered significant opposition.

Every anti-hunger nonprofit I’ve ever worked for has at some point been accused of “mission creep.”

This is the idea that the organization’s focus or goals are expanding beyond its stated intentions or responsibilities. In my experience, any time a food justice organization reorganizes or evolves their strategy, they will face accusations of mission creep.

The greatest barrier we face to eliminating hunger is our collective assumptions and biases against people experiencing hunger. While the field had evolved significantly in recent decades, there is still significant resistance to prioritizing the dignity, respect, and autonomy of people experiencing hunger (over the distribution of food with the attitude of “be grateful for what you can get”). Mission creep is often weaponized to combat this shift in focus.

While there are organizations who may genuinely stray from their agendas, too often mission creep relates more to opposition of new strategies for fighting hunger.

The fear of being accused of losing focus can be an effective deterrent to innovation. It’s also a key concept that keeps nonprofits stuck addressing symptoms and not root causes. Food pantry leadership, fearful of such accusations, might continue to prioritize distributing food even when data shows convincing opportunities to reduce hunger through other avenues.

How food pantries can handle accusations of mission creep:

  • Consult your mission. You’re not restricted to just handing out food if your mission is to fight or end hunger, if you already have a strong understanding of root causes. It’s up to your Board of Directors to determine how big your scope is, but adding programs like anti-poverty advocacy, education on food justice and sovereignty, and supporting immigrants can all fall under the umbrella of fighting hunger. If your mission statement doesn’t give you enough guidance, you need a new mission statement.
  • Prepare to lose donors or volunteers, and gain others. I’ve met a number of food pantry volunteers who have been volunteering for decades, and feel very strongly that there’s nothing more important than direct service. While that’s an awesome attitude in a volunteer, it can also translate into strong opposition to change. Don’t adjust your long-term goals to accommodate one or two volunteers.

Previous Post: Food Pantries: Helping Shoppers Get Food Home

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: Helping Shoppers Get Food Home

When we talk about designing respectful and effective food pantries, focus falls on the quantity and quality of food alongside the experience people have while shopping. Anyone who’s ever worked in a food pantry knows how difficult and how valuable it is to address these goals.

Because of the challenges of uplifting dignity within our current emergency food program, it’s easy to neglect smaller but still essential components of running a functional food pantry. One of these is considering how people carry their food, in the pantry and on the way home.

It’s difficult enough to maintain basic pantry operations without worrying about what happens next, but how people transport their food is an essential component of building access.

Shopping in the pantry

There’s no “one size fits all” for how to get around a food pantry, since there is so much diversity in the style and design of these organizations. But because the most dignified and respectful (and therefore effective) food pantries empower shoppers to choose their own food, it’s important for pantries to offer a way for guests to carry it as they go.

While pantries who prepack boxes have the ease of simply handing off a box or bag, choice pantries need to provide a shopping cart or basket for the ease of their guests. Shopping carts are the gold standard, since many people may not be able to carry the amount of food they would like to take home.

The size of the cart matters. Standard carts donated by grocery stores may be too big for small spaces and will naturally encourage people to take more food. Smaller carts are more maneuverable and potentially more suitable for your food supply, but may have to be purchased.

The headache that shopping carts cause for staff is due to their tendency to wander. Since shoppers may lack reliable transportation, a cart enables them to take more food than they can carry alone. Once it leaves the property, however, it’s unlikely that cart is ever coming back. If your pantry uses shopping carts, it’s important to have a system for tracking them.

One of my previous pantries numbered our carts and documented who used each one, and then volunteers escorted shoppers to their cars or to the edge of the property. Although it didn’t keep all carts from wandering, we knew who they disappeared with and could often follow up.

Shopping baskets in pantries may be unavoidable, but they are often an uncomfortable limitation. Especially for pantries who limit how often someone can shop, it may prevent them from taking the food they need and be an insurmountable barrier for people with disabilities.

Taking food home

Food pantries also face the difficulty of finding ways for shoppers to carry their food home. Food pantries are rarely located in convenient locations, which means shoppers may have to carry food long distances. Many people forget their reusable bags, or may not even own them since having to purchase them is a significant barrier. This means food pantries either need to provide something to carry food in, or put their shoppers in the uncomfortable position of having to manage it for themselves.

If using shopping carts, it’s important for pantries to offer boxes or bags up front, or else suffer the traffic jam of pantry guests loading food into their cars can by can.

Our pantry used to save boxes for shoppers alongside accepting donations of paper and reusable bags. Donated plastic and paper bags are difficult and labor intensive, since they may be damaged or come in awkward sizes that demand sorting, with a fair amount of waste.

Options:

  • Offer shopping carts to your guests. Develop a food delivery system for people who live too far or can’t transport the food themselves!
  • Purchase or solicit donations of carts and/or baskets. Consider the appropriate size for your pantry space and a system for tracking them.
  • Purchase or solicit donations of bags or boxes for shoppers to take home. Consider what shapes and strength are necessary based on your food supply and shopper needs. For example, paper bags are awful on rainy days, and large boxes of canned goods may be impossible for some shoppers to carry.
  • Increase the frequency that people can shop to reduce the need to take a lot at once. Empowering guests to shop at least once a week will help decrease the amount of food needed for each visit.

Remember that our goal is to end hunger, which depends on people getting the food they need to feel secure. Don’t let your biases about quantity, quality, or capacity influence your operations decisions. Every way you maximize the amount of food leaving your facility should be celebrated as a success.

Next Post: Addressing Mission Creep in Food Justice

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

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Preparing for the Next Storm

Our world is a terrifying place right now, especially for those of us doing direct service with vulnerable populations. I find comfort and hope in punk rock music, and today’s blog title made me think of the song The Next Storm by my favorite musician, Frank Turner.

Last week, more than half the country started digging out from a catastrophic winter storm (and bracing for the next one). I’m in Portland, Oregon where we’ve had barely enough winter to dust off my rain boots, but I’ve been anxiously checking on friends hunkering down across the East Coast.

Because of the size and scope of this storm, I also can’t help thinking about the enormous impacts it had on regional food systems. There are countless stories of empty grocery store shelves, long lines, and impassable roads.

Similarly, food pantries had a similar experience plus the additional responsibility of distributing food that might not keep through an extended closure. Mostly dependent upon donations, it will take time for pantries to refill their supplies.

It’s an important reminder that even a few days of severe weather can have long-lasting impacts on food access.

