Food Planning Task Force of McLennan County

Good afternoon all!  It’s incredible to see the city of Waco come together to serve our brothers and sisters from West.  Our community’s response has been inspiring.

In order to most effectively and efficiently continue to serve the victims from West, please join and like the Facebook group West, TX Volunteer Efforts: https://www.facebook.com/groups/186936951456721/?fref=ts

This group has been established so that volunteers can continually update the community on the most pressing needs at Blair’s Cove Apartments.

This apartment complex is currently housing 50+ residents from the explosion in West and is taking food, water, blankets, toiletries, and cardboard boxes as donations.

As we hear more from the owners of the apartments about the most pressing needs, this Facebook group will be updated.  Therefore, please check it regularly as we want to ensure that we are best serving our brothers and sisters in West.

A quick update – the need for blood donations has been met!  Radio stations have been reporting lines that go outside the doors of donation sites, even with the rain.  Kudos to you all!  The greatest current need is volunteers who can help box and organize all the supplies that have been donated at Blair’s Apartment.

Also, the Blair’s Cove Apartment staff asks us to spread the word that they have extra rooms available for displaced West residents.  We know there are more people in need of shelter; we just need to get the word out that the Blair’s Cove Apartment has more room and is serving as a sanctuary.

Again, thanks again for your collaboration, care and prayers.

We are proud of our city.

–Amber Jekot, Food Planning Task Force

By: Amber Jekot, Food Planning Task Force Organizer

The Annual Homeless Assessment Report is a report presented to Congress to illustrate the magnitude and nature of homelessness in the United States.  This report helps determine where federal funds are most needed.  In order to assemble this data, the Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS) is predominantly utilized (Donovan, 2013). 

By encouraging more pantries in the Waco area to utilize the HMIS database, we are able to play our part as a community in painting an accurate picture of the problem of homelessness in America.  This is especially important during the current challenging financial situation, as convincing Congress that federal programs need continued support has proven difficult.

On a local level, by utilizing HMIS, individual non-profits will have access to Waco’s data and be able to use this nationally recognized data for grant writing purposes to bring more resources to our most food insecure community members.  As the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has historically supported many hunger initiatives in Waco, we want to support them in the streamlining of homelessness data.

The city of Waco is providing an HMIS portal for Hank Perot with the Capital Area Food Bank that will provide homeless demographic data that we did not previously have.  This portal will only display demographic info, not specific information about clients in order to protect client confidentially.  HMIS does not only provide more accurate data for our area to better address poverty solutions in McLennan County.  Though this system is different than Charity Tracker, the time and effort that will go into learning the new system will be greatly rewarded.

The HMIS system could benefit McLennan County by:

• Providing access to client demographic information
• Screening for federal benefits
• Illustrating the gaps of services as well as duplication of services – thus encouraging overall supplemental food efficiency
• Providing a client ID card capable of being used at all the Waco pantries, allowing organizations to see when an individual attends a pantry and what other pantries they have attended
  • This information can be utilized to develop poverty planning solutions
  • Delivering accurate data for grant writing purposes – specifically HUD grants and other federal and state assistance

The Food Planning Task Force, as a coalition of individuals and organizations dedicated to action-orientated food planning and strategizing, looks forward to seeing how HMIS positively impacts McLennan County’s food insecure population.  We value the collection of precise data so that we can encourage and implement evidence-based practice in our community.  Thanks to Bob Gager and the Emergency and Supplemental Food Work Group for all their hard work and dedication to providing three nutritious meals, seven times a week, to ALL individuals in McLennan County.

According to Bob Gager with Shepherd’s Heart, we can make assumptions about what we are doing, we can do informal surveys and eventually we might know what we are doing to a certain extent, but are we bridging the gap?  Are we hearing from clients? We need info coming from bottom up rather than top down.

References:

Donovan, S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, (2013). The homelessness data exchange (hdx). Retrieved from website: http://www.hudhdx.info/

By: Amber Jekot, Food Planning Task Force Organizer

The final editing for our strategic plan is complete – This is so exciting!  So much valuable information and hard work is represented in this document, and now are able to share the gift of our hard work to other service organizations and individuals in Waco.  The voices of those we serve and of the work groups’ participants are intertwining to put our collective dream for ending hunger in Waco on paper.  I wanted to take this opportunity to again thank each of you for the conversations you have and share with your clients, for the compiling of information, for the time you have given this coalition, and for your investment in the Waco community. The Food Planning Task Force’s partnerships with the Hunger Coalition and Texas Hunger Initiative have proven to be assets in this process as well.  The strategic plan will be posted on the Task Force blog.  Bound copies will also be made for the Hunger Coalition and other organizations/community members who want to partner with us in the implementation phase.

But our work isn’t done and we need your help!  Join us this afternoon at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame as we discuss next steps.  We will be discussing how to incorporate both the community’s voice collected through our community input boards as well as our work group strategies to begin addressing the needs of our community’s food insecure population.  We invite you to come share your opinions and join us in putting our strategic plan and strategies into action.  Your voice is important.

We are here for the long haul and we hope that you are too.  The Beehive Collective, a collective who utilizes collaborative artwork to energize grassroots movements, created the art piece above to be used as an educational and organizing tool.  The picture’s depiction of such a diverse crowd of “community members” represents our hope for the Food Planning Task Force, where the voice and songs of all members are taken into account. Like the art piece illustrates, there is always another seat available at our table.

We look forward to seeing you at 2:00 pm at the Texas Ranger Museum.

By: Amber Jekot, Food Planning Task Force Organizer

The Texas Hunger Initiative and Bethel Erickson-Bruce with the Waco Downtown Farmers Market have been in conversation with the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) about the possibility of bringing the Farmers Market Nutrition Program to the city of Waco. 

The Farmers Market Nutrition Program provides vouchers to WIC eligible women and children for fruits and veggies that can be redeemed at a TDA approved Farmers Market. Vouchers of a $20 value are provided as an addendum to the actual amount of WIC money allotted per client.  These vouches can help encourage healthy consumption for Texas’ women and children.  TDA would partner with a local non-profit called a contracting entity and a Farmers Market Association to implement the FMNP.

We believe this program would be an asset for the Waco community.  Fresh produce helps meet the nutritional needs of children during their most crucial period of brain development – the first 1000 days of their life.  Proper nutrition also sets the stage for better education outcomes for our children.  This program is also an effective way to encourage small businesses/small farmers and generates more funds to our local economy – one of the Food Planning Task Force’s work group strategies. 

In Tarrant County, Fort Worth, the Farmers Market Association made $53,000 for only 9 produce distributions. The farmers shared that they often made more money selling to WIC clinics for 2 ½ hours than they did selling at the local farmers market all weekend.  Our hope is to provide Waco’s farmers with this same opportunity.

Although this is not something THI and the Waco Downtown Farmers Market are able to pursue at this point, we think this program would be a huge asset to WIC recipients, farmers, and the local economy.  Our hope is that the Farmer’s Market Nutrition Program will flourish in Waco in the near future.

Special thanks to Jeremy Everett, Eric Weeden, Kathy Krey, Shamethia Webb, Doug McDurham, and Bethel Erickson-Bruce for their efforts to bring such a promising program to Waco, Texas.

Click the link for the full article: http://notes.bread.org/2012/12/when-a-child-is-stunted-we-all-lose.html?__utma=1.1837805329.1355416714.1355416714.1355416714.1&__utmb=1.1.10.1355416714&__utmc=1&__utmx=-&__utmz=1.1355416714.1.1.utmcsr=event|utmccn=ol2012|utmcmd=email&__utmv=-&__utmk=198196015