Moving toward Sustainability - Supporting a Food Security Network in Buncombe County

Food Security Workgroup members met on July 24th for a process to begin identifying what a potential formal collaborative process would look like to assist in expanding the capacity and sustainability of those nonprofits doing work around food security.   This process built on survey feedback from partners that identified shared values, barriers and supports to our work as well as look at funders and connectors being accessed across our partnership. 
A second meeting to complete this process will be held in August with the outcome of identifying a clear structure for collaboration and a detailed action plan for moving forward with an emphasis on innovation and substantive actions.

July Update on partner activities (note this meeting agenda was tight and the only partner sharing info this month was Bountiful Cities:

Bountiful Cities has been awarded funding through Aetna Foundation’s Cultivating Healthy Communities program for 18 months beginning in October of 2017. This highly competitive national grant program has chosen the Community Food Education Collaborative, a joint-project of FEAST, Women's Wellbeing and Development Foundation (WWD-F), and Bountiful Cities for an award amount of $53,000. These dollars will fund the bulk of 18 months of FEAST's cooking and gardening education at Hall Fletcher Elementary, 3 seasonal series of the 12 week Strong Roots youth community gardening education program with Bountiful Cities, and 18 months of resident-led cooking classes at the Hillcrest Resource Center with WWD-F. Additionally, the grant provides funds for WWD-F, FEAST, and Bountiful Cities to work together to cross-reference and compare programmatic components in order to improve each program's content and delivery. All three programs will be utilizing the CHIP Food Security Education & Skill Building Collaborative Measures to record the effectiveness of the programs' ability to increase measures related to participants' overall food security. This information will then be entered into the CHIP Scorecard in order to track and compare results across all participating Food Education programs in Asheville and Buncombe County. This grant is an example of the CHIP's Food Security Working Group beginning to effect results and increase collaboration among Asheville and Buncombe County non-profits.

The Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) has launched at the French Broad Food Coop!  Bountiful Cities was awarded funding from the WNC

Community Foundation for this pilot to increase access to fruits and 

DUFB Eligible Produce on Display!

vegetables for SNAP recipients. The DUFB program awards a dollar for each SNAP dollar used to purchase locally grown produce.These dollars can then be spent to purchase any other fruit and veggies purchased from the same establishment.

The program had a soft roll-out in late June to insure there were no difficulties with the technology and logistics before broadly promoting. After only 3 weeks the program is running very smoothly.  And despite only word-of-mouth promotion, 86 individuals have signed up over 100 transactions, well beyond what was expected at this point. The waiver process from the USDA is well-underway and we anticipate the West Village Market to come on board as the second market in the next few weeks.

This 2017 pilot is an exciting scaleable effort to develop a successful model in WNC in preparation for submitting a USDA Food Insecurity Nutrition Initiative (FINI) grant in 2018 to expand to more retail outlets in Buncombe and surrounding counties. Eventually this is expected to be a statewide initiative and conversations are underway with Durham and Wilmington.  Moving forward MountainWise, a non-profit serving the counties west of Buncombe, will be the lead agency in this effort as DUFB expands initially into Haywood County.  

The Ask for July:

We continue to need you to help us identify volunteers to serve as Double Up Liaisons.  These volunteers should be SNAP recipients and individuals who need 20 volunteer hours a week to maintain their SNAP eligibility.  Take a look at the Double Up Volunteer flyer,  print it off, and share it with individuals that might be a good fit for this opportunity.

We also welcome you to begin letting individuals know about the program and how they can participate. Click here to download a flyer to share.  The plan is to begin larger outreach efforts as soon as the West Village Market location launches. 

 For more information on the Double Up program, take a look at this article written by the Mountain Xpress!