The Problem:  Hunger doesn’t take a summer break

The Food Bank works hard all year to make sure kids have access to fresh, healthy food through our Healthy Children Pantries, our Morning Snack Program, and efforts by our very active CalFresh enrollment team.  But for many of these children, summer break means they miss out on school meals and miss out on nutritious food they need to thrive and return to school in the fall ready to learn. These kids are also affected disproportionately by summer learning loss, which hits low-income children harder than their high-income peers. That means that these children often return to school academically behind higher-income peers and struggle to catch up before classes even start.

The San Francisco-Marin Food Bank has created new programs and is advocating for policies to directly address summer hunger.

The Solution: Creative programs and policies

To combat this summer hunger gap at the local level, the Food Bank continues our support of the Summer Continuation Pantry model.  For the second year we are operating a large-scale pantry at Gordon J. Lau Elementary School in San Francisco’s Chinatown.  There, upwards of 400 families are being served nutritious groceries – so children attending several nearby schools can continue to get the nourishment that they need.

We’re advocating for action at the Federal level

Childhood hunger during the summer months is not just a Bay Area issue.  Nationally, only 1 out of every 7 kids who need free meals in the summer is getting them.

Thankfully, our federal elected officials are responding to demands of advocates to improve access to free summer meals for kids.  The Food Bank has signed on in support of The Stop Child Summer Hunger Act introduced by Senator Pat Murray (D-WA) and Representative Susan Davis (D-CA). The bill would provide low-income families whose children are eligible for free and reduced-price school meals with an electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card to help them obtain nutritious food during the summer, just like with food stamps.

Along with our national anti-hunger partners, the Food Bank is calling for major investments in federal programs like the Summer Food Service Program and Summer EBT that would dramatically reduce summer hunger, provide far more student enrichment opportunities, and create jobs.

We are committed to making sure that hunger does not hold back any child from living up to their full potential.

For the third year in a row, we at the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank find ourselves on the defensive with a harmful budget proposal from the Trump Administration.

The President’s spending plan calls for massive cuts in vital safety net programs – including $220 billion in deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, CalFresh in California) over the next 10 years.

If you’re a longtime supporter of the Food Bank, then you probably know just how devastating this proposal would be for our community. SNAP helps put food on the table for over 40 million Americans, four million Californians, and tens of thousands of people in our service area of Marin and San Francisco.  It’s THE most important and effective program we have to fight hunger and serves as a lifeline to those who don’t make enough money to provide three square meals a day for themselves and family members.

MORE NOT LESS

Now is the time to invest in food assistance efforts rather than diminishing them. While the economy is strong, we should bolster programs such as SNAP with benefit levels that support better nutrition. Income requirements for these programs should be designed to account for cost-of-living disparities, so that applicants in high-cost areas—such as San Francisco and Marin—are guaranteed equitable access to food assistance.

Through cruel and ill-conceived ideas, like a renewed push to replace SNAP benefits with so-called “harvest boxes”, the President’s proposed budget poses a grave threat to our most vulnerable neighbors. The harvest box proposal stigmatizes people who are struggling to make ends meet.  More importantly, it replaces SNAP, an efficient system where people shop for themselves in a grocery store and pay with an electronic benefits card, with a program requiring an entirely new distribution system that would likely be more expensive, less efficient, and provides less nutritional value for those it purports to serve.

CALL TO ACTION

We continue to remain firmly committed to using our voice to elevate the importance of federal nutrition programs like SNAP and call on the community to reach out to their members of Congress to oppose these cuts to SNAP and other vital programs.

Our tagline at the Food Bank is “Food For All” – a simple phrase with a big meaning. When we make healthy food available for all, our community thrives.  Any effort to undermine that is simply undermines the greatness and health of our country.

Now is the time to invest in food assistance efforts rather than diminishing them.

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In February, our Policy & Advocacy team joined 1,100 passionate advocates in Washington D.C. for the National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference.  Co-hosted annually by Feeding America and the Food Research and Action Center, the conference is an exciting opportunity for anti-poverty and anti-hunger advocates to collaborate. We celebrated the bi-partisan 2018 Farm Bill – which reversed proposed cuts to federally-funded food programs.  We also geared up to fight attacks on food programs anticipated from the current administration.

Day 1 – Sunday – “We’re Not Going Back!”

We spent our first morning learning from fellow food bank representatives about new opportunities to use client-level service data to influence policy and advocacy. Then, during lunch, Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE),  ignited the room  with a powerful keynote address.  She reminded us that we have come so far in our advocacy to provide neighbors with the basic human right of food, and encouraged us to continue challenging attacks on these programs.

Day 2 – Monday  “The Rent Eats First”

Our second day kicked off with another outstanding speaker: President of the US Council of Mayors, the Honorable Steven K. Benjamin of Columbia, SC.  He spoke about addressing the root causes of hunger, including institutional racism, limited access to financial education, insufficient wages, and the “unlivable” cost of living in cities across America.

He highlighted income volatility – citing recent studies that show half of US families can’t pay for an unexpected $400.00 bill.  Our Food Bank learned this firsthand during the recent government shutdown, when we saw a spike in need from people who had never required food assistance before, but found themselves two paychecks short and unable to cover their expenses.

Day 3 – Lobby Day! – SNAP benefits inadequate for Bay Area’s hungry

By Day 3, we were all ready to take our anti-hunger priorities to Capitol Hill, where we met with staff members for Senators Kamala Harris and Diane Feinstein. We also connected with staff members of Congressman Jared Huffman, who actively supports our advocacy efforts on behalf of his constituents in the northern coastal region, including Marin.

We thanked them for their leadership and asked that they turn their attention to the inadequacy of benefits for current SNAP (food stamp) recipients.

Right now, the average SNAP recipient gets $1.49 per meal, which we know with the cost of living here is simply impossible to stretch. We were joined by Patricia, a Contra Costa County resident, who shared her personal experience of having her SNAP benefits cut to just $15 per month.  We are asking Congress to reevaluate the criteria used to determine how much money a household can get in SNAP benefits.

The Conference was an energizing reminder that we are not in this struggle alone.  We are part of an incredibly diverse and tireless community of advocates and elected officials who have never stopped fighting for policies that feed and protect our neighbors who need us most.