(upbeat music) - [Teacher] WSKG thanks the following for their support of this project, the Conrad and Virginia Klee Foundation.

the Corning Incorporated Foundation.

M and T bank.

UHS.

and viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Good evening, thank you for joining us tonight.

Even before the Corona virus pandemic swept across America creating dramatic numbers in lost jobs or long-term furloughs over 10% of households in the United States dealt with food insecurity at some point.

Before the pandemic national food insecurity levels were the lowest they'd been in 20 years and yet 35.2 million individuals including 10.7 million children lived in food and secure households.

Because of COVID-19 progress made to alleviate food insecurity in the United States will likely be wiped out and it will take years to overcome.

Food banks across New York state increased their distribution by 62% in response to COVID.

Locally the food bank of the Southern tier along with our network of partner organizations distributed over 17.6 million pounds of food to families in need representing a 40% increase over 2019.

According to projections from feeding America the nation's food banking network the number of food insecure people in the Southern tier region is expected to increase by 43% compared to 2018 levels largely due to the impact of COVID-19.

My first guest tonight is Dan Egan the executive director of feeding New York State, prior to joining feeding New York state in 2019.

Dan worked in the New York state department of health.

Welcome Dan, and thank you for joining us.

- Thanks for the opportunity, Natasha.

- So tell us a little bit about feeding New York state and your work in particular.

- So like food bank of the Southern tier feeding New York state is a not-for-profit charity and we're a membership organization so our members are the 10 feeding America food banks in New York state your food bank and the other nine together we cover the entire state.

our food banks together this year we'll probably distribute over 400 million pounds of food.

And our role at feeding New York state is to be that unifying voice for all the food banks in New York state so it makes a lot of sense to have a single place where we can talk to state government or manage statewide efforts against hunger - Right?

And that work is especially relevant this year during our COVID response.

And so, as you know, COVID has brought the issue of hunger and food insecurity really to the forefront for many people, but you and I know it's been a problem for quite some time.

Can you talk a little bit about what hunger looked like pre COVID and what it looks like now?

- Sure.

That's a great question because you know we have to ask ourselves what's normal, what's acceptable in our society so if we look back say one year just before the pandemic started so January, 2019, there were about two and a quarter million people in New York state who struggled every month to put food on the table and that's why we're here to help them out, and that was normal that's what we considered okay somehow.

And that's not okay.

When the pandemic hit in March, I would say between March and may, things changed very fast I remember there was one week when 400,000 jobs disappeared here in New York state.

So things changed fast.

Now there's over 3 million people in New York state who are food insecure so it's about a 46% increase in need and it's, you know folks have seen the lines around the block, the lines of cars, it has exposed the problem but the pandemic didn't create this problem, the problem was there before.

So what we've seen at all of our food banks is huge increases and the need to do this work You know, imagine if you were running a business and someone said, well I need you to double your output like that.

You get the same building, the same equipment, you know but you have to do twice as much and that's what food bankers have done, that's what volunteers at food pantries and shelters have done It's just been an incredible effort.

- So feeding New York State does not actually distribute food directly, but you do so much to support food banks like ours across the state.

So can you talk about the different ways that you do that?

- So some of the things we do is we spend a lot of time talking to elected officials.

I'm at the Capitol a lot at least pre pandemic days, now we're zooming with elected officials looking for public policies that will help folks who are in need.

So that's probably the biggest job as being that voice but we also administer a lot of statewide grants.

So we do a lot of food sourcing last year, we sourced over 20 million pounds of food which came mostly from New York state farmers incredibly generous, hardworking people.

That food went from the farm to food banks, to those in need.

That makes sense to do that on a statewide level because the food is distributed very unevenly, there's some places with an awful lot of food and some places with less, we get it where it needs to go.

One of the things I'm proudest of this year is we started a food box program.

So we're kind of taking that sourcing to the next level where we were getting food from all over the state, putting it in a box of mixed produce and dairy and getting that out to food banks that's a new thing we're doing.

It's been very well received so far, It's easy for people to handle.

Another thing we're doing is tryna figure out how to distribute more dairy.

It's challenging for every food bank, of the Southern tiers are real superstar when it comes to distributing dairy, but we're tryna figure out how can we do more of that?

- I think you bring up a good point too, about, you know, moving food around and there are regions in the state that have large commercial scale farms and they're producing a lot of, let's say cabbage and maybe the food bank near there is up to their ears in cabbage, but you know, feeding New York State is helping kind of redirect those resources to other parts of the State that maybe don't have that.

And I think that's important to keep in mind especially during COVID right.