Food pantries are relegated to the fringes of established food systems, which means they can be the last to recover from major interruptions like weather events. This is despite them having the most vulnerable clientele. For example, when schools are closed, children lose access to the free lunch program. Providing additional home meals on top of lost work hours can be catastrophic for already stressed budgets.

What can food pantries do to prepare for sudden or unexpected closures?

  • Maintain a stockpile for days when you may not receive incoming donations. One of my past food pantries kept a stash of boxes for people who showed up after we closed, didn’t have cooking capabilities, or had a caseworker in a rush picking up food for them. It included staples like cereal and shelf-stable milk, canned soups, fruits, and vegetables, pasta and sauce, and other odds and ends. We recognized it was an inadequate long-term solution, but allowed us to serve our shoppers even when we had no donations coming in. It’s a luxury to have an emergency stockpile, but useful if you have the space!
  • Establish personal relationships with your donors. At one of my first school food pantries, we developed an incredibly positive relationship with a local Grocery Outlet, who called me whenever they had a donation. Sometimes I could take it, and sometimes I couldn’t, but we kept it casual and comfortable enough that they always checked in with our pantry before exploring other options. When regular food deliveries pause, personal relationships may help facilitate alternative options.
  • Invest in your freezers. In my experience, many pantries offer frozen meat but don’t offer additional frozen items. If you have access, it’s incredibly worthwhile adding a freezer to improve your frozen food options to improve access to fruits, vegetables, and ready-to-eat meals.
  • If you don’t have extra storage space but have funding for emergency food supplies, consider distributing grocery store gift cards. They empower families to pick the items they need, which is infinitely more dignified and effective at meeting their individual needs. Because stores are most likely to open sooner than pantries after disruptive events, gift cards improve community food access. And yes, I’d advocate for gift cards that allow people to buy what they want, without restriction.

How can pantries help their shoppers prepare for service interruptions?

While I recognize why they are sometimes necessary, I firmly believe in eliminating limits wherever possible. They are more a manifestation of our biases and assumptions about hunger than a response to client needs.

Remember that our goal as food justice champions is to end hunger, which means helping our shoppers build the security they need so that an event like a winter storm doesn’t have to be a food access crisis.

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 and Food Safety

I once met a food pantry volunteer who told me that at their pantry, they checked the quality of donations of milk by opening one container and drinking it. If it tasted okay, the donation was put through.

There are a million things wrong with this strategy. The one I can’t get over is that pantries rarely get large donations of the same product, which means that you can’t assume it all has the same expiration date or even comes from the same source. Tasting one carton tells you nothing useful, and I can’t figure out how this would ever be considered an appropriate strategy.

Many food pantries depend on donations from stores that are made because products are at or past their expiration date. This means that we carry the burden of ensuring all the food we distribute is safe to consume.

It’s important to remember that many people experiencing food insecurity also lack access to affordable healthcare, which means getting sick from food pantry food could be catastrophic.

Besides offering real health risks, distributing unsafe food demonstrates a profound disrespect for the people we are supposed to be uplifting. The responsibility is not one to be taken lightly.

The challenge is that few pantries have enough food to serve their community, which increases the temptation to distribute questionable items.

While there are clear requirements about how to manage food safety in donation programs, food pantries also don’t always have the infrastructure or training necessary to maintain it.

At one of the first food pantries I worked at, our refrigeration was limited to three regular sized refrigerators while regularly serving over 100 households. I spent many winter days with the warehouse door open to chill the items that didn’t fit in the fridges. This is not how this should be done, but illustrates the impossible situation we put food justice organizations in.

It’s important to appreciate just how hard it is for food pantries to maintain food quality while depending on inadequate infrastructure, insufficient resources, and an absence of training.

This is why food safety training needs to be an ongoing priority for all staff and volunteers.

Volunteers often do not receive adequate food safety training because staff may not have the time or the knowledge themselves. Many volunteers come to food pantries with a primary goal of reducing food waste– which often translates into trying to distribute as much as possible and discarding as little as they can. An unintentional consequence of this goal is that they may distribute foods that are no longer safe to consume.

How food pantries can foster food safety:

  • Don’t be afraid to say no to a donation you don’t think is safe. I once had a manager with a fear of confrontation, which means my team found ourselves regularly throwing out unsafe donations so that we didn’t risk offending the donor. This is a waste of time, energy, and resources. If a donor is only giving you garbage, there’s no value in the relationship anyways.
  • Host regular food safety trainings for your volunteers. When I worked at a regional food bank, we had a volunteer shift sorting fresh donations that included a ten minute orientation on food safety standards that we shared with every single shift. It was boring and repetitive, but also essential for keeping our food supply safe and helping volunteers become better-informed consumers. Normalize sharing it so often that your regular volunteers can recite along with you. They’ll be more likely to help teach new volunteers and maintain appropriate standards.
  • Empower your staff to take more advanced food safety training courses than just getting their food handlers card. Consider what other advanced certifications are out there, and see what options there are to take regular or ongoing trainings, instead of just when their cards expire.
  • Don’t be afraid to advertise your infrastructure needs. Encourage donors to contribute to your refrigerator fund or help with the purchase of a three-compartment sink instead of the food purchasing fund. Brainstorm ways that you can navigate the space and resources available to help your team be more effective based on the types of donations that you regularly receive, or that you’re trying to get more of.

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

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Preparing for the Next Hunger Crisis

With the end of the year comes planning for the one to come, and this year most anti-hunger organizations are preparing for a much more difficult next twelve months.

With cuts to SNAP, purchasing restrictions, implementation of new eligibility requirements, and the expiration of ACA subsidies leading to higher healthcare costs, many, many more people are going to face hunger in 2026.

Frustratingly, the chronic nature of hunger and perishability of foods means that it’s incredibly difficult to preempt it in the food banking system.

In a perfect world, we’d take the policy steps necessary to prevent it by ensuring people have money to buy what they need and that healthy food is accessible to everyone.

The next best option would be to ensure that food pantries and food banks have an abundant support so that they don’t ever have to send someone away hungry.

Tragically, most anti-hunger advocates have access to none of these options. But that doesn’t mean that we must just sit back and wait for the coming crisis. There are still steps that we can take to preemptively fight hunger and make our communities stronger. Effective action demands that we recognize the complexity of hunger and acknowledge that it does not exist in a silo.

Food insecurity is not really about the cost of food or the absence of the resources to pay for it.

It’s about the health of individuals and communities, both physical, economic, and social, and what resources are made available to them. Hunger is no accident.  

