The Foodstamp Challenge begins today at the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks.
Which means that I am only allowed to spend $3 per day on food, the same amount that someone surviving on social services would spend.
Which means that I am going to have some trouble finding a $3 Subway sandwich when I meet a friend there for lunch. Which means I'll have to spend $5 for a footlong (are you singing that jingle in your head now? *evil laugh* What a catchy song...), which means I can essentially only spend ONE dollar tomorrow. The rules say I am allowed to use condiments and spices that I already own. Ranch dressing has a lot of fatty goodness, right?
This is just like the 30 Hour Famine. I'm hungry already.
Hopefully this will raise awareness and encourage policy makers and other people who may not be aware of the difficulties people have with food insecurity to try the challenge themselves. It's been done before in a couple instances, like back in 2007: Lawmakers Find $21 a Week Doesn't Buy a Lot of Groceries
This is like my 5th post in the past two days, so if you are an ardent reader of my blog, don't forget to scroll down and check out earlier entries!
I absolutley had to do a special post on the newest addition to my OASHF swag/professional toolkit.
I'm definitely moving up in the world, as "I have many one leather-bound books binder, and my apartment desk smells of looks like rich mahogany." #anchormanfans?
Do you know a teacher/administrator in a school district in Central Ohio that are looking for ways to fulfill the school's Family and Civic Engagement Plan requirements?
Here is an over of what the House Bill says for schools:
HB 1 establishes family and civic engagement requirements for Ohio’s schools, families and communities. Together, schools, families and communities work to ensure all children have supports needed to graduate from high school prepared for additional educational experiences, the workforce and a healthy life style. Ohio’s goal is to have high-performing family and civic engagement teams and county family and children first councils that effectively and systematically connect all children, youth and families in need to school and community-based services and programs.
The Benefit Bank is actually a perfect tool for schools to use to support their students and families. Coordinators don't even have to create a work plan for implementation, as Benefit Bank administrators already created a Template based on District Comprehensive Continuous Improvement Plan (CCIP) that your school can use.
You can check out this webinar the Ohio Department of Education posted about the Benefit Bank as a suggestion for school districts:
The radio DJ this morning inquired of his listeners: "Are you working at a job that has nothing to do with you college major? Then you're probably a Gen X-er!"
Well guess what Mr. DJ, even though it is true I am not exactley in a position that directly relates to my major, I am still integrating components of public relations.
Look! It's direct mail!
Do YOU want to know more about the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks and the Benefit Bank before your organization becomes a site? If you live in Central Ohio, let me know, and you will receive this sweet packet:
Considering my last post was so long, I'll make this one short and sweet. And include pictures! Above is front view of the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, affectionalty abbreviated as MOFB from here on out.
It was truly a fantastic facility in every way. It is one of the 12 member foodbanks that my organization heads up, so it acts like a distribution center to smaller food pantries and soup kitchens across mid-Ohio. They just moved in to this facility in the past year, it was previously a matress factory. Think of a huge warehouse of matresses, now full of bulk food!
As soon as you walk in you can actually see in to the warehouse, through three story high bay windows in the lobby. Cool!
The best part is that they are LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified Gold. See here for more information on that distinction.
THIS is the overview from the MOFB site on how their facility is designed.
Our favorite college football team, the Ohio State Buckeyes, loves the MOFB too!
I am doing some site recruiting in the rural areas of my region, so residents will have more options and better access to public benefits where they already “live, work, play and pray.”
Speaking of praying…
While in Springfield at a nonprofit I was referred to my contact’s church to visit as a potential site. This isn’t uncommon, there are a good number of Christians in the non-profit world, and sometimes at the end of a site visit they will do a little “Oh by the way, here is the name and number of my church, we already do this, this and this to help people in our community, can you talk to them about the Benefit Bank?”
So I called up the pastor I was referred to, on a whim that he might be at the church and available to meet. He was. I went.