You know, you had a lot of people in need.

You have a lot of farmers that were dumping milk, for example.

And so how do you play that matchmaker role?

And I see feeding New York State as doing a really good job playing that matchmaker role because you know, different regions of the state are not equal in terms of the resources available.

And also the level of need.

- I'll just throw a statistics out there and it might blow people away, but the National Resources Defense Council will tell you that about 40% of all the food that's raised or created in the United States is never consumed It's thrown away.

It's either ploughed under at the farm or it's put in a landfill from the distributor or it's wasted in some other way and you know, all of us in our households waste a little bit that's kind of the last step, but you know, between the farm and your table, 40% of our food is discarded.

So there we are wasting all that food at the same time, we have people in need and that's really where food banking started is let's put these two things together take perfectly good, you know, healthy, high quality food that's not being used for its intended purpose and get it to those who need it so that's, that's really all food banking is, but boy is it complicated to get it done?

And so here in New York, our farmers incredibly productive with a very small percentage of our workforce in New York state they're producing about 18 billion pounds of produce.

We need to put that food to good use and every farmer I've ever talked to, that's what they want, they don't wanna let that go they worked hard to create that food.

You know it's not just a commodity farming is a way of life.

They want that food to go to people who need it.

And they're always there helping us out.

Our challenge at feeding New York state is is getting a truck for that food getting it at the right place at the right time then getting it to a food bank, getting it to the pantries.

It's a gigantic logistics problem.

- Yeah.

And I think, you know, the example that you give really points to the notion that we are part of a larger network of hunger relief, right?

- Yes.

- I think some people might be familiar with their neighborhood food pantry and not really realize all of the different organizations and individuals that play a role in getting food to that pantry.

So thank you for sharing that.

So last year was challenging in so many ways as we know but it also demonstrated what could be possible when we all work together as part of that network, right of hunger relief organizations, towards the common cause what do you feel are some bright spots that came out as a result of our statewide COVID relief efforts?

- So I think anytime you have like a big challenge or a crisis, it brings out the best in people and so many people and that's really what sticks with me is all the new partnerships all the existing partnerships that got so much stronger during the crisis that happened fast.

And I shouldn't speak in the past tense it's still going on.

- Still happening yeah.

- We've got a long way to go.

I'm not even sure if we've seen the worst of it we just don't know, but the partnerships have been incredible.

The people who've called and just said I know you need help.

You know, where do I send help?

Or here's a check or I'm gonna volunteer or I have a restaurant and I'm closed, but I'll prepare food for you.

Or I've got a load of potatoes.

You can have them just tell me where to send you know, that has just been over and over again, this incredible generosity I have to recognize State government here also, they've been right there.

Nourished New York has been an incredible asset for us this year.

The state of New York committed $35 million over an eight month period to nourish New York that was a tremendous help.

Every penny of that got spent with New York state farms, New York state food producers okay none of it left, spent here, New Yorkers feeding new Yorkers is a fantastic help all the numbers aren't quite in yet cause we're not quite finished but so far over 17 million pounds of food has been distributed with that money.

We're hoping to see that continue.

That's really important.

- Excellent.

Well thank you much for joining us Dan, and thanks so much for the work that you do on behalf of food banks and people experiencing hunger in New York.

- Thanks for the opportunity.

- In a moment we will talk with two individuals who lead organizations that help gather and distribute food to people in need.

There are also many grassroots peer to peer groups active throughout our region that help connect community members with food and other resources.

In innovative ways.

We caught up with one of those groups last fall.

(Upbeat music) - My name is Ana Ortiz.

Am part of the mutual aid.

Every week we're doing a food distribution.

So we just saving any food, any donation in Tompkins County.

And we just do an event and we just gave up to the people around.

(upbeat music) - Mutual aid is an ancient practice.

I mean, I would say it's been practiced long before English was even a language.

And so mutual aid is just trying to revive what has been done before and re-imagine the future in a way that people don't have to go hungry.

Like we really have enough abundance.

And it's just about spreading that abundance around.

People in this community have been practicing it out of just sheer necessity for long before the pandemic.

The folks who were involved with mutually Tompkins now just saw an especially acute need, like more and more people were gonna be facing food insecurity than before and financial insecurity as a result of the pandemic.

And so the group kind of formed as a as like a crisis response really initially to that.

But we try to take leadership and direction and inspiration from local community members who have been doing it like Ana Ortiz and other societies in the past.

So a lot of it is rescued food from a number of local grocery stores.

Some of it's from the friendship donations network who partly does food rescue and partly gets donations from community members.

