With leadership from Capital Area United Way, the Food Insecurity Coalition is looking to address and solve the barriers to food access in East Baton Rouge Parish.
Food Insecurity Coalition Meeting Notes
(#10—November 4, 2020)
CPEX, Urban Footprint, and Feeding Louisiana presented a beta tool with the goal of using data and analysis to drive decisions, tactical distribution, and allocation of resources. Data will be used to validate information on demographics within parishes and individual zip codes including unemployment rate, jobless claims, poverty rate, household income, and the food security index identifying social vulnerability, economic stresses, health risks, and accessibility. The tool will look at changes over time with the potential for layering data as well as government services and organizations on top of other data and resources while optimizing the user experience with an easy to read dashboard. The coalition will use this tool as a starting point while continuing to focus on ways to narrow in on marketing strategies, creating products such as white papers, adding more personal questions such as the number of jobs worked, wages, frequency of fast food consumption in relation to restaurant locations, and various health indicators.
Moving forward, the coalition will assemble a list of potential national, local, and state funders with a prioritization on pre-existing relationships with the Wilson Foundation, CAUW, BRAF, and Pennington. The Walls Project and partner organization grant writers will take this list to research grant cycles, evaluate open/closed funding invites, and put together a road map of funding opportunities in December. Work Group A will use this list beginning January 2021 to strategize outreach. Lois, Jan, George, and Lori will make initial introductions to the work followed by strategic introductions with coalition member organizations.
The initial goal of 2021 outreach will be to secure national funding to layer on top of existing benefits like SNAP and USDA feeding programs and to leverage local philanthropic investments into the Food Insecurity Coalition and the partner provider network (practitioners, distributors, data, policy). A draft of the Case For Support in November will be finalized in December. This will become the narrative for the national funding outreach in 2021 and initial grant LOI/apps. Work Groups A, B, and C will work together to develop FIC budget(s) in December and January and settle on a fiscal agent. The coalition continues to discuss Food Truck proof of concept, creating a list of questions for members to create a greater understanding of overlap in service areas. The coalition is also developing a comprehensive calendar of events related to food insecurity and distributions.