COMMUNITY ACTION OF GREATER INDIANAPOLIS INC
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Mission Statement
To Empower Those We Serve To Become Self-Reliant & Self-Sufficient.
About This Cause
For more than 23 years, CAGI has offered healthy meals to lower-wealth families, at or below 200% of the poverty level and seniors, 55 years & older, distributing nearly 5,000 healthy meals and feeding an average of 1,250 families each year. CAGI’s Meal Distribution Program (MDP) provides up to 7 days of nutritious food for income qualified individuals and families during the Holiday season. Our partnerships continue to expand from 10 have grown from 2 partners to more than 10 affiliates, including grocery stores, local companies, community organizations and financial institutions, allowing CAGI to leverage our resources and expand programs. Long after the federal government’s “War On Poverty” ended, the community action agencies it created continued to fight existing poverty, seeking to eliminate its causes. In 1982, Community Action of Indianapolis significantly expanded its coverage area from one to four counties, incorporating community action activities and expanding its services throughout Marion County. During this time, the agency’s name became Community Action of Greater Indianapolis to reflect responsibility and engagement throughout a much larger geographic area. The programs CAGI creates are based on the data received and built around the needs of our lower-wealth communities. From problems residents experience buying an affordable house or vehicle to difficulty paying household bills or home repairs to locate secured employment, we design programs to address the trials facing our residents. In 2022, our 12 programs and services helped more than 21,000 people and 2,500 households, ensuring our participants’ well-being, safety, and triumph. Food Insecurity: Demand for food increased significantly in 2022 and inflation made fulfilling the need more difficult. CAGI witnessed food as one of the items worst hit by the highest inflation in 40 years. Unfortunately, the cost of food and fundamentals like gas and rent usually fall hardest on our lower-wealth households, making food nearly a third of a family’s budget. Inflation was responsible for the high cost and delays in ordered turkeys, calling for meat substitutions, such as whole chickens. This experience requires CAGI to increase the budget and place earlier orders next year. Our participants experiencing food insecurity also encountered other hardships, such as housing instability and financial uncertainty. For these reasons, we offered CAGI wrap around services such as case management and financial education workshops to support broader stability in people’s lives. The financial gap between the underserved/unserved and people of wealth continue to widen in our communities. To consider realistic data, we requested our participants to provide a detailed “picture of their financial lives” and ability to meet their basic needs. Through planning and strategy, we verified the issues participants are facing and created opportunities to assist them, using interviews and surveys to provide a detailed picture of our participants’ financial lives and ability to meet their basic needs. A significant number of our residents answered our surveys, reporting that they were unable to get enough food, or not the kinds of foods they wanted to eat: • 38% of respondents said they could not afford to buy more food • 7% said they could not “get out to buy food” (ex. because of transportation or health issues) • 6% said they were “afraid to go out” • 5% said they could not get groceries or meals delivered • 7% said stores near them didn’t have the foods they wanted • As of September 2020, over 77,000 households were receiving SNAP benefits, a 25% increase over 2019. • 63% of our recipients receive SNAP assistance while 8% want or need this kind of assistance. • Nearly 22% of households in the service area earned below $35,000 a year. Marion County had the highest rate of households (38%) earning below $35,000 a year. 1. Mobile Food Pantry: Created as a “food pantry on wheels,” CAGI collaborates with Gleaners Food Bank and Mozell Sanders Foundation, providing lower-wealth households to select their own healthy food items, including choices of dry and canned goods, fresh fruits, and vegetables, and meat items. We need additional funding for this program to assist the community with their healthy meal preparations. 2. The Holiday Meal Program: For more than 22 years, CAGI has provided healthy meals to lower-wealth families, at or below 200% of the poverty level and seniors, 55 years & older, distributing nearly 5,000 healthy meals and feeding an average of 1,250 families each year. The Holiday Meal Program provides up to 7 days of food supply for qualified individuals and families. 3. Goals and plans for fulfilling the project/program. Neighborhoods to be served: CAGI’s Meal Distribution Program will continue to assist our five senior communities residing in zip codes 46202, 46205, 46208, 46218, and 46226, Energy Assistance Program (EAP) families at or below 185% of the federal poverty level, rental, and transportation assistance recipients at or below 200% of the federal poverty level. In addition, HMP offers healthy meals to our disadvantaged families, disabled persons, veterans, and local homeless people. Our partnering agencies and faith-based groups are also given priority to extend the invitation to their clients, helping CAGI to create a goal of providing healthy meals to more than 2,000 individuals during the 2022 Holiday season. The families we serve typically fall under the following categories: • Women Head of Household • Ages 20 and up • Energy Assistance families within the last 12 months • Lower wealth residents of Marion, Boone, Hamilton, and Hendricks counties CAGI’s primary role in our Mobile Pantry and our Holiday Meal program is to store food donations and then pass them on to people experiencing hunger. In addition to food, local pantries CAGI also provides other resources such as clothing and even hygiene products. It sustains the people, especially the poor, who struggle to secure their food and medicine. It empowers the people to work together by donating goods, produce, and available resources. CAGI engages in providing food to the local community to be able to work together for the common good. 4. Proposed measurable outcomes. An Impactful 2021: The purpose of CAGI’s annual Holiday Meal Program is to assist our families with various life-exhausting challenges. Coordinated at our headquarters in Marion County and officiated by our Case Management team, Board members and community volunteers assure families who often encounter difficulty accessing healthy food during the Holiday season, would have a celebratory experience. During the 2021 programmatic year, CAGI staff and volunteers created a more efficient delivery of services for HMP. Through our new Site Distribution Service, we requested our partners and organizations to meet CAGI staff at designated locations to receive food packages. Coordinators of each organization assured the boxes of food were distributed to their participants. Beyond this fact, CAGI has invented such initiatives that are already serving thousands. The moral logic of these programs is just as impactful. “Giving what you can and taking what you need” is reminiscent of a popular cliché in many progressive movements, “to each according to our abilities, to each according to our needs.” The simple idea of socialism is to equitably distribute duties and wealth so that every citizen can contribute to, and benefit from, the collective. CAGI’s focus is on more complex projects that build community food security and local food systems in a comprehensive fashion. For example, the primary goals of Community Food Projects (CFPs) are to: 1. Meet the food needs of low-income individuals 2. Increase the self-reliance of communities in providing for the food needs of the communities 3. Promote comprehensive responses to local food, farm, and nutrition issues 4. Meet specific state, local, or neighborhood food and agricultural needs including needs relating to Infrastructure improvement and development of planning for long-term solutions. The creation of innovative marketing activities that mutually benefit agricultural producers and low-income consumers. Ideally, a project reflects a well-executed planning process. CAGI's plan is to address the applicants by incorporating community input and will engage in a systematic assessment of conditions and opportunities that makes the case for why a particular project is needed and worthwhile. CAGI will perform a (Community Food Assessment). We will perform a planning effort that can easily take a year or more. CAGI will establish project planning and an implementation timetable that can help organize the food drives by helping with: 1. Understanding conditions in the target communities. 2. Establishing the need for and interest in the initiative and why we will continue this project along with assessing why this is a good idea and not just a fundable strategy. 3. Having stakeholders and Board members participate in the planning process. 4. Knowing where activities will take place and who will participate. 5. Finding funds, including matching funds or in-kind contributions, where it is required by a funder such as CFP, or where the proposed funding does not account for all the needed resources for the overall initiative.