Most importantly, hunger is not something that we can manage individually. The only way we can successfully fight it is through coalition building with traditional and unconventional partners.

What can anti-hunger organizations do to fight hunger without food:

  • Connect with organizations who can provide support on health insurance. Health insurance is a confusing monster. I can’t pretend to understand how it all works, and I also don’t have the time (or patience!) That’s why it’s so important to seek out people and organizations who understand the details and can offer resources and empathy to individuals who face astronomically rising costs or having to go without it altogether.

Instead of waiting for the deluge of phone calls, start researching today who can be on your support team. Find shareable links or the phone numbers of real human beings. With costs doubling or more, it means people will have to choose between eating or having health insurance, which leaves them less healthy overall and vulnerable to emergencies.

  • Make friends with your local housing advocates. Housing security is closely tied to many other factors, and keeping people safely housed can help them weather significant other challenges. Housing resources are highly localized and almost as confusing as health insurance, but most big cities will have several organizations specializing in housing support. They are likely also overwhelmed but can hopefully still offer opportunities for information sharing and collaboration that can benefit you and the people you serve.
  • Connect with local schools. While they’re just as strapped for funding as any food pantry, they offer enormous access to children and local families, compelling opportunities for storytelling, and motivated advocates. Maybe they’ve already got teams engaged around school lunches or a backpack program, and there may be opportunities for collaboration or expansion. Anti-hunger issues are too often managed alone, but now is the time to eliminate those barriers.

I confess that I don’t have good feelings about 2026 overall. However, I find solace in the knowledge that there are so many people doing anti-hunger work right now driven by passion, empathy, and fierce determination. Every day, I see incredible innovation, experimentation, and a willingness to think outside the box that we haven’t previously harnessed in this field.

This is exhausting work, but I’m excited and honored to be among peers committed to ensuring all our neighbors are nourished with compassion 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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How My Body Taught Me That Food Choices Matter

To honor my holiday vacation, I’m reposting this blog from April, 2023.

Eight years ago in mid-December, I checked myself into the ER. It turned out that my appendix had burst approximately three months prior, with all the complications that accompany a life-threatening infection. I spent 12 days in the hospital and had two surgeries before moving in with my mom for an additional month because I was too weak to take care of myself on my own.

I endured a year of slow recovery before something triggered my system that suddenly gave me near-debilitating arthritis and an increased sensitivity to foods. Over the next six months I slowly just stopped eating because being hungry was preferable to the pain, depression and fatigue that accompanied digestion.

Some foods hurt me worse than others, and I eventually reached the point where I ate little besides cabbage and avocados. I felt like I was dragging my body through the heaviest mud imaginable, and nothing could lighten the weight.  

I tried every diet I could find, was dismissed and mistreated by numerous doctors, penalized at work for talking to HR about taking medical leave, and was starting to panic that the future I envisioned might never materialize as my body continued to fail.

Through random chance, someone recommended a diet plan that excluded foods containing the lectin protein in seeds that are hard on sensitive digestive systems. It proposed eliminating all grains, fruits, and grain-fed animal products along with any preservatives. Within four days of starting this new plan, I began to feel better. I’ve now been following this diet for five years and in many ways have been able to return to the life I hoped for.

I became an anti-hunger advocate and food justice champion long before I got sick. I was already committed to making food a fun and communal experience rather than just a vehicle for nutrition.

But over the last five years of learning how sensitive my body is to my food choices, my understanding of food insecurity has changed dramatically.

My quality of life is entirely determined by my diet- how well I sleep, how much energy I have, my focus at work, and my capacity to manage emotional burdens. And my understanding of my nutritional needs is constantly changing and evolving.

I’m lucky to have always been able to afford and prepare the food I need. I could buy artichokes, sardines, and radicchio, all foods which at one time held an important role in my recovery.

But I know that if I was dependent on a food pantry or SNAP benefits for my nutrition, I would still be miserably sick. My diet would be determined by the options available, rather than by what my body needed.

I know that if I allowed someone else to determine what foods I eat- even someone well-educated in nutrition- they would not get it right. Everyone knows their own needs best, and my role working in food pantries is to facilitate that as best as I can.

Many people experiencing food insecurity have never had the opportunity to make intuitive food choices before. The food they eat is determined by what they can afford or what the food pantry is able to give them. I don’t want anyone else to ever be as sick as I was, so I am committed to ensuring that people facing food insecurity can choose what and how much they want to eat.

There are still times where I rage about the things my illness has taken from me- the freedom to eat out at a restaurant without scrutinizing the menu, the enjoyment of a good whiskey, or eating pizza with my partner.

But upon reflection, I also see that it has given me invaluable experience and the tools I need for being a better anti-hunger advocate and helping my food pantry always do better for the people we serve.

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

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What Food Pantry Should You Donate To?

A colleague recently reached out to me about hosting a food drive. Their organization is ready with a donation barrel, but they wanted a recommendation about whom they should donate to. In writing my response, I realized there were a lot of factors to consider when making this decision.

(This is also the time of the year where many organizations are inspired to host their own food distribution or meal, but that often doesn’t actually help local anti-hunger efforts.) Collecting resources for an experienced organization is much more effective, and easier for everyone.

While every anti-hunger organization needs food right now, it is important to recognize that there are many different types of pantries with different styles. Luckily, there are thousands of diverse organizations out there, and with a little research you can find one that aligns with your values.

How to pick an organization to donate to:

Volunteer: The gold standard for picking your donation recipient is to volunteer more than once, which will help you identify if they are a good fit with your belief system. I recommend more than once because the first time is mostly orientation. The second shift will be when you really start to understand how things work. Spending some time doing on-the-ground service will help you learn what resources are or are not available to inspire your donation drive.

Word of Mouth: If volunteering isn’t an option (many food pantries have full shifts right now because of the holidays, but they are often in great need of volunteers in January, too!) I recommend seeking out ways to connect with a volunteer, shopper, or someone else familiar with the organization. Staff are likely swamped, but other community members may have capacity to share their experience. What do they love about it? What makes it special?

Other factors to consider:

Proximity: There are a lot of different ways to choose a food pantry to support, and proximity is an incredibly valid one. Selecting the food pantry nearest to you is a great idea because you’ll support individuals within your immediate community. More of your neighbors than you realize likely utilize the resource.

Doing an internet search for your nearest food pantry might surprise you- I recently learned that two different churches in my neighborhood also have food pantries that I didn’t previously know about.