And some of it is also from a local community gardens including I wanna say ecovillage, the SC street garden, youth farm project.

So yeah, really a wide range of things.

First It was very new people didn't really know about it this location was chosen because of its proximity to like neighborhoods that traditionally rely on like walking across the street and doing grocery shopping It's like here, instead of walking across 13, you can get some free food.

And now, now that the word has gotten out between neighbors and also some more publicity on social media, the responses grown especially since this distribution often pops different neighborhoods to try and meet everyone cause a lot of the people who need the help don't necessarily have cars.

This pandemic I think exposed a lot of the shortcomings of our economy and our society that were already long present.

And now that they're just wide out in the open people are starting to realize, Oh gosh like I'm vulnerable too like we're all kind of in this together, we're all like, you know a few bad months away from, you know, experiencing poverty or eviction or homelessness and much farther away from achieving like upward class mobility and so people are realizing you have to turn elsewhere and we're turning to each other.

(upbeat music) - I'm joined now by two people who work every day to help provide food to some of our neighbors here in the Southern tier and Finger Lakes region.

Jessamine Stone is the coordinator for the Groton Community Food Pantry in Tompkins County.

And Janet Schroeder is the director of the Pantry Of Angels in Lindley located in Steuben County.

Thank you both for joining me today.

- Good evening.

You're welcome.

- So can you tell us each a little bit about your pantry and what brought you to this work?

- I started about 10 years ago and it was because I have always been a helper to people and throughout my career, that was the role I always played.

And our food pantry, it was already in existence was in a tough spot and they needed more manpower and more organization and just more involvement on a leaders part.

And so I got involved and our pantry grew very quickly.

- What about you, Jess?

- So I got involved about two years ago when the pastor of the local church who helps a lot and supports us a lot asked if I would be interested in helping and so after some consideration, I thought, hey what a great way for myself and my husband and our six children to have a place to serve together into to do some stuff and as I got involved like Jenna, I noticed that there was a lot of things that were going well but there were a lot of things that needed some tweaking and so, you know, immediately we went to work and tweaking you know, options that we had different quantities that we were providing and also, you know partnerships that could be sought outside of the ones that already existed and so we too took off and started growing very quickly.

- And this was prior to COVID.

Right?

I mean, what, can you tell us a little bit about what the need looked like in your communities pre COVID and how did it change because of COVID?

- So pre COVID, we were seeing probably about roughly 40 families that would come and, you know sometimes they weren't exactly the same families but it was about 40 families.

And then we had about an additional 50 families that we distributed to on a delivery basis from like our senior housing and our assisted living housing that we have in Groton that was pre COVID and when I ran the numbers at the end of this year, we're up to about 350 families not counting those 50 families that we deliver to so we've had tremendous growth.

- We're open one day a week and we serve upwards of 90 families we were ahead of COVID and now it's like 150.

- And so now both of your pantries are located in a small rural communities.

Can you share some of the challenges that your community faced before COVID and how those challenges were magnified during COVID?

So like Jess, you mentioned to having to do deliveries that's a common theme that we hear in a lot of rural communities cause transportation is such a huge issue.

- We have a lot of families that maybe don't have vehicles or are operating with one vehicle and you know, husband's at work and so wife has no way to get to pantry.

We also don't have a consistent bus line we do have a bus line, but it's very limited and so to go outside of Groton to get groceries since we have no grocery store which is another difficulty that we face right now makes it challenging and so families they really have to kind of plan and coordinate and figure out how they're gonna get there to get their basic things like meat and produce, and certain dairies that are not offered at the two local smaller stores we have - We have no stores either, no transportation at all.

And there are a lot of people that don't have vehicles, that are disabled, are seniors and not strong enough to get out or are holding in because of COVID now and used to come.

And it's just a major shortfall to be in a rural area.

- And so COVID forced many businesses and organizations to change their operations significantly.

How did your pantries have to adjust?

Because of COVID - Like many pantries.

Most of my team was seniors who were unfortunately one of our most at risk populations for COVID and so I was very nervous going into COVID how that would work cause I didn't wanna not have them help, but I certainly didn't want them to be putting themselves at risk.

And so slowly one by one I kind of lost 95% of my work crew at a time when we were quickly doubling tripling, quadrupling, but in the process of changing how we did things going from coming in and walking through to having now pre-pack boxes and we actually do like an order system so people can actually choose It's kind of like a Walmart pickup order in a sense as how we do things so I, I acquired very quickly a great team of people who have come on and much younger stronger able-bodied group of people that are less at risk and they've been absolutely necessary in this I don't know how we handle things without them but so it's really it's become very different deliveries have increased and just the need for planning and and the hours are crazy.

