Oklahoma food bank begins disaster response

A devastating tornado touched down near Oklahoma City on Monday destroying more than 8,000 homes and resulting in dozens of fatalities. And just like in other national disasters, a Feeding America Member food bank is on the ground, ready to help as soon as the storm passed. Immediately following the disaster, The Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma began the process of mobilizing staff and volunteers to distribute food and supplies to the countless people in need in their service area.

At this point, the food bank is requesting handheld snacks and ready-to-eat foods for distribution but NOT canned pantry box items. Water is also a priority, but the preference would be to source water from other food banks who are geographically close to Oklahoma City.

Feeding America, Volutary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD), and FEMA do NOT encourage community food drives outside the State of Oklahoma.  Instead food banks within the network and food companies who work with Feeding America will provide these items in tractor-trailer load quantities to the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.

To learn more about ways to help that will be most effective, go to the FEMA website

Foodshare staff fire extinguisher training

Volunteer Coordinator Edna
Bailey tries it out.

Yesterday, training in the use of a fire extinguisher took the place of our regular monthly staff meeting.  Everyone who wanted to had the the chance to actually put out a fire with an extinguisher.  I know how important this is, for I have actually used the training to use a fire extinguisher at home and put out a small fire!  It was good to know exactly what to do and not have to stop and read the label or something!

Receptionist Arelys Fernandez
puts out the fire.

Disaster Response

Our hearts are broken watching the horrific news out of Oklahoma.

But know that Feeding America and the food banks around the nation are part of the disaster response efforts and will be working hard to make sure that both survivors and first responders have food and water and other essentials.

I will keep you posted as I know more.

SNAP IS EFFICIENT

SNAP has one of the most rigorous quality control systems of any public benefit program. Almost 95% of federal SNAP spending goes directly to families to buy food. Most of the rest goes toward administrative costs, including reviews to determine that applicants are eligible, monitoring of retailers that accept SNAP, and anti-fraud activities. Only 3% of SNAP benefits represent overpayments, meaning they either went to ineligible households or went to eligible households but in excessive amounts. SNAP achieved its lowest error rate on record in fiscal year 2011, with a net national overpayment rate of only 2.2%.

Source: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 5/9/13, SNAP Efficiency

Senator Murphy to take "SNAP Challenge"

First, thank you to those who called Senator Murphy's office asking him to sign on to the amendment protecting the SNAP benefit.  It worked - I learned on Friday afternoon that he had done so!

But according to the Capitol Watch blog on the Hartford Courant's website, he's taking it to the next step and planning to take the SNAP Challenge and live on a SNAP budget for a week.

I'll look forward to hearing more about his experience and how it affects him.

Would you like to take part in the SNAP Challenge?  Foodshare coordinates this every September as a part of National Hunger Action Month, and we'd welcome your participation and your insights afterwards!

SNAP SUPPORTS WORK

Most SNAP recipients who can work, do work. SNAP rules both encourage and reward work. About 2/3 of SNAP recipients aren’t expected to work, mostly because they are children, elderly, or disabled.  But, among SNAP households with at least one working-age, non-disabled adult, 58% work while receiving SNAP — and 82% work in the year before or after receiving SNAP. The rates are even higher for families with children:  62% work while receiving SNAP and 87% work in the prior or subsequent year.

The number of SNAP households with earnings has been rising for more than a decade, reaching 6.4 million in 2011.  The increase was especially pronounced during the recent deep recession, suggesting that many people turned to SNAP because of under-employment — for example, when one wage earner in a two-parent family lost a job, when a worker’s hours were cut, or when a laid-off worker took a lower-paying job.

Source: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 5/9/13, SNAP Works

Foodshare is hiring

Foodshare is looking for an experienced Director of Development to join our team.  You can find all of the details here.

And remember that we always post all of our job openings on our website here.