 Well, welcome everybody. It's great to be here. I'm John Sayles. I'm the CEO at the Vermont Food Bank. And I'm really pleased to be here for Tuesday talks with Vermont State Libraries to talk about leading with health, the Vermont Food Bank, and really to talk about the relationship between hunger and health because it's a really important relationship and there's a lot we can do in that area. But first, I'd like to just talk a little bit about the Vermont Food Bank, who we are and what we do. So the Vermont Food Bank has a vision where we see a Vermont where everyone has access to enough food every day, where everyone in Vermont is healthy, and where everyone in Vermont takes action to end hunger and poverty. And we also have our goals. So as dutiful state employees, I'm sure you're aware of results-based accountability. So the Vermont Food Bank, our strategic direction is based around results-based accountability and appreciative inquiry. And so everyone has access to enough food every day, everyone is healthy, and everyone takes action to end hunger and poverty are our population level outcomes. And we know that the Food Bank can't do those things alone. That it's going to take nonprofits and government and the private sector all working together to really make those things happen. And so our organizational goals are the Food Bank's contribution to those population level outcomes. And that is that we optimize our organizational capacity, employ innovative solutions to food access, and we'll be talking about some of the things that we do there. Inspire and engage people to take action, and that's really about raising public awareness and raising money for the Vermont Food Bank. And then promote health through food and services, and we're going to be talking a lot about why that's important. So inspire, engage people to take action. I mentioned raising money for the Vermont Food Bank. The Food Bank is a private 501c3 nonprofit organization, and actually 1% of our operations funding, our yearly operational funding comes from the state of Vermont. And so we are over 70% of our yearly operations funding comes from donations from people in Vermont and from small family foundations. And some bigger companies and bigger foundations, but it's mostly individual Vermonters and small family foundations supporting the Food Bank and making all this work happen. So really what we do at the Food Bank is about the people that we serve. And I wanted to start by telling you Don's story. So first of all, all the stories of the people that we talk about, our neighbors, they're participating in telling their own stories. And they're happy to have their stories shared with you so that people can understand the struggles that they have as individuals and how there are different ways to help. So Don lives in southern Vermont and he just started showing up at, we'll be talking about the Veggie Van Gogh, their produce distribution events. And our driver, Greg, noticed Don, just a Glenn, our driver Glenn, noticed Don showing up at all the different ones, which was unusual. So here was this older gentleman showing up at the Veggie Van Goghs at the hospital, at the schools, and anywhere where we were distributing fresh produce, Don showed up. And Glenn's a real gregarious guy, so he started chatting Don up and trying to find out what's Don's story. Well, it turns out that Don needs a heart transplant. And because of his heart problems, he lost his job, he couldn't work. And he was living on $57 a month. That was his discretionary income. And his doctor told him that while he needed a heart transplant, he wasn't healthy enough to be on the transplant list. And one of the things he told him he had to do was change his diet. Well, unfortunately, Don couldn't afford to eat the kinds of healthy foods he needed. And he found out about our Veggie Van Goghs and our produce distributions and started going to all of them. And that was really his first step. So over the last year or so, Don has completely changed his diet by his access to fresh fruits and vegetables. And now his doctor has told him that he's healthy enough to be on the transplant list, which is a real victory for Don. It's certainly not all the way there, but it's just one example of how what we do with all of our neighbors and working together can really make an impact on one person's life. So I'm going to bump ahead for a minute. So Don's story is one of 153,000 stories. Those are the number of people that are served by the Vermont Food Bank in any given year. And every story is unique, and every story is different. So we want to tell you what we're doing to be able to reach people where they are. We know this is an evidence-based cycle of toxic stress and trauma that a lot of people who can't afford enough food are stuck in. So and Don's a really great example. So poor health. Don's health is really bad, and that increases his health care expenditures. It made it impossible for him to work. It lowered his household income, and it created spending trade-offs. So we know Don has $57 a month in discretionary income. So what income Don does have has to go to paying the rent and paying the electric bill. And those real necessities in life. And what we know about people from talking to them is that food is a fungible part of your budget. You've got to pay the rent. You've got to keep the lights on. You've got to fill the oil tank in the winter. You've got to keep gas in the car so you can get to work and keep the car running. You've got to get clothes for the kids. So what's left over is what gets spent on food. And that's when people start making trade-offs like food or my prescriptions. Food or do I pay the rent this month? Food or putting oil in the tank. So we know that people are making those trade-offs all the time. And then when you're making those spending trade-offs, because food is the fungible part