Food Bank waiting on aid as demand keeps surging
Executive director fears federal help not coming in time
In a perfect world, Food Bank of Northwest Indiana, with $300,000 in cash donations within the first two months of 2021, would be in excellent shape to start the year’s mission of feeding Northwest Indiana’s hungry.
Getting food to feed them, however, remains the Food Bank’s biggest concern going into the second quarter of 2021, and as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to lurch along, it’s unclear whether help — at least at the federal level — is going to arrive anytime soon, its executive director, Vic Garcia, said.
With final passage of the American
Rescue Act, the bill will “extend the time that lawmakers increase the maximum Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by 15%; extend and expand Pandemic-EBT through this summer and beyond; and provide direct, financial assistance to people who are most likely to struggle with hunger by expanding the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which could cut child poverty rates by half,” said Vince Hall, interim chief government relations officer for Feeding America, which supplies the Food Bank of Northwest Indiana and 199 other food banks nationwide, in a recent release. For Indiana’s SNAP recipients, that’ll mean a $28 increase per month to their benefits, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Additionally, the USDA in a March 3 release said it’ll be releasing $1.25 billion in funding to The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) for states to purchase food through the Agricultural Marketing
Service as well as continuing to “look for ways to remove barriers and make it easier for qualified applicants to receive assistance through programs like SNAP, WIC and P-EBT, which should ease the demand currently shouldered by our food bank partners.”
Farm to Family, a food distribution program started during the Trump administration, is expected to continue through March and possibly April, Garcia said.
The announcements would be a huge relief to Garcia, but so far, other than the Farm to Family program extension, he said he has yet to receive word from Feeding America about what the USDA announcement means for Northwest Indiana and the food bank. What he does know is that the need to feed his clients remains at an unprecedented rate and only the wild burst of cold and snow at the end of last month slowed things down for a minute.
“Last month, we fed between 12,000 and 13,000 people through our Mobile Markets, whereas we had been averaging 15,000,” Garcia said. “But prior to last March, we were feeding 4,000 people.”
And if Congress continues to kick the TEFAP can down the road, food banks will face a decline of 30% to 40% of their charitable food from farmers, and food through TEFAP comprises about 50% of Food Bank of Northwest Indiana’s inventory, Garcia said.
Nevertheless, the Food Bank is forging ahead on some of its plans with the money it received from the
Cleveland-Cliffs Foundation and Albert’s Jewelers of Schererville, Garcia said. The Food Bank will use the $250,000 it received from the steel mill to increase its food storage capacity by transforming a 12,000-square-foot space in its warehouse as well as purchase a 15-passenger van that would be used to pick up people within a 10-mile radius of a Mobile Market.
“There might be people who’re three blocks away from a market but won’t be able to get the food back to their place because they don’t have a vehicle,” he said. “We want to eliminate the transportation barrier.”
The $50,000 Albert’s donated, meanwhile, will fund three big Included Mobile Market food distributions between March and August as well as a special Easter Mobile Market, he said. Albert’s will also provide monthly groceries through its Pantry Pack program for limited-income pregnant women, home bound seniors, and food-insecure youth who are a part of the juvenile justice system, according to a release.
A third program the Food Bank is undertaking with the Lake Area United Way will see residents who fit LAUW’s ALICE profile be eligible to earn a certificate in Warehousing through its LEVEL UP program, Garcia said. The program will work with cohorts of 15 to 20 people via virtual classes, and two or three of those would become eligible for a paid internship at the Food Bank, he said.
The program dovetails nicely with the Food Bank’s mission of not just feeding, but also helping people help themselves. It’ll also bridge the gap left when the Indiana National Guard was redeployed at the end of last year.
“That was such a good experience working with the Guard, and now, we’re learning to adapt to life without them,” he said. “The LEVEL UP program will help.”
People interested in volunteering with the Food Bank of Northwest Indiana can sign up at foodbanknwi.org/volunteer.