Salem Food Policy Council

Food Policy Council of Salem, MA December 4, 2023, 6:00 pm Hybrid Participation Present: Alphonse Wright, Julie Pottier-Brown, Claudia Paraschiv, Flora Cordealoni, Joel Simonson, Allison Caffrey, Robyn Burns, Irv Perrin, Kerry Murphy, Councillor Varela, Sara Moore Absent: Michaela Short Motion to approve minutes: Sara motions to approve; Alphonse seconded. No public comments. City of Salem Update, Kerry: Reminder that MA Food System Collaborative forum is coming up this Friday, 12/8 at Holy Cross in Worcester. Janelle Rolke, the city’s Waste Reduction Coordinator will be part of a panel on school composting, I’ll be on a panel about how cities support local food systems. The MDAR Local Food Policy Council grant is due next Friday and I’ll be working on that over the next week once we have a proposal finalized. Joel added that the MA Food System Collaborative announced today that they have a new director. J. Harrison has been the interim director. City Council Update, Councillor Varela: Is still pushing the conversation for temporary food service vendors. I have a meeting set up with Mayor Pangallo and dept. heads this week to find out how we can move this forward. I’ll have more of an update at the next meeting. There is a slightly different city council beginning next year, but still many champions of food access on the council. I hope to continue as the liaison to Salem Food for All. Subcommittees Joel: Kerry circulated a flyer. We need to finalize our subcommittee descriptions on the Google Doc before we can distribute. Kerry will add in a QR code linking that flyer to the descriptions. We should all look at the document over the next month and make any final edits. There is another google doc that Kerry shared where we can all add where we’ve circulated flyers. The plan is still to start recruiting in early 2024. 98 WASHINGTON STREET, SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS 01970 ♦ TEL: 978.745.9595 FAX: 978.740.0404 ♦ WWW.SALEM.COM MDAR grant Kerry reached out to Bonita Oehlke at MDAR to ask about mini-grants. Using the funding for mini-grants is not allowed, however we would be able to use them for stipends to compensate community members for their time. Joel: At the last meeting, we discussed a SNAP awareness campaign. Kerry and I discussed ideas like using funding to pay for billboard ads. Alphonse: What is the top end of the grant? Kerry: The maximum amount we can apply for is $20,000, but last time they had more applicants than expected and we all had to scale back our funding requests by a small amount. Would there be any way we could support The Salem Pantry’s SNAP support? Robyn: At this point where not sure when our program will start. Can the request be less specific? Kerry: It should also include the Healthy Incentives Program. I know the Salem Farmers’ Market has had challenges with customers not knowing how to use these benefits. Joel: The main goal is to raise awareness of these programs and increase food security, but it also aligns with our work plan and each of our subcommittees would play a role in this project. Robyn: Could we use the funding to raise awareness of Salem Food for All as an entity and include the resources we’ve mentioned. Joel: We do need to raise our profile, but I think this funding is an opportunity to fill a community need. I don’t think it has to be mutually exclusive – we can increase our visibility while promoting these resources. Sara: Can we use any part of the funding to strengthen our partnership with the schools or provide resources to schools? Joel: Michaela has talked about the SNAP Gap and how it affects school meals. Kerry: If the goal is to make the city aware of all the resources available, would it be worth it to have our own resource guide? Julie: Is there a centralized resource? Kerry: We do to an extent, but it’s not very visible. Julie: If we’re talking about the goal, which is information – we could have billboards, A-frames, Instagram campaigns, but we need to have the information to back it up first. Joel: I think the purpose is awareness and education. Beyond that, we have language and technology barriers. I think having a one-stop resource would be useful. Kerry: Can we pay community members stipends to help with community outreach? Claudia: I don’t know how someone signs up for SNAP – I can imagine the process can be intimidating. Julie: And also, many people think these types of programs aren’t for them, and this can be another barrier. Claudia: For many events and programs, there is a barrier where people need an extra push to make them feel like they’re welcome and invited. Ambassadors can help with this too. Maybe even table at events to talk with the community. Alphonse: We could have an informational access fair where people can be signed up for services right there. Kerry: Can we steer people towards The Salem Pantry who will be doing SNAP sign-up hours? Sara: We may be missing people though who may not go to the Pantry. We should also think about going to where people already are, like churches and other community spaces. Alphonse: We also will have people on our subcommittees who can help with this. SSU’s Center for Civic Engagement may also provide interns. Kerry: I’ll have an SSU intern working with me in May who could work on this. Julie: We can piggyback with Councillors’ newsletters and other events already happening. Robyn: The Greater Boston Food Bank put out a report that touches on SNAP and the efficacy of having a billboard or other types of outreach and what the impact has been. 67% of people who reported that they are eligible but don’t use SNAP, do so out of a desire to support themselves rather than rely on the program. This parallels with people who aren’t willing to use a food pantry. 74% of SNAP participants also sought additional food assistance. 