For the over 10,000 children and their families which would be 25,000 family members with the disease called food insecurity, we are going to take a stand together. Will you join us in this pledge ?
“I pledge, or we pledge” to take actions and make decisions in Jefferson County to get our children and families to HOME PLATE.” “We will add to our life a legacy of helping others to EAT ” “We choose to give of ourselves to make this happen”
HOME PLATE means that we shall provide enough foods and means and helps for self sufficiency skills for a family to no longer have to be in physiological chaos over having food and not having food. Having food and not having food each week, month and year.
University studies show that weekend food bags do help families to somewhat reduce food insecurity and trauma. The studies also show that MORE FOOD is needed to eliminate the ups and downs and fears of not being able to eat everyday. More food is needed through giving foods, snap benefits, food pantries, and higher levels of incomes and better food budgeting skills for these children and families.
Having had cancer in 2001, I am familiar with fighting for my life. You brace yourself. When will be the day that together in Jefferson County we will have a plan like General Patton to destroy this villain called FOOD INSECURITY ?
We will be having a series of COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS WITH ACTIONS to bring our children and families to HOME PLATE together. If we really love our neighbor and we do, this will not be hard. We will exert enough effort over the next two years to take that villain down.
Be on the lookout for announcements about our Home Plate community gatherings for action. We promise you these are not to just talk and slap ourselves a high five. No these are generals meetings who are going to go to war against this insidious disease called food insecurities
The requests we are receiving to help children and families reduce hunger is growing so much each month. We really need your help to donate and for some to donate regularly to support our work that has included over 40 sites since our inception. We will be adding drop off sites but begin with Hampton Inn Denver . They were so kind as to allow us to use their facility for our Gala Event last November. They have sent volunteers and money since that time.
Please donate as an individual or family. Ask your teams or clubs to do food drive for us. There are over 10,000 children and their families just in Lakewood that are food insecure. This means that there is a high likelihood that during any month they can have not enough food, have to skip meals etc. Many remain silent in this suffering.
WORKING POOR are our over predominate families we serve. Living wage in Jefferson County is $32 an hour. Free and Reduced lunch families can be earning around $30,000 for family of four. We partner with agencies and non profits that strongly provide financial self sustaining support and training. Please consider supporting this food drive . We deliver to 20 schools and apartments each week. We will be delivering to over 30 sites this summer.
Be sure all items are exactly what we ask for and are not beyond food safe dates. That is greatly appreciated. Thanks for being the answer to their prayers and hopes. Barbara Moore, Executive Director
Thursday Drivers are a core of our Ambassadors who load and
deliver foods each week to our locations at Section 8 Apartments, Title One
Schools, Head Starts, Gap Schools, Pools, Parks, Rec Centers all year round.
Leadership
Team for Drivers/Deliveries Logistics
Don and Jeanette Polotto –
A couple who are a team. Don has a background in Electrical Contracting
and Jeanette provides communications and planning talents.
Deanna Kahn – A retired commercial real estate broker. Back
up leader for Delivery Schedules and order logistics. Plans out snacks and
produce for each driver and location weekly.
Core Drivers – come almost every week and are the foundation
of our ability to consistently and with care and professionalism bring foods
every week year round to our program families. Our team is also community members who
volunteer once of few times a year to help us have a solid team. We use Helping
Habit platform for signing up to volunteer on Thursdays.
Bill Graf – Attorney in private practice and proud member of
Rotary Lakewood Foothills. Southern Methodist Dedman School of Law.
Ed Mast – President of Lakewood Foothills Rotary. Retired engineer.
Trish and Duane Hermanson – Driving foods and packing foods
each week is said to be their very favorite part of the week. Trish is an author and has amazing blog site
for inspiring people weekly. They serve at their church which feeds high school
children pizza weekly and more.
Chair of Advisory Board – Paula Redig – Adams 12 Five Star Retired Principal. Owner of A 1 Rentals Wheat Ridge with Russ Redig. Student teacher supervision Regis College. Taught Social Studies.
Advisory Board Ed Diez DeMedina – Senior Vice President of Human Resources/Director of Diversity & Inclusion at FirstBank. Aba Stonier School of Banking/ Wharton School. University of Utah School of Business.