Client experience: This is the primary factor that determines the recommendations that I give out. While it’s impossible to really know without having been a client myself, I consider factors like being a grocery-style pantry, what communities they welcome, and how they determine eligibility.

I favor pantries with the fewest eligibility requirements, since it’s impossible (and completely irrelevant) for us for know why someone comes to a food pantry.

For instance, I won’t recommend donating to a pantry that only serves people who already receive benefits like SNAP or WIC, since that excludes a significant number of vulnerable individuals (and that number will soon grow from SNAP cuts.)

There are still many organizations, covertly or not, who remain unsafe spaces for marginalized communities like immigrants and LGBTQ+ individuals. I look for organizations who explicitly welcome these communities, because in an increasingly hostile world silence can easily be interpreted as taking the side of the oppressor.

There are many organizations out there serving specific demographics, from veterans, to foster children, to people living with HIV/AIDS, and many more. If there’s a community you feel passionate about supporting, there’s probably an anti-hunger resource or food pantry aligned with your beliefs who needs your help.

It’s also important to consider what type of support you want to offer. If you want to donate to a larger food bank, money is probably more desirable than food, since they have more buying power and less capacity to sort and distribute small-scale donations. However, a food pantry might prefer food donations (please ask!), and have specific requests based on their current inventory, such as canned fruit or soups.

I like to encourage themed food drives which guide donors’ choices and make sorting slightly easier for recipients. Things like baking supplies, soups, or spices and seasonings (my personal favorite) help ensure the recipient organization has enough to distribute to many shoppers, and saves them from the conflicts that can occur with limited high-demand items.

While every anti-hunger organization needs food right now, it’s important to carefully consider where your donation goes. It demonstrates who you think deserves to eat, and who you think doesn’t.

Ensuring your donations go to the pantries who give their guests the most positive, abundant, and dignified experience helps move our world a little closer to the place where everyone has access to those same privileges.

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

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Building an Abundance Mindset in Your Anti-Hunger Team

When we are depleted, it is harder to take care of those around us. It’s difficult to convince our community we have the resources we need to support them when we ourselves don’t believe it.

There is no time or place where this reality is more relevant than right now in our food pantries and banks. Rising numbers of visitors alongside interruptions and cuts to the food supply mean that anti-hunger fighters face increasing burdens with fewer resources.

Last week, I had the ultimate privilege of being part of a webinar panel on building abundance hosted by Katie Martin, the author of Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries, alongside food banking expert and consultant Seana Weaver.

We spoke about why the idea of abundance is so important to food pantries, and dug into some of the ways that we can foster that attitude among anti-hunger advocates. Here is the video if you’re interested.

It’s important to remember that abundance means having a lot of something, and that it’s possible to have a lot without having enough. This is an essential duality that food pantries experience every day.

How we think about hunger is one of the most powerful influences on how we fight it. When we focus on what we don’t have, the emphasis falls on maintaining limited resources, often to the detriment of the people we intend to serve. When we adopt an abundant mindset, it empowers us to celebrate what we do have and use it more effectively.

While a future post will discuss what we can do to help food pantry guests feel this sense of abundance, it’s important that we start with staff and volunteers. Convincing this demographic that your food pantry has the resources to thrive means they can more successfully convey it to your community.  

Introducing abundance to staff:

  • Adequate wages and benefits. Too often the nonprofit world expects employees to be martyrs, dedicated to the work regardless of the reward. No matter how we feel about the work, the reality is that we also must pay rent, afford medical bills, buy food, and maintain our vehicles. You’re likely to breed resentment if your focus on abundance is limited to the people you serve.
  • Support: Are there enough staff to do the work? Is it possible for staff to comfortably take a break or lunch? Is there an expectation (spoken or not) that staff should sacrifice to support each other, like not taking days off? While I recognize that few pantries have the resources to add staff, keep in mind that retention is cheaper than regularly hiring and training new individuals.
  • Recognition: Fighting hunger demands an enormous amount of emotional labor. Every day, staff work with people who are struggling with enormous challenges; not just hunger but also housing insecurity, medical debt, caregiving, and all kinds of discrimination. Offering daily support to 40 or 50 different people experiencing some kind of trauma is enormously exhausting. Too often, workplaces don’t recognize that the conversations that go into these interactions are just as difficult and draining as moving thousands of pounds of canned goods.

Demonstrating abundance to volunteers:

  • Celebrate abundance. When a guest leaves the pantry with an abundant amount of food, I’ve often heard volunteers mutter comments about how it’s “too much.” I like to counter this attitude by regularly telling volunteers how excited I am when someone leaves with lots of food, and to envision the excitement and security that the individual must feel when accessing this support. This can gradually help your volunteers transition from the idea that your pantry should give out as little food as possible to maintain supply, and instead to give out as much as is necessary to ensure your community feels supported and nourished.
  • Pick a food item to treat abundantly. Ask your volunteers to act as if they have an unlimited supply to encourage guests to take. It doesn’t have to be a popular food, and it doesn’t have to be consistent (I’ve done this with everything from cranberry sauce to cabbage to veggie chips.) Demonstrating an excess will help volunteers gradually process that their role is to be givers of abundance rather than gatekeepers, while also sharing this attitude with your pantry guests.
  • Don’t put volunteers in enforcement roles. When volunteers are responsible for supervising shoppers, such as telling them where they are allowed to go or how much food they may take, it forces them into a confrontational position focused on scarcity. It’s incredibly difficult to feel positive about the impact they’re making when the focus is on telling people what not to do and what they can’t have. I encourage pantries to have volunteers in monitoring positions, but to get staff when enforcement is needed so that volunteers remain immersed in abundance. This is an increased responsibility for staff- highlighting the need for support and recognition!

Building an abundance mindset is not something that can be achieved overnight. It requires repeated exposure over a long period of time until it is gradually adopted as part of the food pantry culture.

The most important thing to remember about implementing an abundance mindset is that you can make a significant impact simply by adjusting the way you think and talk about hunger. Even if you’re not able to make any changes to systems or structures, considering the attitudes we approach hunger with can have a powerful impact on the experience of everyone within the food pantry community.

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

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Uplifting Dignity Amidst a Hunger Crisis

Being an anti-hunger advocate is exhausting right now. The scale of the need we face as people experiencing hunger go without essential SNAP benefits is astronomical. I’m frightened by the growing needs of my neighbors and the overwhelming but vastly insufficient amount of work demanded of my peers. Even though benefits are in the process of restored, it is hardly the end of rising hunger.