56% of self- identified food insecure households are enrolled in SNAP which is the highest since the pandemic. Joel: Project Bread did a similar study several years ago with similar findings, but also uncovered misinformation, like the belief that if someone enrolls in SNAP, that they would be taking the benefits from someone else who may need it more. This justifies a need for more education and being “invited” into the program. Robyn: Project Bread works very closely with the schools and with Salem. Maybe Irv has insight on what is being missed and what we might be able to learn from that partnership. Irv: In the last year the City Connects team has been working with eligible families to get them signed up for SNAP. We are now 100% funded through the Community Eligibility Provision because so many families have signed up for SNAP, so this increased enrollment helps our reimbursements. This is a partnership that Project Bread is supporting. The state has also simplified the application process so that people can even sign up on their phones. Joel: If we are going to put together a toolkit, we also need to see what is already happening. Sara: The first round of funding was used for a very practical purpose, and we had discussed having a community event – this could be a way to build engagement. Alphonse: Like a community meal event? Kerry: We had talked about doing a Longest Table event in the past. Alphonse: The Human Rights Coalition has been trying to do a Longest Table event. We could possibly use the bridge along Congress St? Kerry: With the grant timeline, would it compete with the Summer Meals kickoff event if we’re having the same kinds of info? Alphonse: We can build in the informational aspect into the event. We could have a resource guide at every seat. Kerry: Could we provide funding for Root to cater? Budget for a meal for 300 people? Allison: We could do something from Espacio to Notch, expanding on the Meet & Eat program. I could see Root doing the food, The Salem Pantry providing information, and the NSCDC helping with logistics. A Meet & Eat meal costs about $1000, but the cost goes down for more people. Robyn: Going back to the stipends, could we give stipends to community entities to put this on? Kerry: Not sure if we can pay stipends for hosting an event – that seems like it would be more of a subcontract to hire someone to host an event. Alphonse: It would be like hiring a publicist – there is probably a way we can do this. Joel: The goal would be to advance the work of the food policy council and we would be hiring vendors to help meet that goal. Would the event be an add-on or the focus of the grant? Sara: I think it would be good to have a website that is very user-friendly. Alphonse: Branding – we have the food policy council, but most of the material says “Salem Food for All”. We need to figure out how to brand ourselves so that there is no confusion as to who we are. Sara: Should Salem Food for All be the motto rather than the name? Robyn: Would it be worth considering bringing back Lydia and J. to have some extra time as we launch the subcommittees? Joel: Are there other grant or other funding opportunities that could be used towards this? Kerry: We could potentially use ARPA funds for that where it’s more city-focused Alphonse: Agreed – we should be tapping into that as a resource. I think the funds must be expended by 2026. Kerry: Maybe once the subcommittees have some structure, we can request ARPA funding. Robyn: We often get requests from entities like Harvard Business School or the Wharton School looking to build capacity for organizations. I wonder if the food policy council would qualify for one of these. Usually, members of their team work with the organization for intensive training. The grant is basically for their time. Joel: I feel like these types of programs can work very well or not. We would need to be very specific about what we’re looking for. That being said – getting outside perspective is always very helpful. We should look into what the schedules for these programs look like. Alphonse: Maybe a task for the Organizational subcommittee? Joel: To recap, our grant discussion included a community engagement event that includes education and promoting a resource guide. The focus of the guide is still to be determined but we’ll think about SNAP, Salem Public Schools, what aligns with our work. Additionally, we talked about growing our capacity, building brand awareness, and thinking about ARPA for a business program or consultant. Kerry: The resource guide could include a page about what the food policy council does and help raise our profile. Alphonse: And we should be branded throughout the guide. Sara: Can we hire someone to do graphic design work to help with the design of the guide, website and logo? Claudia: There was a designer who did a great job with rebranding Artists’ Row. For the website, if we want to be able to update the website ourselves, it will be in a simple program called Squarespace which shouldn’t cost very much. We should be able to keep the budget under $10k. Alphonse: I motion to adopt the plan encompassing community event, hiring a graphic design for a website and resource guide as part of our grant application. Julie seconds. All in favor. Motion carries. Sara: Maybe we could have people bring recipes to the event that can be shared to contribute? Julie: I could potentially have FDC participate by providing some farm-fresh produce. Joel: Allison, if you could at some point share a list or timeline of what your team will need as deliverables to help Root. Next Meeting Date Lastly, we need to reschedule next month’s meeting. Would the following Monday, 1/8, work? Claudia and Allison will be away, but we’ll still have a quorum. Sara motions to reschedule our Jan. meeting to Jan 8, 2024 Alphonse seconds. All in favor. Motion carries. Member updates: Claudia: Residency as Artist in Residence is coming to an end. I will be having an exhibition at Old Town Hall the last two weeks of Jan. Food is a theme as part of the exhibit. I’ll send out the info. to everyone. Alphonse motions to adjourn. Julie seconds. All in favor. Motion carries.