Advisory Board – Peter Freitag Operations Leader for Friday Packing
Senior Director of Retention, College of Arts and Sciences, Interim Assistant Dean College of Arts and Science university of Colorado Boulder. Volunteer at Colorado Coalition for the Homeless Eye Clinic. Stony Brook University Doctor of Philosophy Sociology.
Ambassadors Leadership Team
Volunteer Coordinator Leader – Tara Sawinski Business Operations Sr Manager Accenture. Civilian Personnel Management U S Department of Defense. University of Maryland. Government and Politics and Public Administration and Politics .
Operations – Friday Packing – Peter Freitag – Senior Director of Retention, College of Arts and Sciences, Interim Assistant Dean College of Arts and Science university of Colorado Boulder. Volunteer at Colorado Coalition for the Homeless Eye Clinic. Stony Brook University Doctor of Philosophy Sociology
Finance/Accounting/Forecasts – Tina Cowles . Corporate accounting and finance for over 30 years. Tina earned her bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Butler University and her MA in Counseling from Colorado Christian University. She helped build and continues to support the Ray of Hope Home orphanage in Kenya in memory of her late husband. She also supports the Foothills Animal Shelter by serving as a foster parent.
Operations – Thursday Drivers for Deliveries – Jeanette and Don Pallotto Don is semi-retired project manager for a local electrical contractor. He specializes in security systems.
Policy and Collaboration – Laura Boggs Director of CDBE Enterprises. Consultant to Benefits in Action, University of Michigan BA Business Administration. Strategic Business Process Improvement.
Operations – Produce and Special Foods – Thursday Delivery operations – BS in Business from Regis College and MS in Finance University of Colorado. 30 Years in Commercial Real Estate . Fund raiser for children’s Non Profit Ralston House and Brent’s Place.
Non Profit Formation Coach – Rusty Collins – Denver County CSU Extension Director. Was Executive Director of Bohemian Foundation. Executive Director of Neighbor to Neighbor Affordable Housing. Colorado State University MS BS Consumer Science and Housing.
Sandy Pederson Neumayr – School Relations – Retired Advanced Practice RN, volunteer at Camp Wapiyapi each summer. Was Hospital Director and Supervisor in Virginia.
Jeremy Ravitz – Operations leader for Driving Foods From Food Bank Rockies to Site – Owns POME short for Product Of My Environment, is an Earth-conscious apparel & lifestyle brand that offers top quality men’s & women’s apparel & accessories. The idea was cultivated outside of Detroit, Michigan where we still claims our roots, although HQ has transplanted to Denver, Colorado.
Olivia Madrid – Social Media and Communications – Student at Colorado Christian University.
Stephanie Lind Bitzer – Larry Miller Auto Group controller – Financial Projections and Events – Comptroller for Larry Miller Nissan at 104th. Married with two children and grew up with food needs so she is compelled to help us.
Breaking Barriers to SNAP Benefits Will Help End Hunger
By Alejandro Garcia Posted on June 2, 2011, 9:00 am
Latinos are becoming a national presence and will represent a crucial segment of our nation’s future workforce. They accounted for more than half of the nation’s growth from 2000 to 2010 and will be a third of the overall population by 2050. Latino children currently make up more than one in five children in the United States. They are the youngest and fastest growing population in the nation.
Ironically, Hispanic children are also more likely than their non-Hispanic white peers to be overweight or obese. Obesity and hunger are interrelated because low-income families may be forced to buy cheaper, higher calorie foods in order to make their food budgets last. And 38.2 percent of Hispanic children are overweight or obese compared to 35.9 percent of black children and 29.3 percent of white children. Furthermore, Hispanic families are less likely than non-Hispanic white families to live in neighborhoods where healthy foods are available and sold at affordable prices. Obese children often become obese adults, and are increasingly at risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
The promise of SNAP
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is the nation’s largest antihunger program. When our nation experienced a large spike in unemployment between 2008 and 2009, increased SNAP benefits put in place by the Obama administration in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 helped prevent a corresponding increase in hunger. Increased money for food stamps not only helped families, it boosted the economy through increased spending.
