Hi All,

Yesterday I had a wonderful and informative conversation with Katie Martin, who is the Executive Director of the Foodshare Institute For Hunger Research & Solutions. She has over 20 years of experience developing and evaluating creative solutions to hunger. We talked about her new book, Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries, where she shares her years of experience, re-imagining food banks to offer healthier choices and food pantries to become Community Hubs. She developed the SWAT Program, (Supporting Wellness at Pantries) a stoplight nutrition system where all foods are ranked as green, yellow or red, depending on whether they should be eaten often, sometimes or rarely. She shared examples of food pantries that went beyond just offering food, where the clients had a personal case manager who understood their situation and their trauma, and could be a resource for other services, like applying for government assistance, help with jobs, childcare, medical needs, etc. These types of pantries were more successful in helping the community than the pantries that just offered food. We discussed how hunger and food insecurity is not due to a lack of food, but due to the inequality and poverty that is built into our society, and how the government passed on the responsibility of feeding the poor to volunteers instead of solving the root problem that causes poverty.

I highly recommend Katie’s book,  Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries. If you want to reach out to her personally, her email is kmartin@foodshare.org

If you missed our interview, you can listen to it here;

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