The end of 2021 is coming to a close, and I’m looking forward to a pandemic free 2022. It wouldn’t be a proper new year if I didn’t reflect on the great work of the Arizona Food Bank Network and our hunger fighting partners. To the highlights!
We started the year focused on college hunger. Our collaboration, resources, and advocacy resulted in the Arizona Board of Regents creating a basic needs coalition. The University of Arizona then completed their Student Basic Needs Survey. We added more resources to our website and even hosted a Q and A session with the Department of Economic Security (DES) about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and what helping more students at risk of hunger could look like.
While work focused on college students is relatively new, the AzFBN team has been plugging away on other issues for years – one example is our continued advocacy efforts to lessen hunger among seniors. AzFBN has been working with DES for a long time to make it easier for seniors to apply for and renew SNAP. We even published this op-ed, so read more about it! These efforts have finally paid off—DES submitted the waiver in September. If the USDA approves (which we think they will) we’re on the brink of making it easier for more seniors to get the critical help they need!
In a pandemic year, sometimes you have to take unexpected opportunities to make a difference, and we did just that. AzFBN partnered with Maricopa County and Native Health to host two COVID-19 vaccination events for food bank staff and volunteers. More than 650 people from 97 different hunger relief organizations were vaccinated at St Mary’s Food Bank Alliance and United Food Bank – an enormous step forward to help keep our food bank environments safer. We even received a “Hot Shot” award from The Arizona Partnership for Immunization for this work.
Instead of canceling our annual conference like we did in 2020, we hosted our first ever virtual annual conference, and had more than 150 participants! We all learned about fundraising, evolution in emergency food relief, volunteer recruitment and personal improvement. Did you miss it? You can find presentations here!
We launched our summer meal campaign to help connect parents and children to local meals while schools are closed. Our social media exposure reached more than a million families. That’s right – a MILLION! Because of this, more families knew help was available.
And let me tell you, in 2021 I have learned things I never thought I would, like the diversity of crops grown here in Arizona. For the past 18 months we have operated the “Friends of the Farm” program, which purchases locally grown produce, protein, and dairy to distribute in food banks. This fiscal year we purchased more than 350,000 pounds of food from 25 farms in 6 counties. Here’s a tip that I picked up: If you aren’t familiar with the name of the produce or don’t know what kind it is, (Is it an apple? Melon? Type of onion?) it’s probably squash!
I mentioned before that in 2021 we stepped in to do things just because AzFBN was the organization best positioned to get things done. We were fortunate to partner with government and private donors to award nearly $6 million in grants to 382 anti-hunger organizations in all 15 counties in the last year. The great news is that, thanks to these generous partners, we are doing another round right now (which will continue in 2022) and have already awarded $1 million to 70 hunger fighting agencies. As my staff likes to remind me, we aren’t traditionally a grant making charity, but sometimes you find the mission, and sometimes the mission finds you!
AzFBN was a critical partner in getting the word out about Pandemic-EBT (P-EBT), a program that helps children and their families with nutrition support while school is out. More than 777,000 children received assistance, and we successfully navigated many calls from frustrated parents trying to get help.
The AzFBN VISTA program had another amazing year, with volunteers serving food banks statewide. One of our VISTA volunteers (placed at St Mary’s Food Bank Alliance) was recognized as an “Inspiration Spotlight” during the Points of Light Awards. Daniel has helped more than 1,000 distributions to Native American communities in Arizona. We love ALL of our VISTA volunteers, and can’t thank them enough for being a part of this program to support food banks!
November was Native American Heritage Month. We featured several of our Tribal partners in a blog series. Read all about it here!
The support of the National Guard has been critical during the COVID-19 pandemic. Troops have sorted food, packed boxes, and loaded food into cars. What does this have to do with AzFBN? Our team helped our member food banks and their smaller agency partners (they had plenty to do already) secure Guard personnel to help. Because of this “connecting the dots” work, Guard members helped with more than 6,174 food box production and distribution events since the beginning of the pandemic. Thank you to all National Guard members for this critical help – food banks would have struggled to keep their doors open without you!
Of course I can’t reflect on a year without talking about the core work our team does to secure TENS of MILLIONS of pounds of food – most of which is fresh, healthy produce – for food banks statewide and beyond. People need food NOW, and making sure more of it is fruits and vegetables is what this program has been plugging away at, day after day, year after year. It’s hard to imagine all of the people and equipment it takes to make sure a donated load of tomatoes gets from (for example) Nogales to Phoenix so that those tomatoes can go to people all over the state. Picture warehouse staff, pallet jacks, coordinating and scheduling staff, semi tractor-trailers, drivers, thousands of pounds of produce, paperwork – this is just the start of the list of what it takes to do this critical work every day.
There’s so much more I want to mention — from trainings, to keeping the AzFBN website up and running, to ensuring that our directory of food banks stays up to date. Then there’s the fundamental “nitty gritty” work of paying bills, fundraising, and making sure the AzFBN staff have what they need to fight hunger each day. Honestly, seeing everything written down in front of me, I can finally appreciate why I might be a little weary right now. All of this stunning work happened a year AFTER the COVID-19 pandemic first threw our world upside down.
I don’t know what 2022 has in store for us, but given what we were able to do in 2021, I can definitely say that AzFBN is ready. This is due to the many friends, partner organizations, donors, volunteers, dedicated staff, board members and others who support our work – even when that work turns down unexpected paths.
For 2022, I’m hopeful that things will get better. Less pandemic. Less hunger. More certainty. More help.
So I’ll close this note with words from the wise author E.B. White, “Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”
I can’t wait.
Angie Rodgers
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