A Culture of Diversity

I have created this “Diversity Statement” for the Foodbank so that everyone – employees, customers, donor, and other constituents know that we understand the importance of diversity, and know that we plan to keep the goal of a diverse workplace in mind at all times.

“Our mission is to gather and share quality food, and nurture partnerships so that no Vermonter will go hungry.”

Fulfilling the Vermont Foodbank’s mission depends on creating a personal, trusting connection with everyone in our community—including people in Vermont in need of food, network partners, donors, and government agencies. One way we as an organization will gain, nurture, and maintain this connection is by recognizing the role diversity plays in all that we do.

To build trust and foster relationships the Foodbank must make a personal connection with each individual from whom we gather, or with whom we share. Making that personal, trusting connection means that anyone—regardless of age, income level, race, gender, culture, disability or any other attribute—should recognize the Vermont Foodbank as an open, diverse and welcoming organization.

A diverse range of potential employees must also make a personal, trusting connection with the Vermont Foodbank for us to be seen as an employer of choice. Our nation’s work force is increasingly becoming more diverse in every way—a trend that is here to stay. Potential employees need to be able to trust that the Foodbank is committed to an environment where each individual’s perspective, concerns, and contributions are equally valued, appreciated and acted upon.

The more diversity we have in our staff, our partners, and our supporters, the more successful we will be at gaining the trust of the people we serve. Diversity at the Vermont Foodbank is about achieving our mission and nurturing partnerships to ensure that no one in Vermont goes hungry.

Hope

Just as giving as an unconditional act, hope is about overcoming adversity and dedicating oneself to a long-term effort to bring about change. I recently read this statement about hope, and I found it a wonderful reminder to keep the big picture in focus while tending to the day-to-day detail of what we do. It was posted on March 21st by Paul Raushenbush, the Religion Editor for the Huffington Post, talking about the difference between “optimism” and “hope.” (My apologies to Mr. Raushenbush for taking his post somewhat out of context.)

. . . [O]ptimism won't carry you very far in politics, faith or life. Hope is different than optimism. Optimism assumes that everyone will be happy clappy and go along with the program, and then crumples when they don't. In contrast, hope inspires endurance, and requires serious work. Optimism is a luxury for those who can afford to lose. Hope is for people for whom there is no alternative but to persevere. It was not optimism that carried the great civil rights movements of the last century, it was hope that made a way when there was no way, and squeezed justice out of the bitter fruit of persecution. Hope is tied to a belief in something greater than oneself (if only the collective wisdom of humanity) that wills this world to be a better place. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote "Hope is the faith that, together, we can make things better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope is an active one. It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope. Hope is the knowledge that we can choose; that we can learn from our mistakes and act differently next time. That history is not a trash bag of random coincidences blown open by the wind, but a long slow journey to redemption."
The promise that progress is possible, and that history is kind to those who work for the common good echoes the famous profession of hope by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who reminded us that the "arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice." . . . .

The courage of hope is why people persevere in ending hunger. I believe that long arc is indeed bending toward justice, and that we can end hunger in this country in my lifetime.

The Vermont Foodbank’s Annual Hunger Conference

This year is the 4th Annual Vermont Foodbank Hunger Conference, titled “Understanding the Persistence of Hunger and Poverty.” There are so many public and private efforts to relieve hunger and poverty both in this country and around the world, yet the problems persist. In fact, it seems that hunger and poverty have always been with us.

We have done a great deal in this country to alleviate hunger. People rarely starve or suffer from severe malnutrition but a large number of people, more than 49 million according to the USDA, are “food insecure,” meaning that they don’t have enough food to live a healthy, active lifestyle. There are programs: SNAP, CSFP, CACFP, SFSP, WIC, school breakfast and lunch, TANF and others that provide benefits to purchase food or directly feed people in need. What is missing?

That is what we will explore on April 27th at the Sheraton in Burlington. The morning session will be for the people who operate food shelves, feeding sites, shelters, child care centers and senior programs—for network partners of the Vermont Foodbank. We will participate in an abbreviated version of the “Bridges out of Poverty” program that provides insight into the challenges of living in poverty and perspective on the choices people in poverty have to make and the reasons certain choices are made.

