Foundation Journal

A discussion about food stamp outreach at Harvesters taught me to remember the difficulty many working poor people face when making ends meet. The trend in the charitable food assistance world shows a steady pattern of people living in poverty and with food insecurity. Many individuals neglect to apply for SNAP benefits even though they are eligible for those benefits. An AmeriCorps worker performing SNAP outreach duties at Harvesters shared how Kansas City, Kansas residents have increasingly applied for food stamps because of the instructions provided to social service workers at El Centro . The outreach worker shared how even immigrants with permanent residency status neglect to apply for these government benefits over fears they could lose their path to citizenship, despite situations which allow non-citizens to receive benefits.

The Interdisciplinary Center for Food Security at the University of Missouri  released a booklet offering "tips and strategies for linking food pantries and community partners to get healthier food onto the shelves of pantries and into the homes of food pantry customers" in January 2015. Download the 24-page PDF document for information on healthy nutritious food options.

It's easy to get reports on how the crisis around the Federal government shutdown impacts workers and families in the Kansas City area. Major news outlets have reports that talk about whether this or that agency is shutting down and furloughing workers. Many of these reports feature personal, first-hand accounts of the impact on how workers are making ends meet. KKFI 90.1 FM, the local community radio station, got in on the act this week  with a report from a furloughed USDA worker. What's harder to determine is the impact on programs that provide benefits to poor people or low-income workers. The federally-funded Women, Infants and Children (WIC) feeding program seems to be safe for now, but will lose funding if the government stays closed for long. Thanks to the Springfield News-Leader and St. Joe News-Press for local reporting on the WIC story in Missouri. The story in the News-Leader was inconclusive whether the shutdown would exhaust WIC benefits in Greene County i...

The nation's first non-profit grocery store opened two days ago in St. Joseph , Missouri, narrowly beating Philabundance, the Philadelphia food bank, at selling food at discounted costs to low-income families. Actually, the claim of being the first non-grocery store could be debated, given the success of a mobile grocery store in Minnesota with 27 outlets that offers up to a 40% discount. Let's not quibble as Fresh Start, St. Joe's non-profit grocery store, starts this grand experiment because it's really about placing stores in or near " food deserts ." Putting aside food co-ops and similar ventures, it seems a bit of stretch to think that we had to wait until 2013 before someone came up with the notion of a non-profit grocery store. Shouldn't access to nutritious and affordable food be a basic right to everyone in one of the wealthiest nations of the world? You can bet there's going to be strong opposition to these efforts, especially i...