A common theme I’ve recently noticed in the public sphere is the tendency to minimize the severity of hunger. I understand it- the suffering and the ramifications are too great to imagine, so it’s easier to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Even empathetic analyses are failing to recognize how the loss of SNAP- even temporarily- may be a harbinger of houselessness, dropping out of school, job loss, serious medical consequences, and more.

Hunger has much bigger consequences than just empty bellies.

Hunger is never the only challenge people face, and cutting food resources also cuts away at other essential lifelines.

Although our primary goal is to ensure people can access the food they need with dignity and compassion, it’s important that we remember there is so much more that we aren’t helping with.

To succeed in our mission, we need to actively avoid minimizing the experience of hunger.

Food insecurity is trauma.

It’s true that one or two days of hunger won’t kill you. But the cumulative impact of reoccurring food insecurity has profound, lasting impacts, and we impede our own efforts when we dismiss the hardship of this reality.

How to avoid dismissing the impacts of hunger:

  • Acknowledge when your food supply is inadequate or inappropriate. There are a million valid reasons why you don’t have the food your shoppers want or need, but they don’t need to hear those details. If they can’t get the food they need, at least they can see that anti-hunger advocates understand what they’re facing.

My previous pantry saw a noticeable decrease in conflict when we started listening to the concerns of our shoppers without intent to respond. It’s hard, but it will help your shoppers feel seen, and you’ll hopefully learn something!

  • Actively fight judgements based on appearance. Especially now, as the government shutdown weigh heavily on our economy, people who may have never previously visited a food pantry before are seeking help. They may drive nice cars, live in upscale neighborhoods, and wear new clothes, but none of this influences their need for food and support.
  • As food pantry attendance goes up alongside staff stress and fatigue, fight the tendency to treat shoppers as a number rather than an individual. While the total number of clients served and pounds distributed are important, it’s essential to remember the stories that people bring and the experience they’re having. It’s real. Consider developing a practice of pursuing at least one involved conversation per distribution with a pantry guest and setting aside time to reflect on what you learned.

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

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What Hunger Looks Like this November

If you don’t work in social services or the anti-hunger sector, it might be easy to underestimate the gravity of the current situation.

It’s hard to articulate the scale of the catastrophe we face.

The government appears to be stalling to avoid using USDA contingency funds that would allow SNAP funding to continue despite the shutdown. It’s unclear if or when those funds will be distributed.

As a result on November 1st, 42 million Americans who depend on SNAP did not receive any money for food.

I’ve heard from several colleagues in the anti-hunger field that it feels a lot like the beginning of the pandemic- that moment when we confronted the reality that our emergency hunger system has nowhere near the capacity to meet the demands we face.

The difference is, in 2020 the federal government mobilized funds to ensure that food banks and pantries could scale up to support their communities. This time, there is no federal sympathy.

It’s clear that while we individually cannot solve hunger, it will be the individual efforts of our communities that help our neighbors get through this.

I find myself regularly dissolving into despair from the amount of suffering I see in the news, but I am buoyed by stories like the successful fundraising of this coffee shop to offer free breakfasts, and by farmers markets around the country changing their policies to maintain access to Double Up Food Bucks without requiring a SNAP match.

One of my favorites stories is from the small town in Eastern Oregon where I briefly lived, where farmers are donating truckloads of potatoes and telling people to “bring a box or plastic laundry basket” to take as much as they can carry. The notices don’t even mention hunger or SNAP- they just instruct the community to show up.  

Efforts like this both impact the lives of people experiencing hunger, but they also offer a concrete way for us to feel powerful, engaged, and connected at a time when it’s too easy to feel helpless and isolated.

Fighting hunger is good for you and your neighbors.

Here’s how you can support your community:

  • Donate. Both funds and food are important. Food banks can often make cheaper purchases in bulk, so funds help them buy more food. For food pantries, it varies. Some may not do much of their own purchasing, in which case donating food is more useful. Check with the organization to see what their specific needs are.

Regarding food donations, consider what other ingredients are necessary to serve it. For example, donating macaroni and cheese requires milk or butter, which consumers may not have. Absolutely donate it- but please just add in other ingredients like canned soups and ready-to-eat meals.

  • Host a food-specific food drive. By choosing a specific item, it’s easier for your community to focus and saves your food bank from having to do intensive sorting. Consider hosting a drive to collect soups, fruit, condiments, cereal, diapers, or other goods.

I’m personally passionate about encouraging donations of seasonings and spices- imagine eating canned beans or veggies without them!

  • Volunteer. Anti-hunger organizations are slammed and need all the help they can get. Conversely, most are not set up to serve thousands of people or support hundreds of volunteers. While volunteers are an essential part of the process, good volunteer management is also intensive and exhausting. Please be kind and empathetic to the staff- there’s a very good chance that they are also SNAP recipients facing food insecurity.
  • Support community efforts. Anti-hunger work doesn’t just have to happen in food banks and pantries. Maybe your neighborhood has a free little pantry you can fill. Perhaps the community garden is organizing donations of produce. Hopefully the school is facilitating a backpack program. If you can’t find something, start something!
  • If you are in a position of financial power, use it! Forgive your tenants’ rent (don’t just defer- you can do better than that.) Give your employees bonuses or raises. How else can you use your resources to ensure your neighbors remain healthy and housed? If you’ve ever complained about crime or houselessness, now is your opportunity to actively prevent it. Hunger-free communities benefit us all.

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

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Building Safe Spaces to Fight Hunger

This upcoming November, recipients of SNAP will not get their benefits because of the ongoing government shutdown. A growing number of Americans are missing their car payments, a key indicator that all is not well with the economy. The threat of the military being deployed to American cities continues to loom.

In addition, growing fears of ICE using increasingly aggressive and brutal tactics makes public spaces less safe.

Despite the obvious and inevitable incoming growth in hunger rates, these conditions create a very real conundrum of rising food insecurity but fewer safe opportunities for people to access food.

Whether or not any of these factors make you personally feel unsafe, it’s important to recognize that they contribute to hunger rates. As anti-hunger advocates, we have an obligation to address it.

It’s easy to feel helpless in this situation, but there are still some very real steps that we can take to combat hunger with dignity and compassion.