The public is invited to join us for lunch with keynote speaker Joel Berg, Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and author of All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?. Joel is a provocative speaker, with strong ideas about how this country can actually end hunger and why we haven’t done it yet. The general public is invited to stay and attend afternoon session featuring Mr. Berg and others.

I look forward to the discussions that will come out of the mixing the perspectives of those in poverty with a policy plan to end hunger. Mashing the different perspectives together might get everyone off kilter enough that we come up with some unique and innovative ideas. It will be especially exciting to have the general public in the mix with what I suspect will be some different ideas about hunger and poverty and how to address the problems.

Please join us. For more information or to register visit the Vermont Foodbank website, www.vtfoodbank.org.

Say sNO to Hunger

Ski and Ride to benefit the Vermont Foodbank on Friday, January 29! For every all mountain lift ticket purchased with this coupon

SKI/RIDE SUGARBUSH ON 1/29 AND PRESENT THIS VOUCHER TO SUPPORT THE FOODBANK:


Sugarbush will donate $10 to the Vermont Foodbank. $5 will be donated for every Mount Ellen lift ticket.

It’s been warm, but it is supposed to cool down, with snow showers Thursday, to set up a nice, cold day for skiing on Friday. Also, Timbers Restaurant at Sugarbush will have a Localvore menu on Friday, and a percentage of the proceeds will be donated to the Foodbank.

This is really and unprecedented event, and an exciting new partnership between the Foodbank and Sugarbush. It will be a great day of skiing and riding, and I invite you all to come.

I will be at Sugarbush Friday morning to greet skiers and hand out coupons to those who don’t have them. We will also have a table set up with VFB information. See you there!

Hunger, Food and Power

Don’t underestimate the role power plays in the issue of hunger and people’s access to food. Food brings up powerful emotions in people – it is a very primal need. And powerful people, wealthy or not, do not go hungry. Powerful institutions control the growing, manufacturing and distribution of most of the food in this country. When some people don’t have enough food, there are programs run by powerful institutions (governments and NGOs) that can often decide who gets fed, what they get fed, when they get fed, and how much. This power can be used for good, and in most cases it is. There are also many peoples and organizations without power who struggle to provide assistance to those in need. Amazing feats are accomplished every day, yet people still go hungry in Vermont and across the world.

We can all do more good, and feed more people, when we strive to understand the power dynamics at work and proactively foster understanding, cooperation and empathy towards those with little or no power.

Hungry people can often feel powerless, which leads to feelings of frustration, hopelessness and anger. I know that feeling powerless makes me angry. Imagine the weight of these feelings, day-after-day, month-after-month, year-after-year. “Why can’t the powerful see what is happening, and fix the problem?” Advocates for the hungry can also come to feel powerless, frustrated and angry. At the same time, the corporate or government executives believe they are doing their best under the circumstances and wonder why the advocates are so frustrated and angry, and why the advocates can’t understand how “the system” needs to work?

The truth is the reasons hunger exists are pretty well know, and many effective solutions to hunger are at our fingertips. Starvation and severe malnutrition used to be a real problem in this country, and have largely been alleviated by successful government programs. It seems that there is no political will to take the next steps and end hunger and food insecurity. The necessary decisions are resisted because they will cause someone, somewhere to lose some of their power.

Do people really stand in the way of feeding others?

Maybe not directly, but many times I have heard the concern expressed that we must guard against people who are “unqualified” or “undeserving” getting food or benefits, or that people are “abusing” the benefits they do get. I have heard this from Presidents of the United State and U.S. Senators to social service case workers, food shelf volunteers and even other recipients of help; why is there so much concern about others getting “too much?” Could it be that if someone else receives a benefit that offends our sense of fairness or right and wrong, that we feel powerless, and therefore threatened?

It is difficult and against our nature to just let go of that threatened feeling. It is especially difficult to let go of that feeling again, and again, and again, each time our slim hold on power is threatened. I struggle; we all do. We just need to summon our reserves of grace, and each time remember that people must be fed, people must eat, and all of us have a responsibility to let go of some of our own power, and insist that others do so also. So let go, you’ll be glad you did.

