This week, I traveled to Tallahassee to visit with agencies and associations about supporting our campaign against hunger. Everyone was incredibly welcoming and supportive of Florida Impact to End Hunger. Thanks to Secretary Prudom at Florida Department of Elder Affairs, Secretary Poppell at the Department of Children and Families, and Surgeon General Rivkees at the Department of Health for taking the time out of your crazy busy schedules to hear our voice and listen to our concerns about our most vulnerable populations.

I also had great and productive visit with our longtime partner, Lakisha Hood, Director of The Division of Food, Nutrition and Wellness at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. We talked about how Florida Impact to End Hunger can support their efforts to make sure that children receive a meal during the summer months through the Florida BreakSpot Program.

I also stopped in for a chat about the Afterschool Meals Program with Heather Bernier at the Association of School Administrators, and then a final stop at the Florida Education Association to meet with Tina Dunbar and discuss how we can support Florida’s teachers and cultivate school nutrition champions in the classroom.

Many thanks to Sky Beard from Florida No Kid Hungry and her new staff member Josh for meeting with us at the end of a long day to plan strategies in working together to end childhood hunger in Florida. Thanks to our devoted COO Katie Williams who supported me at all our meetings and remains in Tallahassee to continue all these partnerships. None of this would have happened without the incredible scheduling efforts of Kelli Greene, our administrative coordinator and go to/do everything assistant.

What a week! And it’s not over yet…

– Trudy Novicki

President/CEO

Florida Impact to End Hunger

#teamstories

Florida Impact Staff had a blast this #NSBW18! We got to visit schools across the state and join the celebration!

Florida Impact has been awarded a $40,000 grant to support its plan to increase afterschool meals for children in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties.

The grant from Health Foundation of South Florida will enable Florida Impact to provide education and advocacy directed to elected and governmental officials about Florida’s Afterschool Meals Program with the ultimate goal to increase the number of sponsors, sites and hungry children benefiting from the federally sponsored USDA program.

“Every summer for several years in Florida, more and more hungry children have gotten a nutritious meal every day through the federally supported Summer BreakSpot program,” Florida Impact CEO Trudy Novicki said. “We believe with some administrative changes in Florida, more community locations can provide children in need with afterschool meals during the year.”

The big hurdle that Florida Impact will tackle with this grant is the childcare licensing requirement for sites wanting to serve afterschool meals. This onerous rule isn’t the case for the summer food program; thus, more providers are able to provide more kids with nutritious meals during the summer. The sites get reimbursed for the food through the federal Afterschool Meals Program.

Florida Impact will call the attention of Florida legislators to this issue, and provide education and advocacy for the 2018 Florida Legislative Session, which begins in January. If the program were to move under the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, instead of under the Department of Health where it currently resides, this problem would be resolved. The work of providers would be simplified, and they would serve hungry children all year round.

To illustrate the potential gains, currently in four major metro areas of Florida, only 13%, or 64,000 of the 509,000 kids who are receiving a free or reduced price lunch are also receiving a free afterschool supper. An increase to 30% participation would add nearly 90,000 more children routinely receiving an evening meal. Smaller cities and rural parts of Florida would benefit even more from a simplified process, as their current afterschool meal participation is even lower than in the big cities.

Florida Impact will conduct rigorous outreach at both the state and local levels to ensure that federal child nutrition and meal programs are fully accessible to those for whom they are intended. The organization will inform and organize the direct involvement of community leaders in policy and program advocacy.

“This project seeks to ensure Florida children don’t go hungry. If successful, our state will be tapping into millions of unused federal food and nutrition dollars,” Novicki said. “Last year we estimated that more than $129 million in federal nutrition funding available for children was left unused in Florida last year. That’s a lot of children left hungry who should not have been.”

Learn more about the program at www.FloridaAfterschoolMeals.org!

The over 300,000 Floridians who qualify for SNAP (food stamps) now face a work requirement which took effect on January 1st, 2017. Particularly in rural communities where jobs are far and few between, this new requirement threatens the ability for many to feed their families. State Senators Bill Montford and Dwight Bullard have spoken out against reinstating the work requirement saying that state is diverse and economic standing varies.

“Especially in North Florida, in these rural counties that I represent, they have not felt this economic revival that people talk about,” Montford said. “Unemployment is still high. The jobs are not there. … The needs the SNAP program meets, I would say the needs in these rural counties are just as great as they were in 2009.”

“They’re being penalized even though they’re trying, even though their effort is good,” Bullard said.

Read more on this news in the Tampa Bay Business Journal and find your elected officials to tell them this new work requirement is unjust.