Here’s how food pantries can help:

  • Minimize the amount of information you ask of shoppers. Visiting a food pantry is already a vulnerable experience, and many people associate pantries with the government, whether it’s true or not. Asking for no more information than you absolutely need can help shoppers feel more comfortable- and it should be a given that you never share any client information without a warrant.
  • Increase your distribution hours to decrease wait times. Building a system that allows shoppers to get in and out quickly helps people feel more in control of their environment and makes it easier to visit despite busy schedules. Allowing easy flow also makes it more difficult for any enforcement agencies to target your clientele.
  • Mobile markets. While difficult to organize and implement, thoughtful identification of locations for distribution empowers individuals to access food while feeling relatively anonymous. While these events still need to advertise their location, variable times and locations both improve accessibility and help people feel safer from surveillance.
  • Drive-through distribution. During the heart of the pandemic, we learned these are an effective way to get food to lots of people fast. While they don’t regularly allow freedom of choice, enabling people to remain in their cars may be a strong incentive for those who may not feel safe in public spaces.

One of the most important lessons that I’ve learned about fighting hunger is that addressing the biggest, most difficult barriers impacts the greatest amount of people. None of these suggestions are easy or simple to implement. But while they specifically intend to help people feel safe accessing food, they also increase access for individuals with disabilities, a lack of transportation, or schedules that don’t allow for regular pantry visits. Building safe spaces benefits everyone.

By putting in the extra effort to help our most vulnerable community members, we can have the biggest impact on hunger rates, and uplifting the dignity of everyone we serve.

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

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Don’t Rebuild: Let’s Reimagine Fighting Hunger

Right now, my social media feed is nearly exclusively discussions on the reductions being made to anti-hunger resources. With cuts to Farm to School, SNAP, LFPA, TEFAP and more, the industry is shocked, panicked, and legitimately frightened about the future.

For impacts as tangible as cuts to the food supply, it’s incredibly hard not to focus on what we’re losing. Anyone who works in the food justice field knows that we simply can’t support the growing numbers of people facing food insecurity. Food banks and pantries just can’t meet the need as resources and food supplies are decimated.

While it remains essential that we strategize based on our remaining resources, I have been reflecting on how these cuts mean we’re no longer tied to these antihunger programs.

Their effectiveness has been deliberately whittled away, and they’re not doing what we need them to do.

This offers us a moment to fantasize about how we move forward. We have always known that our anti-hunger systems were inadequate, politically motivated, and rarely effective at addressing the root causes of poverty.

Rather than recreating what we had, we face an opportunity to imagine new possibilities.  

Untether yourself for a moment from the constraints of the current political environment, and brainstorm what we can change, rather than what we keep the same, to fight hunger.

My fantasy for achieving a hunger-free future:

What if, instead of restoring all the cut funding relating to food insecurity, we implemented universal healthcare? The average American in 2023 spent over $14,000 on healthcare (although the average in this case is somewhat misleading- some people spent astronomical amounts while others didn’t survive because they had nothing to spend.) In contrast, in 2023 Americans spent on average a little less than $10,000 on food.

Increasing access to healthcare (and hopefully its effectiveness too) and saving Americans this cost would more than cover the cost of food. While this wouldn’t address all the gaps in food access we currently have, it would make a significant impact alongside the added benefit of fostering a healthier population.

What would happen if instead of instead of maintaining WIC, we aggressively implemented programs ensuring that all women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC individuals earned equal wages to white men and had mandated paid sick and maternity leave? Bonus points if we throw in universal free childcare, which has wide-reaching social and economic ramifications.

There’s ample evidence that rectifying the gender pay gap effectively fights poverty, stimulates the economy, and improves retention rates for businesses.

What if we reallocated ALL of the funding our nation is currently putting toward militarizing the police, and established accessible housing for every single American? The U.S. Congress has allocated a little less than $20 billion to fund ICE this year, while in contrast, estimates to end houselessness range from $10-30 billion.

Are these realistic or simple tradeoffs? Absolutely not. Policy is never simple, and we live in difficult times. Making these changes won’t solve anything overnight- we will still need programs actively offering food to people facing insecurity.

But despite this, right now is exactly when anti-hunger and food justice advocates should brainstorm new ways to fight hunger, without restraint. Most advocates will agree that the tools we’ve been using are ineffective and clunky. If they’re being actively dismantled and we’re starting from scratch, we shouldn’t build systems that recreate the inadequacies of the past. We should build new tools that move us towards an anti-poverty future and not just a less food insecure one.

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

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Ignoring Hunger Doesn’t Make it Go Away

The prosperity following World War II helped pull the U.S. from the wreckage of the Great Depression. Mobilization for the war effort produced jobs and industry that countered the unemployment of the previous decade, while years of rationing and disposable incomes prompted an eagerness to indulge.

Thanks to the general increase in prosperity, worries about food insecurity were not a significant part of the 1950s.

While children were admonished to finish what was on their plates while thinking of starving children in other countries, there was little public awareness of hunger in America. There was no data or research being done on the issue which left it mostly invisible.

Policy makers and the average American largely assumed that food insecurity was an occasional event, prompted by a crisis like a job loss or a hurricane. There was little discussion regarding chronic or ongoing food insecurity.

In 1967, Senators Robert Kennedy (NY) and Joseph Clark (PA) made an eye-opening visit to the Mississippi Delta where they witnessed families living in extreme poverty. This prompted a (long overdue) realization about the existence of chronic hunger in the United States.

Fueled by this new interest, in 1968 CBS released the documentary “Hunger in America” which painted a truly gruesome picture of hunger in the U.S. for the general public. It brought chronic food insecurity into the public awareness in a way that it hadn’t been examined previously.

This mobilized the U.S. to action, and over the next several decades prompted an expansion of the Food Stamp Program, the formalization of the National School Lunch Program, the introduction of school breakfasts, and other programs specifically intended to fight hunger.

The U.S made significant progress on fighting hunger thanks to this increased visibility. The public and policy makers demanded an increase in data and the need for effective solutions. Until food insecurity in America received this extra publicity, it was easily ignored and overlooked.

In 1995, the U.S. implemented the American Household Food Insecurity Survey to track hunger rates and provide essential data for helping policy makers evaluate what policies were most effective. This became an essential tool for helping anti-poverty and anti-hunger advocates understand the root causes of hunger and evolve our development of solutions.

Last week, the USDA announced that it was eliminating this survey, stating that it did not provide any useful data.

Without relevant data on food insecurity, it becomes harder to measure the effectiveness of policy. A lack of facts facilitates a transition towards policies built on assumptions and attitudes rather than data. And history has clearly shown us that anti-poverty policies built on assumption tend to be punitive and ineffective, with a goal of punishing rather than uplifting people who need support.