Hispanic children and their families, however, are less likely to receive help from SNAP than non-Hispanic white or African American children. Today, only 39 percent of eligible Latino families receive SNAP benefits compared to 65 percent of African Americans and 74 percent of Caucasians. Latino families have a particularly low participation in SNAP because they face various hurdles.
A survey conducted by Children’s Health Watch found that more than one-fifth of SNAP eligible families reported barriers to applying for SNAP. Mothers of SNAP eligible families reported lack of information about the program and immigration concerns as obstacles to SNAP participation. Because SNAP requires a five-year residency requirement, even adult legal immigrants who have not resided in the country for that long cannot access SNAP benefits. About 52 percent of Hispanic children are native-born children of immigrants. This lack of awareness of emergency feeding programs, the confusion or complexity of the application process, and the stigma associated with asking for help puts Latino children at greater nutritional and health risks.
Certain actions must take place to eliminate these hurdles and increase SNAP participation.
Increasing awareness. Public awareness about hunger in the Latino community and further outreach to Hispanic communities on the importance of SNAP should be on the agenda of major grassroots organizations. Congress should invest in outreach and education projects for eligible populations with low participation rates, including the elderly, low-income working households, and immigrant households.
Simplify application processes. Simpler pre-screening tools should be implemented to facilitate the process of determining eligibility. States and counties can use a categorical eligibility option, where families eligible to receive services by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF program, will be “categorically eligible” to receive SNAP benefits without the need for asset or gross income tests.
Reconsider eligibility of immigrant families. Congress should lift the bar that prohibits legal immigrants from accessing SNAP in their first five years in the United States.
These steps will help break down the barriers to SNAP participation and increase Latino participation in SNAP. Latino children will gain access to more essential nutrients, better physical and mental health, and better academic performance.
Ending child hunger
As the debate about our nation’s budget deficit continues, we must fight against proposals that would exacerbate child hunger. The GOP budget proposal for FY 2012 would convert SNAP into a block grant, cutting the program by $127 billion over the next 10 years. Cutting SNAP benefits would increase hunger and poverty. According to the Census Bureau data on disposable family income, SNAP helped lift 4.6 million Americans above the poverty line in 2009, including 2.1 million children.
Instead of cutting SNAP benefits, Congress should consider reducing or eliminating high tax breaks to companies and people who don’t need them. Donna Cooper from the Center for American Progress shows that billions of dollars are spent on unnecessary tax entitlements. Oil companies such as Exxon Mobil benefit from more than $9 billion in tax breaks for oil exploration and large biofuels companies, such as Archer Daniels Midland, benefit from the ethanol tax break that now costs nearly $5 billion a year. Are we willing to accept cuts aimed at programs such as SNAP that help the most vulnerable while leaving in place special interest subsidies for oil companies with record-breaking profits? Reducing the budget deficit is important, but it must be done in a way that doesn’t exacerbate conditions for hungry and poor people.
Hunger’s root cause is poverty. Families below the poverty line do not have enough income to purchase nutritious food for their families. If we want to address hunger, we need to address poverty. In 2009, poverty was at its highest level for Latino children since 1997. 33.1 percent of Hispanic children were below 100 percent of the poverty line compared to 11.9 percent of white children. CAP’s recent paper, “Feeding Opportunity: Ending Child Hunger Furthers the Goal of Cutting U.S. Poverty in Half over the Next Decade,” argues that we need to invest in our federal child nutrition programs and strengthen other income and work support programs to reduce hunger and poverty for all Americans and close racial and ethnic disparities.
During his campaign, President Obama set out a national goal of eliminating childhood hunger by 2015. With only four years left to reach that goal, our nation should focus on strengthening antihunger programs, not hindering them. Because poverty and hunger are interrelated problems, the steps we take to eliminate child hunger will ultimately reduce poverty in America.
Anyone concerned with our long-term economic growth and productivity should care about Latino poverty and hunger. Over the last decade, the number of Latino children grew 39 percent. As Congress considers cuts on programs that assist Latino communities, it should remember that the growth and development of our Latino children will help secure a strong economic future for the United States.
Alejandro Garcia is an Intern with Progress 2050 at American Progress.