of your budget, it reduces your food security. So for instance, the mom will say, wow, well, we don't really have much money for food this month or this week. I'm going to skip breakfast and I'll make sure that the kids have something to eat. We hear that an awful lot. Or I'm going to go and buy four boxes of macaroni and cheese instead of a bunch of broccoli, which probably cost about the same thing. But the broccoli is only going to last two meals and my kids might not eat it. And I know that that macaroni and cheese is going to give us at least three or four meals and will at least feel full even if it's not as nutritious as it should be. So the food bank thinks about this stress cycle and how we can create what we call off-ramps. And when we think about the work that we do, the off-ramp that the food bank can provide is food. Having consistent access to nourishing fresh food reduces people's stress. And I won't go into it, but there is a lot of science behind the effect of toxic stress on the body and the neurological and physical effects, not to mention the effects on growing kids. So when the food bank can provide food, that can create some stability in people's lives and that can help people be healthier, help people succeed at work and at school, help reduce those trade-offs and really give people the opportunity to take other off-ramps because there are places in the healthcare world or in job training or housing assistance. There are things that people can take advantage of, but if they don't know where their next meal is coming from or if they don't know when their kids are going to be fed next, they're not going to be thinking about those things. So it's really about creating multiple off-ramps from this cycle onto really a cycle of stability. I showed this one quickly before, but 153,000 Vermonters we serve every year. We talk about health. We know because we asked a third of those households where people are getting food assistance, there's somebody with diabetes. Almost half of those households where people are getting food assistance, there's somebody with high blood pressure. 72% of the people who are served by the Vermont Food Bank told us that they purposefully buy cheaper, less nourishing foods for themselves and their families because they can't afford enough of the nourishing foods. This trade-off creates and exacerbates things like diabetes, high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, COPD, all kinds of health issues. So that 153,000 people, that's almost one in four people in Vermont. So it really is our neighbors. It's somebody on your street. If they're not experiencing hunger now, they may have experienced hunger in the last year, the last several years. The food bank operates not in a vacuum, but in a community. We have 215 partners all over the state, and those are food pantries, meal sites like soup kitchens, homeless shelters, after-school programs, senior centers. Anywhere that's feeding people with low incomes generally is a partner with the Vermont Food Bank. Last year we distributed about 11.7 million pounds of food, which is about nine and a half, between nine and a half and 10 million meals for people in Vermont. And people, you know, you think about, you try and imagine who's that person that's food insecure, who's that person that can't afford enough food. It's not people generally who are every week or every month going to the local food shelf. It's people who find themselves in a situation where they're making those trade-offs, and as they make those trade-offs they can take advantage of food assistance where it's available. So we know that of those 1.2 million visits to one of our network partners over a year, people are going about 8.3 times per year on average. So yes, there are people like Don who's going to go as often as he can because he doesn't have any choice. This is the way that Don's going to survive. This is the way literally Don's going to survive by improving his health enough to get a heart transplant. But for all the Don's, there are people who maybe get laid off in the winter or the summer for two or three months, and things are tight, and so they go to the local food shelf. Or maybe they lost their job or there's a divorce or there's an illness in the family. We know there was just a VPR poll, VPR Vermont Community Foundation poll, and you've probably been hearing some about it, but 40% of people in Vermont couldn't survive a financial need of $1,000 immediately. They just don't have those resources available. And when people find themselves with a have to move, and you have to have that security deposit or the car breaks down and has to be fixed, it can throw them behind for a few months. And that's where the charitable food network is available to people to make sure that they can continue to eat that healthy, high quality food. So what about health? What do we know about how being food insecure affects your health? Well, we know that people who are food insecure, and by the way, the definition, the federal definition of food insecurity is the inability to access adequate amounts of nourishing food in order to live a healthy and active lifestyle. They're working on that, but that's what food insecurity means. We like to call it hunger. It's really the same thing. So of those people who live in food insecure households, they are 47% more likely if you're food insecure to have an emergency room visit. You're 47% more likely if you live in a food insecure household, all else being equal to have a hospital admission. And if you're admitted to the hospital, you're 54% more likely to have increased stays, increased days in the hospital. And that is controlling for everything else just because you can't afford enough food in your household. There's also a, we can quantify that cost to our health care system of food insecurity. So we know that from this study that the