Although food banks and other advocacy organizations will do their best to continue collecting data, they have neither the funds or the capacity to maintain the same scale as the federal government.

Eliminating this survey indicates that the federal government wants hunger to disappear.

This decision should be a signal to all anti-poverty and food justice advocates that cuts to programs are likely only just beginning.

Without accurate hunger rates, it’s easier to make false claims about the economy, quality of life, and satisfaction with leadership. Without data, it grows harder to justify the need for SNAP benefits, food bank funding, school meals, and any other program that supports people experiencing food insecurity. Food banks and pantries can’t replace this essential resource.

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

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What’s a Free Little Food Pantry?

Recently, one of the largest food pantries in my hometown reported that they’ve seen a significant drop in the number of LatinX and immigrant visitors they serve due to the threat of deportation. In the dystopian reality we’re facing of secret police and public kidnappings, it’s easy to overlook that this doesn’t mean these people are no longer experiencing hunger- it’s that they no longer have safe avenues for access.

It is harder and harder to support people facing food insecurity as our public spaces become less safe.

Early in the pandemic, when food banks and pantries were overwhelmed with more people experiencing hunger than they could ever support, my neighborhood started to see “Free Little Pantries” sprout up. They were small cupboards, or occasionally refrigerators, stocked by community members offering an anonymous way for their neighbors to get free food.

I’ve had a couple conversations recently about the value of these resources, and with public spaces being less safe, it seems like a relevant moment to explore their challenges and benefits.

In theory, free little pantries are amazing. They offer a discreet way for people experiencing hunger to freely take the food they need. Enthusiastic neighbors can fill the pantry with the food they have available, and people can take what they want without supervision or judgement. During the height of the pandemic, they offered a low-contact way to get food, and now they discreetly provide food with less risk of encountering ICE. However, they’re not a simple or easy undertaking.

If you’re thinking about starting or supporting a free little pantry, here are some things to keep in mind:

  • Who will be using this pantry? What are the demographics of your neighborhood? Is it a working-class neighborhood, where there may be residents who just need a little boost now and then? Is it a higher-traffic area, where there may be more people who are unhoused passing through? How will people find out about it? There are various websites where you can list your location, but how many people do you want to know about it?

Free little pantries can be a valuable resource for those who are houseless, but they can also be a source of frustration when they don’t offer anything someone can use without a kitchen.

I’ve heard tragic stories of people experiencing houselessness spending Christmas munching on dry pasta, because that was the only food they could access. It’s important to know the demographics who need the most support.

  • How are you going to stock it? Some people are excited to cook and prep ready-to-eat foods for their fridges, while others are ready to do regular shopping. Some pantries depend on donations, which means they never know what or how much they’ll have. What kinds of food are you hoping to offer? The free little pantry near me usually has egg noodles and off-brand tomato sauce, and the fridge is currently full of local garden excess.

While I respect enthusiasm for cooking meals for free little pantries, I also caution against it. It’s hard to guarantee the safety of these meals unless you’re very carefully supervising your fridge, labeling ingredients, documenting dates, and monitoring temperatures.

  • Are your neighbors supportive of this project? It’s important to think about the level of traffic you’re comfortable with. Do you have a neighbor who will call the police anytime they see a stranger walk by? Are they going to complain about unknown cars passing through, or potential garbage on the ground? A free little pantry can never really be a solo endeavor, and you’re going to need community buy-in.
  • How much time do you want to spend on this project? How often are you able to check it, organize, and clean the space? Depending on the level of traffic, it may need more or less attention to keep it acceptable for users and neighbors.

If you have the energy and enthusiasm, go for it! Free little pantries are a great option for offering food to people experiencing hunger with low barriers and anonymity.

They are a great resource for those who may just need a little boost to make it to the next payday, but it’s important to recognize that they don’t have the capacity to fight ongoing food insecurity. They’re an individual solution to a systemic problem.

If you’re looking for other ways to stay engaged, consider food or fund drives for your local food or pantry (and of course engage in their advocacy efforts). Check with them on what their eligibility requirements are and seek out the organizations who are working hardest to support immigrant and marginalized communities. Consider seeking out backpack programs that send kids home from school with food or volunteer with other community food justice efforts like Portland’s Fruit Tree Project or the Green Bag Food Project.

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

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Keeping Compassion in Anti-Hunger Spaces

I receive an increasing number of messages from people eager to convince me of the prevalence of fraud in emergency food assistance programs (usually in response to this post).

Writers share how a neighbor or relative was excited about receiving help to fill up their refrigerator, and this joy was evidence that they must not really need the food and had committed fraud.

Despite not having any personal knowledge of the recipients’ finances, life situation, or food security, the writers are universally confident that their acquaintance doesn’t need the food and are simply exploiting the system.  

They’re sure the system is broken because people experiencing hunger are happy about having enough to eat.

I don’t bother to even acknowledge these messages anymore. They teach me far more about cultural attitudes about hunger than about any disfunction in food assistance programs, but I continue to be shocked by the cruelty of this attitude. These writers believe their entire community should have less access to food because one person they don’t know anything about had more food than they were comfortable with.

Unfortunately, this isn’t an attitude exclusive to internet lurkers. It’s also an attitude regularly reflected in food pantry volunteers and organizational policies themselves, particularly in how they maintain power dynamics and expect clients to act with humility. This is why recipients of food assistance responding with joy and excitement to a few days of food security is so triggering.

We live in a society that is actively working to disregard the humanity of the people around us by reinforcing systemic oppression. This directly reflects in how we think about, talk about, and fight hunger. Our anti-hunger systems have long sought to control the behavior and the attitudes of people experiencing hunger in a way that demeans rather than uplifts these individuals.

How can food justice advocates bring empathy back into the fight against hunger?

  • Advocate for the humanity of the people you serve. Have conversations about how you don’t want to live in a world where it’s okay to ignore hunger, or to deliberately deprive people of the resources they need to survive. Make people say who they think should starve to death. It’s true this is an aggressive position, and you may lose volunteers or donors. But it’s important to recognize that if individuals believe there are people who don’t deserve to eat, they are not doing your anti-hunger organization any good anyways.
  • Practice self-care. There’s nothing more exhausting than the emotional labor of trying to convince people that they should care about others. I’ve discussed before the work that goes into welcoming nervous clients using stigmatized services, but it’s equally important to recognize that fighting hunger requires engaging with people who advocate for cruelty over compassion.

