Session Three

At the Intersection of Health and Hunger

Chad Akers, Director, Hungry Lambs Food Initiative Michelle Akers, Program Administrator, The Fresh Start Program Brandi Browning, Director of Community Services, PRIDE Community Services

Sometimes, around our state, local programs build a ground-up, collaborative approach to respond to its community needs . While it’s hard to know where these great collaborations are happening, we heard from one group in Logan County that has taught us the benefits and challenges of working together .

Hungry Lambs Food Initiative is a food pantry that opened in 1991 at the First Presbyterian Church of Logan. It has grown over the years with the support the church and local donors, but the sudden increase in demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a move to its new location at the Logan County Resource Center.

For years, like many food pantries around the state, Hungry Lambs was staffed by volunteers who were older adults. Because they were a demographic more likely to get sick from COVID-19, they could not continue to keep the pantry open to meet the increased demand for services, which was also created by the pandemic. And so, Chad Akers, a local businessman whose mother was one of the pantry’s volunteers, agreed to step in as director. Hungry Lambs primarily serves Logan County, as well as parts of Mingo and Boone. According to Chad, at the pandemic’s peak, Hungry Lambs averaged 175 to 200 families a month who received food boxes via drive-thru services. In 2020, the population of Peach Creek was estimated at 348 people. It was a surprisingly high number of residents from Logan and surrounding counties traveling to Peach Creek for assistance.

Like many food pantries around the area, Hungry Lambs contracts with Facing Hunger Foodbank. Some of the food it receives is free; some must be purchased. It also orders discounted food from Kroger. And so, there are overhead and operating expenses to keep the pantry viable. The overhead grows as need and capacity increase. With the recent move to the Logan County Resource Center, Hungry Lambs found itself with the opportunity to serve as a community hub for both health and hunger services. Chad described it as “one-stop shopping.” Its community partnerships have included: The Logan County Health Department (which has a remote office in the Resource Center), Coalfield Health Center, the Quick Response Team in Logan County, the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition, and teams of emergency medical technicians.

Two notable partnerships that were the focus of this panel discussion are with the Fresh Start Program and PRIDE Community Services. The Fresh Start Program began as a gardening project in the Southwestern Regional Day Report Center, funded through the Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Abuse Program (COSSAP). Since 2017, the program has served Lincoln, Logan, and Mingo Counties. Anyone who is in substance use disorder (SUD) recovery is eligible to participate in the program, and the program helps those in recovery re-engage with their community. As Michelle Akers described it, the Fresh Start Program participants were “some of the most active, reliable volunteers that Hungry Lambs has had during the pandemic.” Like the Hungry Lambs Food Initiative, the Fresh Start Program has expanded in size and services. Once it started growing more vegetables than the participants

could eat, they started donating the vegetables to Hungry Lambs. Soon, they began raising chickens and donated the eggs as well.

Hungry Lambs second notable partnership is with PRIDE Community Services, part of the Community Action Partnership— a national membership organization that provides technical assistance, training, and other resources and funded in part through a Community Services Block Grant (CSBG). It is one of sixteen designated community action agencies in West Virginia, and it operates several social service programs in its community, such as in-home services, senior programs, family stabilization, and volunteer services. Its clients complete a screening intake form to identify the services they need. So, the organization is in a pivotal position to identify those who may be food insecure and refer them to appropriate services. Together, these partners have collaborated on several projects at the Logan County Resource Center since Hungry Lambs move to this location, such as building fruit stands for their Farmer’s Market. In addition, they’ve offered job training for members of the Fresh Start Program that has led to employment opportunities. They have also collaborated with the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources for career training opportunities through a West Virginia National Guardsponsored program called Patriot Guardians. While Logan County does not have a county coalition that works to coordinate programs, these organizations have taken the initiative to use these partnerships to their advantage. Panelists agreed that not all organizations with similar missions in the county are interested in collaborating. They also agreed that embracing a collaborative approach to addressing food insecurity and strategies to make more healthy foods available in the community has helped them make great strides in addressing these challenges.

Importantly, having all these services in the same proximity has helped them look at health and hunger more holistically. And it has helped address the stigma of utilizing services in several ways. For one, those who were perhaps too embarrassed or ashamed to visit a food pantry could come to the resource center for another program or service. It’s an opportunity to subtly refer individuals to services that, for a variety of reason, they may have been too apprehensive to access— from food insecurity, to health screenings, to COVID-19 testing and vaccinations, to information on substance use disorder and treatment services.

Having a “hub” like the Logan County Resource Center is an incredible opportunity and highly recommended by the panel. They also agreed that the constant pursuit of funding to sustain their efforts is a continuing challenge. They wondered whether forming a nonprofit coalition would make it easier to find larger funding sources to sustain their work. Having to piecemeal grant project funding together, and the fear of losing progress and staff at the end of each grant cycle, is an ongoing concern. Writing grants takes considerable time, and not all grant projects are funded. Panelists agreed that building a robust, collaborative, community-level approach to addressing health and hunger is critical and beneficial, but only sustainable when funding is available. They recommended consistent State funding to ensure good projects don’t end when the grants end, creating a vacuum in services in their communities