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Bends in the Road Inter-Faith Food Shuttle Jill Staton Bullard, Founder and CEO Jill@FoodShuttle.org. Bends in the road. The method behind the madness. The method behind the madness. Our method of evaluation has always been observation, immersion, and personal experience.
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Bends in the Road • Inter-Faith Food Shuttle • Jill Staton Bullard, Founder and CEO • Jill@FoodShuttle.org
Bends in the road The method behind the madness
The method behind the madness • Our method of evaluation has always been observation, immersion, and personal experience. • The people we serve are our partners & our friends, sharing our community. • They lead, we listen, we move forward together.
What we observed • Soup kitchen volunteers cut 11 sandwiches into quarters, so 44 people would have protein. • We didn’t know how desperate they were for food. • Stinky breakfast sandwiches! We could do better than that!
The 1st Bend: Finding GOOD food • People need GOOD food, not just any food— • Produce and Protein • Started recovering fresh food from State Farmers Market to get the best possible food missing from shelters.
What we observed • We sat in the soup kitchens and started talking to people to find out: • WHY are you here?
The 2nd Bend: Root Causes • The more we listened to people, the more we learned our programs HAD TO ADDRESS the 2 primary causes of hunger: • Lack of INCOME • Lack of ACCESS
What we observed • Most people in the soup kitchen were working low wage, day labor jobs, part time, because they had no skills. • Where they lived, food that was available and affordable was highly-processed and low in nutrition.
The 3rd Bend: Teach skills for better wages • Opened a commercial kitchen to stabilize the abundant produce now being donated by the Farmers Market— • Began training underemployed adults in CULINARY JOB SKILLS so they could earn a living.
What we observed: • Before the term “food desert” was popular, the corner mini mart was the SINGLE access point for food in low income neighborhoods.
The 4th Bend: Take food to the people • Create food access IN low-income communities. • MOBILE MARKETS- go where the people are and offer fresh food “shopping” for free. • With community partners, particularly local faith partners.
What we observed: • As we brought produce into neighborhoods, many people didn’t recognize it, nor knew how to cook it. • Volunteers noticed that obesity was rampant among the poor, and mistook that for not being hungry.
The 5th Bend: Teach better health by teaching better eating • NUTRITION EDUCATION to address: • Health disparities in low income neighborhoods. Obesity, heart disease, poor nutrition, too much cheap fast food. • Grandparents did not want their grandchildren to suffer poor health as they did…so they began to change.
What we observed: • Immigrants from agrarian countries did not want to accept free food. They wanted to GROW it. • As we witnessed how they solved their food problems by growing their own food, we asked: “So why wouldn’t this work for everybody?”
The 6th Bend: Growing food • SELF-SUFFCIENCY + GROWING FOOD. • Overcoming lack of income and lack of access by teaching skills around food— • Job skills, food preparation, nutrition and even GROWING FOOD. • TEACHING FARM & URBAN AG in low income neighborhoods
The road leads back to our roots “We were poor, but we never knew it, because everybody had gardens and everybody ‘put up’ food and shared.” –Vernon Malone, State Senator
The road leads back to our roots Travis and Lester, Urban Ag Graduates
Measurement Beyond the Pounds • # Participants in Nutrition classes • # Participants in Urban Ag workshops • # People growing food in their backyards • Revenue generated by Incubator Farmers • Revenue from our Farm Stands • Revenue from nonprofit Catering with a Cause • # Participants learning a marketable skill in growing or preparing food • # Program graduates getting & retaining jobs • # Nutrition Education participants who report changing their eating habits
Bends in the road Together, hunger IS Fixable!