While arguing with them is rarely productive, anti-hunger advocates are often forced into positions where they must connect professionally. Do what you must do to shake off this ugliness- a primal scream in the walk-in freezer, cuddle your pet, aggressively weed your garden, or eat a bar of fancy chocolate.

There is nothing more important right now than our front-line advocates maintaining their ability to practice compassion and ask it of others.

Previous Post: Don’t Offload Food Waste onto Pantries

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

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Don’t Offload Food Waste onto Pantries

The smell of overripe bananas will forever make me nauseous. Our food pantry once had a pallet of bananas donated that the person on the phone promised were completely edible, with “only a little bit of brown.” While that was technically true, the fruit was also so soft I couldn’t pick it up without it disintegrating, and there was no way that I would offer this to my clients.

(If you’re like 99% of my volunteers, I know what you’re thinking and I’m going to stop you right there. Baking banana bread requires flour, sugar, and oil, all of which are incredibly rare at food pantries. It’s also a recipe primarily familiar to Western Europeans, unlike many of our shoppers. It’s not a practical suggestion, and it drives your food pantry staff bonkers.)

I spent the next two days unpacking the bananas from their boxes and tossing them into our compost bin. The smell permeated my hair and clothes, and I regularly had to step outside for fresh air. I wanted to call the donor and yell at them to take this donation back. It was a waste of my time and a test of my patience, as well as a burden to our compost system. But of course, I couldn’t risk jeopardizing the relationship.

As massive federal cuts leave nonprofits scrambling to access resources, anti-hunger organizations are sending out pleas for community food donations. Although vastly inadequate, for many underfunded nonprofits this is their only option for continuing services.

As part of this campaign, organizations are seeking to establish or boost relationships with corporate partners like groceries stores who have the potential to supply larger quantities than individual donors.

When these relationships work, they are a boon for everyone. Businesses get public appreciation for making a donation (and the tax benefits), and food pantries get the food they need to serve their neighbors.

But just as often, these transactions act as a way for businesses to offload their waste disposal.

Too many people still hold the pervasive idea that it’s okay for people living in poverty to eat lower quality food, which justifies them donating foods that no one else wants to eat. I’m sure this banana donor genuinely believed they were helping us since they knew that food pantries were desperate for food, thanks to constant messaging they hear about donations.

Unfortunately, this attitude places recipients in the uncomfortable position of having to either silently accept the donation or risk offending the donor.

Our current nonprofit culture lives in such a scarcity mindset that it has become the norm to accept these donations, even when it brings additional costs for the recipient such as waste disposal and labor.

How can pantries advocate for quality donations?

  • Make expectations clear from the outset. My pantry developed an internal system for evaluating food that we would have done well to share externally. We only distributed food that must last until tomorrow and bring joy to recipients. While soft ripe bananas might still technically be edible, they brought no one joy. Telling donors this at the outset would help them understand what we could and couldn’t accept.
  • Engage in a dialogue with donors about the challenges of receiving food that doesn’t meet your needs. (This has the added benefit of introducing the idea that you don’t just want any foods, but have specific needs for your community.)Before a donation is even made, I like to mention the hardship of receiving food that has to be immediately tossed. Whenever possible, look at the donation before you make a commitment.
  • This demands confident leadership, but don’t be afraid to refuse donations that don’t meet your standards or align with what you were told you were receiving. While you may risk offending or losing a donor, you also set yourself up for a far more productive relationship in the future. They weren’t helping you by donating garbage, so you don’t actually lose anything.
  • Asserting donation expectations also teaches your volunteers and community the standards of your organization. Volunteers often assume that food brought into the pantry has already been determined acceptable, which means it’s okay to distribute to clients. When you don’t allow low-quality food in the door, you teach your team that your clients deserve only the best.

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

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Why Growing Food Doesn’t Protect From Hunger

Americans have an idealized vision of agriculture that celebrates individuals developing an intimate relationship with their land through hard work to provide for their families.

Framed by a backdrop of diverse crops and not quite enough money to make ends meet, the myth of American agriculture recognizes the hardship but also celebrates the purifying effects of physical labor and food production. Farmers are celebrated as the “salt of the earth,” which is a biblical reference for being honest, hardworking, and reliable.

People working in agriculture are regularly lauded as the epitome of rugged individualism and American heroes. But individuals working in agriculture are also one of the most food insecure demographics.

Thanks to a lack of labor protections that results in appallingly low wages, the agricultural sector is highly vulnerable to food insecurity. Many of the people who harvested your food for your recent holiday weekend barbeque likely couldn’t afford it for themselves.

While farm jobs generally do not require an advanced education, this does not justify starvation wages. First, it’s important to remember that this is essential work. If you like to eat, then you need someone to harvest your food.

It’s also important to consider that while it may not require formal education, agricultural labor is hard. It’s physically demanding, often in uncomfortable or dangerous weather conditions, and is time-sensitive (before the crops go bad.)

In addition to inadequate wages and physically stressful work, agricultural jobs by their nature are in less centralized or accessible areas, which means people have to travel further distances to visit grocery stores. Very, very few farms can offer their laborers more than the scraps of their harvest, and even fewer have a diversity of products that might be the origins of a healthy diet.

A discussion of food insecurity amongst farm workers also demands that we talk about immigration policy. Our current agricultural system depends on migrant workers and those who have entered the country without authorization. This is the primary way that businesses can continue paying such inadequate wages– by exploiting a vulnerable workforce who has few other options than acquiescence. The main argument against labor protections is that farms can’t afford to pay better wages- damning evidence of a broken system.

As ICE increasingly harasses and threatens anyone they arbitrarily deem suspect, it becomes less and less safe for anyone to do this work, which is already starting to manifest as labor shortages.  

As it becomes less safe for people to go to work, their risk of hunger increases exponentially.

What can anti-hunger organizations do to fight hunger among farm workers?

  • Increase services in rural and agricultural areas. These are often neglected because organizations prioritize the number of clients served over the need for service, and rural sites likely serve fewer clients even though they have higher rates of hunger. Mobile pantries and markets are hugely valuable resources.
  • Reduce reporting requirements that might scare shoppers away, such as asking for documentation. Even if your organization already serves undocumented individuals, it’s important to recognize that in the current state of fear they may not come unless you are explicit about being a safe space.
  • Research the labor practices of the food coming through your organization. While I fully recognize that few food banks have the capacity to pay more for the produce they buy, we still need to work towards a system that pays people appropriately and that begins with information.

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

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