This was a complete cold call, so I started with the basics of Second Harvest Foodbanks and on a very surface level what the Benefit Bank is. (Think application consolidation tool, reducing barriers to public assistance, helping low income families access food assistance, etc).
I paused to see if he had questions. Not only did he not have any, but he had something to add to the discussion.
He pulled his Bible across the table, immediately flipped to Timothy (“one of the letters that Paul wrote…” he tells me. Thanks.)
He points his finger to the bottom of the page and reads aloud “If a man will not work, he should not eat.”
After a meaningful pause he looks up at me, and then starts explaining his views on public assistance, the sins of laziness, compassion, and liberal idealism.
The funny thing is, I agreed with a lot of what he was saying. The way he approached it seemed very confrontational and judgmental, but he was basically just explaining hard love. You know, if you love someone that is addicted to a substance that is destroying them, the loving thing to do (according to him) is to not give them assistance. Open the door, offer support and help, but don’t let them walk through that door and give handouts to let them sustain a life of destruction. True compassion can be hard to put into practice. Life is hard, right? Cheating makes it easy, and handouts are cheating.
He also spoke about the current ideology of our nation, what he kept calling the liberal mindset, of REACHING OUT to people for help. This went against his ideals work ethic: If people aren’t going to work or even try to earn something for a living, we shouldn’t just hand them free stuff. If people are going to fall to the sins of laziness and not work, he said, that we don’t want to help them. We want to offer a rope of help, but they won’t grab on we won’t go chasing after them.
I think his terminology is really what got me confused. I feel like I am always throwing around terms like “reaching out,” but not with the goal of touching and pulling in everyone (willingly or unwillingly) that I deem needs help. Reaching out, to me, is just opening that door. Creating awareness that there is a helping hand, there is support, there is a way out. So when he demonized terms and ideas that I have been acting on, but in the next breath stated another solid ideal that I hold, I didn’t know what to make of it.
I concluded, about an hour and half into the conversation, that it sounded like his church would be a great referral site. In that way, if they deemed a family/ person a “candidate” to get help from the government to aid in survival efforts, they could refer them to another Benefit Bank site that would take them through the process.
He proceeded to then ask what the next steps were to actually becoming an official site (not a referral organization). “I need to make sure of something,” I began, trying to figure out how to word my concerns. “If you are an official site, you can’t deny people signing up for benefits. Anyone who comes to you, even if they don’t have a job or may perhaps seem lazy, would have to have access to your services if you are an open site.”
“Well of course!” He exclaims. Apparently, the simple act of making the effort to collect their documents and seek out help in meeting with him would be enough on their end. His problem comes if he has to seek people out, if he would have to “chase people down” if they didn’t come to him for help. I explained that none of our sites “chase people down,” that most sites serve people who are coming to them anyways, and if someone misses an appointment there is no obligation on the site’s part to wrassle them up, sit them down, and make sure they get benefits.
“Good,” he says, “because we’re living in a liberally minded nation where people are trying to reach out to everyone to help…”
Do you see where I was confused? How I agreed with what his thoughts are, but didn't? Even the public benefits themselves are called “work support,” you can’t survive on them alone. They are meant to help when a family is down on their luck, when they are in education, job training, or looking for a job. I am all about walking beside someone, teaching them self-sufficiency, not giving handouts, etc. We even spoke today about the plight of the working poor. He pointed out that even though the Bible says Christians should help the poor, the definition of “poor” should be seen as those who can’t work, not those who won’t work.
He did ask if he could pray at the end of our meeting. I obliged, and I spent a couple minutes listening to a heartfelt prayer of a man trying to help his neighbors according to scripture, a man with strong opinions, a big heart, lots of energy, and a man who has given me a lot to think about.
What do YOU think about the Christian/scriptural basics of helping the “poor” in our nation?
Don't adjust your screens folks, and don't grab your reading glasses. You are correctly viewing my very official Community Trainer certification. I requested a neon sign advertising my position for over my desk, but this is all I got. Oh well.
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