Feeding [all of the] People Well: Why Food Banks and the Sustainable, Local Agriculture Movement Need Each Other (Part 2)

The local, sustainable agricultural community, and the movement to bring it mainstream, can really benefit from a clear connection to the food assistance network of food banks, food shelves and meal sites that make up the charitable food system. It is my experience that people committed to local food are committed to community-building and ensuring a tightly-woven social fabric. They will embrace the connection, especially if it can take their movement forward. Also, to truly be sustainable, a food system cannot just rely on a committed core of people: most of society needs to participate or the farms, and the system, cannot survive.

One hundred years ago all we had were sustainable local agricultural systems. Food simply could not be stored and transported long distances, which meant it went from farm to market for the most part. Those were the days of independent butchers, bakers, produce stands, and dairies. By the 1940’s, large, self-service supermarkets were appearing, radically changing our foods systems. The industry has been growing larger and more consolidated ever since. And the trend continues.

How can food banks help?

In a change process there are generally three groups of people: the early adopters, who will quickly embrace change (10-15%); the large middle, who are waiting to see which way the change is going before making a move (70-80%); and those that will actively resist change (10-15%). Here in Vermont we are already seeing the early adopters moving. The trick is to show the large middle that a tipping point has been reached and it is safe to adopt a new way of shopping and eating. Having the Vermont Foodbank, our 280 partners and the tens of thousands of Vermonters who access this food demonstrating how “farm-to-plate” can work – in a practical way – can go a long way to relieving the anxiety of the 80%.

The Foodbank, our partners and clients are a great laboratory and incubator for making the “farm-to-plate” model work in a situation where the conventional wisdom says it can’t work – with limited income people who don’t necessarily come from a culture of preparing fresh foods. In other words, if we can make it work, it’s ready for prime time.

The relationships between the Vermont Foodbank and the local, sustainable agricultural community are both longstanding and just starting. It is time to expand and deepen the relationships, and build the momentum necessary to sustain a movement.

So food banks need sustainable, local agriculture, and sustainable, local agriculture needs food banks. Let’s get to work.

Feeding [all of the] People Well: Why Food Banks and the Sustainable, Local Agriculture Movement Need Each Other (Part 1)

There is an “insider” debate that pops up sometimes in the charitable food world: is it appropriate for food banks to distribute everything that gets donated to our network partners – food shelves, meal sites, shelters, after school programs and senior centers? Even food that isn’t nutritious, like soda, snack foods and candy? Good nutrition is important for everyone, so shouldn’t foodbanks and our partners make sure that free food is nutritious food? My point isn’t here is to engage in this debate, although I certainly have a point of view (and as CEO of the Vermont Foodbank, that distributes over 7.5 million pounds of food, I don’t think anything should be wasted), but to talk about the natural link between food banks and sustainable, local agriculture.

Food banks originated to take food that would have otherwise been wasted and deliver it to people who don’t have enough food to eat. Over the decades, food banks have become conduits for food distribution by the U.S. Government, recipients of donations from food manufacturers and distributors, and have been aggressively sourcing food. As food banks move from donated food to more aggressive sourcing, we can and should find more sources of nutritious and delicious food to distribute. National produce donations are available, and the Vermont Foodbank gets its share. But there are issues of transportation costs and regular availability.

The place to find nutritious local food is to make connections with Vermont’s agricultural community and with those interested in creating a local, sustainable food system. It is essential that local and sustainable includes everyone, even those who are now served by the charitable food system. People committed to local food are usually committed to community-building, and ensuring a tightly-woven social fabric.

The Vermont Foodbank is beginning to build those connections through our gleaning program and by reaching out to the local, sustainable agricultural community. And they are reaching back. These partnership are both longstanding and just starting, but I see a real force building to delivering fresh, local vegetables, fruit, meat and dairy to our neighbors in need.

So foodbanks need sustainable, local agriculture, but why does it need us? That’s part 2.