FEEDNYC

Many obstacles stand in the way of good health for low-income New Yorkers—one being a lack of access to fresh fruits and vegetables. This often leads to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. For children living in food-insecure households, the challenges go beyond physical health. The lack of food access—especially nutrient-rich foods—leads to slower cognitive thinking, headaches, lethargy, difficulty concentrating in school, and can hold them back from reaching their full academic potential.

Sadly, as living expenses rise faster than wages, more and more New Yorkers are struggling to cover the basics. In New York City 2 in 5 working age households don’t have enough income to cover necessities like food, rent, childcare, healthcare, and taxes.

Right now, nearly 3 million New Yorkers are struggling to afford healthy food, and 1.3 million people rely on soup kitchens and pantries to find their next meal. There were many barriers that prevented organizations from solving the food-insecurity crisis, and as hope dwindled searching for a solution, these barriers led to a lack of urgency.

Barriers:

  • Insufficient focus on neighborhoods with concentrated poverty
  • Organizations having a single-issue focus, or lacking the capacity to address the multiple needs of a struggling family
  • Efforts honing in on individuals, instead of looking at the entire household and its challenges
  • No shared vision and a lack of effective and efficient coordination across all industries involved: the government, schools, nonprofits, foundation, corporations, and the families in need
  • No unified approach for data collection

Using the same 5D Approach applied to our ReadNYC initiative, United Way of New York City defined, diagnosed, designed, deployed, and is now driving the results of our comprehensive plan to end hunger and food insecurity across our City by addressing the immediate crisis—needing food today—while creating strategies and building opportunities that would work to eradicate food insecurity as a whole.

FeedNYC—the response to this crisis—is comprised of three components that each address a specific area of the food insecurity challenge.

Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP)

The Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP) is an initiative led by United Way of New York City and funded by the New York State Department of Health. HPNAP supports more than 380 emergency food programs by administering annual food and operations support grants with a purpose of supporting delivery of emergency food to hungry New Yorkers. HPNAP works directly with the community based organizations that are operating food pantries and soup kitchens to build capacity and ensure that as much food as possible is being distributed effectively and efficiently. Many emergency food providers are volunteer-led or managed by limited staff. HPNAP provides technical assistance through food safety and nutrition workshops, provides on-site monitoring to ensure food safety and nutrition guidelines are being followed, and offers resources in transitioning to client choice, volunteer management, succession and sustainability, grant writing and application support, and other technical aspects of the grant process. HPNAP’s program administration rests solely on the staff of UWNYC, and offers the team a unique position of the frontline to speak about what happens when people don’t have enough food or resources.

Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP)

The Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP) provides financial support to low-income New Yorkers on an emergency basis to prevent hunger, preserve housing, provide shelter, and support basic needs. Focusing on families with children, low-income families, homeless, immigrants, and elderly, EFSP funding is used to provide meals or groceries, lodging in a shelter or hotel, one month’s rent or mortgage payment, one month’s utility bill, or equipment necessary for organizations to feed or shelter people. With New Yorkers in or approaching a crisis, EFSP’s strategy is to supplement and expand the work of local social service agencies to help during economic emergencies. For New Yorkers who are working towards, but have not yet achieved self-sufficiency, the assistance from EFSP alleviates the challenges of choosing between rent or food, lights or heat, and offers an emergency support during a moment of crisis.

Food Assistance Collaborative (FAC)

The Food Assistance Collaborative (FAC) is a coalition of major players in the New York City food space. UWNYC along with Helmsley Charitable Trust, United Way of New York City, City Harvest, New York City Human Resources Administration, New York State Department of Health—are working together to alleviate hunger from the food supplier/distributor level by increasing capacity and food supply in the most underserved neighborhoods across the City, sharing information and resources to establish greater coordination among food providers, and improving the client experience.

To learn more about how the FAC got started, check out this article from The New York Times. 

A major accomplishment of our membership in Food Assistance Collaborative was the development of an innovative app, Plentiful—a free, mobile reservation tool for food pantries and clients. Plentiful is making it easy for hungry New Yorkers to locate pantries in their area using any smart phone to download the app or text, search and locate an emergency food provider, make a reservation, and easily pick up food at a scheduled time. This new technology is allowing pantries to better serve their clients, eliminating pen and paper tracking, providing instant communication with clients, helping decrease wait times from hours to minutes, and offering a communication tool for language barriers with the app being offered in nine different languages. Most importantly, Plentiful is helping New Yorkers access food with greater dignity. To date, Plentiful has reached more than 130,000 households in New York City—that’s about 25% of households that use emergency food services, and that number continues to grow.

To learn more about Plentiful, please visit www.plentifulapp.com.