On Wednesday my group and I spend the day with NYCCA, New York City Coalition Against Hunger. We spent the morning with Andrea Shapiro at the Union Square Farmers Market. Before we started our outreach we spent time with Andrea learning about the different food assistance programs available in the U.S. I was surprised to learn that the program we hear of most SNAP or Food Stamps isn’t actually the only one. We learned about other programs such as WIC, Women Infants and Children, which helps pregnant women and women with young children get access to healthy food, and healthy bucks which is a supplement food stamps that encourages food stamp users to shop in farmers markets. I was also astonished by how many people who are eligible for these programs don’t think they are. After getting our change to learn we entered the market with flyers to hand out. The flyers had information on all these programs in many languages to make it accessible to all people. At one point I offered a flyer to a woman and she told me she only spoke Spanish. Instead of letting her walk away I was able to explain to her, in Spanish, what I was trying to share. At first I didn’t really realize how this could help people, but after seeing the number of people who wanted our flyers I realized that possibly knowing that you are eligible for programs like SNAP or WIC can change someones life drastically.
Later that afternoon we went back to NYCCAH’s offices. While I very small thing, I noticed how small their organization was. On the phone and looking at all the work this group has done I expected a huge office. When we walked into their small sweet with probably about 20 people working, I was impressed and inspired by how big an impact just a few people were making. While in NYCCAH’s office we were able to interview Joel Berg, NYCCAH’s executive director. I think what I took away most from our conversation was how the solution to hunger isn’t food drives and soup kitchens. Those are emergency food, and they shouldn’t be what people rely on in their day to day life. Their needs to be a long term solution that will actually eradicate hunger. One of the ideas that Mr. Berg left us with was that he hopes someday hunger will be like slavery in the US. Something that we look back on and wonder why we let this happen and why it continued for so long.