increase in health care expenditures for people who are food insecure is close to $2,000. Again, controlling for everything else just because you can't afford enough food, your health care costs are about $2,000 higher than somebody who's food secure. We also know there's a, yes, please. Yes, that's per year. There's also another study that just came out that quantified the overall health care costs of food insecurity in this country and broke it down by state. And in Vermont, food insecurity costs just the health care system and additional $82 million a year. So this is why. Diabetes. Diabetes is one of those diseases that we all know is very diet related. In fact, you can reverse someone's insulin dependence by changing their diet in a sustained way. And we've seen that happen. What this chart is showing, which is kind of hard to see, is people living in food insecure households have more than twice the risk of developing type 2 diabetes even after accounting for differences, all kinds of differences, age, gender, race, physical activity, smoking, alcohol, diet quality. So this line down here is the number of people who are food secure who will develop type 2 diabetes. And this is time since their interview date. So up to what's going to happen in the next 4,000 days or 5,000 days after the interview. The blue line is the line for people who are food insecure. As you can see, it's close to 20% of the people who are food insecure have the probability of developing type 2 diabetes. And it's just under 10% for people who are food secure. What I hear a lot is, well, people who are poor, I see them all the time, they're overweight. How can they be food insecure if they're overweight? Well, when we talked earlier about the choices and the fact that 72% of the people who the Vermont Food Bank serves consciously make the choice to buy less healthy, less expensive food because they can't get filled up using their food budget on healthy food. It is the low quality diet that can actually cause obesity, as well as the toxic stress that I talked about earlier, causes some changes in the brain and makes your body crave high fat, high salt foods and also causes your body physiologically to put on more fat because your body is feeling stressed continuously and it gets into fight, flight, fight, flight or freeze mode and what your body does is it wants to store energy because it sees a crisis coming and so you actually increase your fat stores when you're stressed. That's not good news, right? So what can the Vermont Food Bank help? How can the Vermont Food Bank help? What can we do? Well, let's talk first about the fresh food that we get and how we get it. So, again, the Food Bank is serving 1 in 4 Vermonters and last year distributed about 6 million servings of fresh fruits and vegetables all across the state. That was 2.1 million pounds out of that 11.7 million is fresh fruits and vegetables. So about 440,000 pounds of that came from right here in Vermont, both locally purchased and donated. The donated produce comes from a whole variety of farms all over Vermont growing all kinds of things, but we also do field gleaning where the Food Bank partners with farmers and volunteers like you can go out into the fields and harvest what the farmer is not going to harvest. So it may be that something grew too early, grew too late, grew too big, the wrong size, the wrong color. For instance, a farmer will plant a field of spinach and they'll harvest the first growth and then they'll kind of move on to what's next and that spinach will regrow and they're not going to harvest that second growth. So they'll call the Food Bank in, we'll get our volunteers, we'll go out there, we'll sweep through that field, we'll harvest maybe 500 pounds of spinach, it'll go onto a truck and then go directly to a local food shelf or a meal site and be distributed to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford that often organic, very healthy, very local, very nutritious food. We also purchase food from Vermont farmers and we just started a couple of years ago, I'll talk about this a little bit more later, a program we're calling Vermonters Feeding Vermonters and that's where we are purchasing first quality produce from Vermont growers we're forward contracting with them which means this time of year or actually in about December or January we start talking to farmers and contract and say we want 10,000 pounds of butternut squash from you in the fall and we negotiate a market rate price for that and then fall comes around and the farmers harvest for us. We also have through our national network of Feeding America access to produce, surplus produce from all around the country so we can bring in produce from Florida, from Michigan, from Texas, from California, of course it's pretty expensive to truck food all the way across the country to Vermont. So we also purchase a lot of produce from a grower in Quebec you might be surprised that they grow a lot of vegetables in Quebec but there's a huge grow up there called Western Harvest and because they're so close the cost is much less we buy second quality produce from them and we get things that are the right wrong size or shape or color and have it delivered right to our warehouses here in Berry in Brattleboro and in Rutland. So that's the balance of that 1.2 million but we're really looking to increase the amount of Vermont grown fresh fruits and vegetables that we're able to distribute. So I was going to talk a little bit more about Vermonters Feeding Vermonters we're really looking to expand the program what we like about it is the food is locally sourced it is locally distributed it's distributed to within 50 miles of where it's grown and it's locally enjoyed by our neighbors who wouldn't otherwise be out there at the farmer's market buying fresh local fruits and vegetables using results based accountability we're looking at