HUNGER FREE AMERICA
This organization has already been registered
Someone in your organization has already registered and setup an account. would you like to join their team?Profile owner : c*******l@h***************a.o*g
Mission Statement
Hunger Free America, previously known as the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, is engaged in building a bold, grass-roots, non-partisan membership movement in all 50 states to enact the policies and programs necessary to end domestic hunger and ensure that all Americans have sufficient access to nutritious food.
About This Cause
Hunger Free America (HFA, EIN 13-3471350) previously known as the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, is engaged in building a bold, grass-roots, non-partisan membership movement in all 50 states to enact the policies and programs necessary to end domestic hunger and ensure that all Americans have sufficient access to nutritious food. Every element of our work is directed towards reducing hunger and poverty by: 1) Advocating, researching and proposing for effective, common sense, innovative policies to make nutritious food affordable and accessible, and to reduce poverty; 2) Increasing access to food and nutrition benefits, and 3) Providing support and assistance to emergency feeding programs (EFPs). Advocacy, Communications and Community Organizing The centerpiece of our advocacy, communications and community organizing efforts is Food Secure NYC 2018, a five-year campaign to educate key stakeholders and transform the city’s food system to dramatically reduce hunger in New York City by the end of Mayor de Blasio’s first term in 2018. This framework is accompanied by executive action plans that detail how Mayor de Blasio, the City Council and other officials can accomplish all the goals on the Food Secure 2018 plan, but particularly three basic, realistic goals: 1) increase access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamps), 2) Increase participation in school breakfast programs, primarily by making Breakfast in the Classroom universal for all NYC public schools, and 3) increase the number of food jobs that provide living wages. With our Child Nutrition program, we are also a leading national voice in the fight opposing attempts to weaken healthy school meals requirements and, as part of the NYC Alliance for CNR, for a strong reauthorization of the current federal Child Nutrition bill expiring in October of 2015. We are also engaging low-income New Yorkers, many of who are current clients/customers of soup kitchens or food pantries, to participate in our Food Action Board (FAB) program. This program provides members with training to advocate on their own behalf, and Food Secure 2018 crafted in close consultation with these activists. Benefits Access SNAP Access: Several hundred thousand New York City residents are eligible for, but do not receive, the vital nutritional assistance they are entitled to from SNAP. By aiding individuals in first determining eligibility, then simplifying and streamlining the application and recertification process, and (if necessary) assisting with that any further barriers that might arise, our efforts are focused on making it easier for individuals to access these vital benefits. In addition to an extensive outreach effort to provide pre-screenings for individuals, we permit clients to submit electronic SNAP applications and re-certifications with the assistance of NYCCAH staff from thirteen community-based organizations through our POS (Paperless Office System) and RIP (Recertification Improvement Project) In 2015, we prescreened 3,560 families citywide for SNAP, leading to 1,938 successful new applications (resulting in an estimated $478,686 worth of benefits each and every month). We also submitted 678 recertifications citywide (resulting in an estimated $152,550 worth of benefits per month) and assisted 793 clients in overcoming barriers through mediation citywide. Guides to Food and Assistance Our Guides to Food and Assistance provide comprehensive coverage of the five boroughs through eight “area” guides as well as a general, citywide guide. These Guides include lists of EFPs and information on benefits such as SNAP/food stamps, WIC, Summer Meals and Senior Meals as well as farmers’ markets that accept SNAP as payment and other useful information. All the guides are available in Spanish and English, with three areas also in Chinese. As information on services changes, we update and reprint them annually. This year will include our first guides in Russian, and have citywide guides available in Russian and Chinese as well. We have distributed over 250,000 copies of our 2014-2015 guides to date. Child Nutrition Our child nutrition efforts are centered utilizing advocacy, outreach, communications, and volunteerism to increase access to federal child nutrition assistance programs, including school meals, the Summer Food Service Program, and Women, Infants, Children (WIC) program. Three out of four New York City public school students are eligible for free or reduced price school meals, and one in five New York City children live in food insecure households. Yet during the summer of 2014, only a quarter (26 percent) of the children who depend on free or reduced-price lunch during the school year also ate lunch through the summer meals program, a federally-funded program delivered primarily by the New York City Department of Education (DOE) SchoolFood. In a barrier analysis report recently completed by NYCCAH under the name Hunger Free NYC, 68% of non-participants cited lack of information about site location or eligibility as a reason for not taking their children while 43% percent of participants first learned about summer meals from organizations and institutions in their community (school, summer programs, daycare, or church). These findings support the focus of our grassroots community outreach, which supports child nutrition and the financial health of families by raising awareness of summer meals. During our intense grassroots efforts promoting information on Summer Meals last year our Summer Associates and staff recruited and managed 235 volunteers who collectively served 615 volunteer hours during the summer. Our Summer Associates also connected with over 200 community organizations to promote summer meals. Preliminary reports from the NYC Department of Education showed an increase in the number of meals served at open summer meals sites citywide, including significant increases in our target neighborhoods. Strategic Volunteerism Engaging volunteers in high-impact activities that address the root causes of hunger is an integral part of NYCCAH’s mission. Every January, since 2003, NYCCAH has sponsored an annual day of service in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy, engaging hundreds of volunteers in anti-hunger activities with NYCCAH programs and partner agencies across NYC. Building on these efforts, in May 2012, the then-New York City Coalition Against Hunger launched a new strategic volunteerism initiative, the Ending Hunger Through Citizen Service Initiative, which encourages volunteers to go beyond canned food drives towards a more sustained, comprehensive effort to improving community food security. We have developed a comprehensive toolkit to provide volunteers with concrete tools to build the capacity of food pantries and soup kitchens, increase participation in nutrition assistance programs, and engage students in increasing participation in school meals programs as well as a volunteer matching system, adding functionality to permit closer collaboration between agencies and volunteers. Both the toolkit and volunteer matching system are available at www.hungervolunteer.org. We are also pleased to say that through an official partnership with NYC Service we were able to implement a detailed, expansive pilot project to identify the needs and capabilities of agencies. We were able to collect information directly from a survey of emergency food providers (EFPs) to confirm both the greatest areas of need for the agencies as well as their institutional capability to manage skills-based volunteers. In 2015, our New York City volunteer program engaged over 762 volunteers throughout New York City; these volunteers performed over 3,315 hours of service, with over 75% of these in strategic activities. AmeriCorps Anti Hunger and Opportunity (AHOC) To address the many problems and to better meet the needs of economically and socially disadvantaged Americans facing hunger and food insecurity, NYCCAH has created a nationwide program to support a variety of integrated activities primarily aimed at increasing outreach and enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). NYCCAH manages a full year AmeriCorps VISTA program as well as an eight-week Summer Associate Program. Both programs will have members working to build the capacity of anti-hunger organizations, recruit volunteers, increase SNAP outreach, and assist low-income families in applying for SNAP and other nutrition benefits. These efforts will be implemented in numerous sites from coast-to-coast, and will not only generate millions of extra federal dollars for hungry families through increased use of SNAP, but also generate economic activity in support of businesses in those communities. VISTA members are able to share best practices and practical advice on their work through conference calls and two multiple day conferences, and we plan to consolidate these insights into a guide distributed to nonprofits in order to support their own anti-hunger efforts.