So it's been quite a change.

- Yeah.

I mean, I just really want to call attention to that because.

- you switched from being an in-person kind of you know client choice type pantry to being all online.

- So I had attended back I think it was probably right when COVID was really starting to be something you hear about I attended a meeting at food bank and there was lots of talk amongst the different pantries, how we were going to accommodate, you know, keeping pantries open but not putting risks out there to people and I remember leaving the meeting just with a sinking feeling of I don't wanna go to pre-pack generic boxes like our people are losing so much, some of them can't go to work, they can't go to their social events, they can't go see their families, like the least they should be able to do is have the choice of what they would like to eat.

And so I went back to my team and said, guys, like, what do you think?

How can we do this?

And so we came up with our system in which we use a wonderful app called PDF filler to be able to make documents that I can send out through email or on Facebook that people can put in their order and place it and then I just zip those off on the printer and we go to work.

- That's like the food pantry Instacart.

- Yes.

Yes.

Pretty much - And things changed a lot at Lindley as well.

Can you?

- Yes.

We're using the drive-through model.

Like more like the mobile food pantry, the problem we faced with doing something like Jess was talking about.

There are a lot of people in our area that don't even have internet.

We're that remote and so we decided this was the better model.

So we're putting more food in the bags and depending on the size of the family they may go home with two boxes I mean, I'm talking banana boxes or they might go home with a trunk full.

- Right.

And you have your volunteers packing those boxes and then the folks drive through and other volunteers are putting the boxes in the vehicles.

- Correct.

- So, because of the shutdown many people found themselves in need of food assistance for the first time.

What stereotypes do you think people have about pantries and pantry clients that may have prevented them from reaching out for help in the past?

- So I know that one of the major situations we ran into is had a lot of folks that unfortunately had negative experiences in the past whether it went stemming all the way back to their child hood and you know, what their parents experienced and the kinds of food like Janet was talking about that maybe were feeling like a less than quality that a lot of people didn't come and so what I found is, as COVID really started to get into you know, its intensity and like, say April and early may we had a lot of folks that came that were like I had sworn off, you know, pantries I was not gonna go there and came and were just incredibly blessed by the amount by the quality and by the people that greeted them.

And as they said made them feel like they were, you know, human again.

- Right, right.

And you have a personal connection with that.

- Yeah.

When I first took over in 2019 the first four months I put myself on the desk and a lot of folks were like, well, why are you doing that?

You know, you should be moving around and seeing how operations are going and I'm like, no it's absolutely imperative that I know each one of these folks by name, if nothing else I wanna know who they are and a little bit about them and so going into COVID I had a good base knowledge of our clientele obviously I've had to grow that as we've, you know quadrupled and, you know, really almost 10 times what we were before, but it's been great.

And it's really rewarding when you see that smile even though they're mask are on, you can see it in their eyes you know, that they really feel great about the fact that, you know, their name or that you remember them or something specific that they may have shared while you were checking them in so.

- From the food bank's perspective for our mobile food pantries and community food distributions, we found 40% of the people that were signing up for those distributions were brand new to our system.

They had never reached out for help in the past.

And for us it was important to ensure that we were providing the best quality food and that we did recruit volunteers for those distributions that were, you know friendly and helpful and weren't kind of contributing to people's feeling of shame, right?

There is a stigma the first time that you reach out for help.

And so it's always good to ensure that kind of message is being dispelled at any given time throughout this COVID experience.

We never had more than about 10% of our pantries and meal programs close.

And when they did, it was very temporary just to kind of figure out ways to tweak their operations.

And then they came right back up.

And I think that is tremendously impressive especially given the fact that about 85% of the organizations that we work with, like yours are entirely run by volunteers.

And the average volunteer at a pantry is a 75 year old female.

And so that's a demographic that is definitely at high risk of contracting COVID and so the fact that people were so dedicated throughout this experience to try to figure out a way to continue to operate, to continue to serve their communities while also keeping their volunteer safe was just an incredible testament to the level of commitment that people have for this work.

And I see that commitment in both of you and I'm grateful for it.

And I thank you both for everything you do, to help your communities and to serve the people in need.

- [Instructor] To find help or to become involved with issues discussed during tonight's episode, please consider reaching out to the following organizations.

For a more complete list Of resources, visit WSKG.ORG/DREAM (upbeat music) - [Teacher] WSKG thanks the following for their support of this project.

the Conrad and Virginia Klee Foundation.

the Corning Incorporated Foundation.

M and T bank.

UHS.

and viewers like you.

Thank you.