Our national affiliation with Feeding America provides us with some very valuable tools to use in our programs reflected in our mission. The boiled down version of our mission is to provide Help for Today and Hope for Tomorrow. The gathering of resources includes, but not limited to – food deemed unsalable, but still nutritious and usable, the gathering of time and talents through volunteers and those who are willing to deeply engage in helping those in poverty committed to finding a way out.
The Help for Today is visible in the form of 1) semi-trucks unloading food to waiting families in cars in line for hours, 2) church food pantries serving people who walk in looking for enough resources to cover the gap in their ability to feed their families.
Hope for Tomorrow looks like 1) now in the evenings at several neighborhood schools who are creating a new positive relationship with hundreds of families while distributing food, and 2) this also can be found in weekly evening meals shared between people in poverty and those working with them to assist in finding a way out. Our Delaware County Circles Program has engaged people in poverty, middle income and wealth to regularly meet and form intentional relationships by providing a listening ear, tools and methods designed to provide a pathway out of poverty aimed at self-sufficiency.
The Map the Meal Gap study provided and updated annually by Feeding America gives us up to date data points to keep us on target with all these efforts. From this study we know that the average food insecure person has a gap of about 7 pounds of food each week that they are not able to cover from all their resources. So a family of 4 would need to secure about 28 pounds of food each week to have their food needs met and not miss any meals. This piece of data is the baseline for distribution in our School Pantry Program and how we will be working with new agencies in the future.
We are now in the midst of meetings in each of the 8 counties we serve in East Central Indiana. These County Conversations are designed for open 2-way communication with all our agencies. We hear and share plans on moving forward to manage the effort of providing hunger relief (Help for Today), and relationship building with Circles and in our neighborhood schools with staff and parents (Hope for Tomorrow). We have engaged all counties with this type of direct communication for about 4 years and it has proven to be effective. Our Program Manager, Warehouse Manager and I will be there to dialogue about questions, concerns and share ideas. This has proven to be effective in eliminating ambiguity and broken lines of communication. We would love for all agencies to participate but attendance is optional. We have much to gather. If you, the public would like to participate, we would love to work with you.