what are the benefits of Vermonters Feeding Vermonters well we know it's improving the health of people so again we surveyed people asked them 85% of the recipients said they're more likely to eat Vermont grown produce again and I love talking about that because even people who are food insecure even people who go to veggie van goes or go to the local food shelf they still buy a lot of their food in the grocery store and by providing fresh Vermont food and letting people know that it was grown here and what farm it was grown on you're creating new customers for Vermont produce you think of that mom who has the choice between some macaroni and cheese or hot dogs or some Vermont grown broccoli well if she's gone to veggie van go and gotten some Vermont broccoli and taken it home and cooked it and found that her kids really like it and that they seem healthier because they're eating it now when she's going to the grocery store and sees that Vermont grown broccoli in the produce section it's not a risk it's something that she knows her kids will eat and she knows that they're going to do better in school and they're going to be happier and they're going to pay more attention and they're going to have more fun playing so it really can change the patterns of people's behavior 25% of the recipients reported increased daily vegetable consumption if you look at the Centers for Disease Control Statistics all across this country there is nowhere and there is no strata of our society where people are eating an adequate amount of fruits and vegetables I mean there are individuals who eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and probably exceed the requirements but if you look population wise it's really abysmal and it's really exciting to know that if we make these fresh fruits and vegetables available to people that they are increasing their consumption security for farmers where we really want to promote our agricultural economy here in Vermont I think it's a real bright spot and we know well obviously 100% of the participating growers reported improved financial gains because they have a contract from the Vermont Food Bank and they know that we're going to pay them for that 57% of the growers reported that they had increased stability because they knew that they could forward contract for that 10,000 pounds of squash or onions or tomatoes or peppers that means they're secure and that means we're more secure we all love our economic multipliers so for every dollar spent on local produce contributes an additional 60 cents to the economy we have a projected goal of adding $800,000 to the Vermont economy and we'll do that by I'll talk about it now the goal of the Vermont Food Bank this year we're going to be going to the legislature is to get a $500,000 continuing appropriation from the Vermont legislature to purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables from Vermont farmers to distribute to people all over the state and that $500,000 spend would create $800,000 in economic activity across the state so we also know that local produce reduces the environmental footprint so as I said this produce is delivered within a 50 mile radius of where it's grown and we're contracting with farmers all over the state we have distribution centers as I said in Brattleboro and in Rutland and in Montpelier and so whichever farm we're closest to the food's going to that distribution center and going right out into that community immediately it's really nice to have that super fresh, super local food when we're trucking food in from around the country or even the food coming down from Canada it just has less of its shelf life left or the food that we're gleaning from grocery stores every week things that aren't that are getting close to the end of their life that the grocery stores then donate to the food bank there's a shorter shelf life so the nutritional value and the shelf life and the flavor and the color and all the good things is so much better with food that's coming from within 50 miles of where it was grown so how can you help you can learn more by going to feedingvermonters.org and I told you about the legislative ask we have this year we're looking for support from individuals across the state and at feedingvermonters.org you can sign the supporter card which will tell your local legislator why you support Vermonters Feeding Vermonters and you can sign up for campaign emails and there will be links so you can contact us later let them know that you think this is a really good idea so that's where our fresh food comes from where does it go how do we use it as I said we have 215 network partners all over the state those are the food shelves, meal sites senior centers after school programs other housing communities and just lots of non-profits if you serve low income people and you serve food you can be at the Vermont food bank and get food from us to serve we have a program called VT Fresh and I'll show you some pictures in a minute but VT Fresh is a cooking demonstration taste testing program so that people can try these wonderful vegetables how many people here in this crowd there's probably some like rutabagas yeah okay I got a little I'm not a big rutabaga fan but one of the biggest successes of Vermont are feeding Vermonters is the emergence of rutabaga fries so we get a lot of rutabagas and people look at them and say what the heck do I do with this and so we have this great recipe for rutabaga fries and it's just like sweet potato fries or using potatoes you just chop them up with olive oil and you put them in the oven at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes then stir them around in another 15 minutes and they're actually really good it brings the sweetness out in the rutabaga and we have kids that get turned on to rutabaga fries and then their moms are taking them home and making them and then our veggie van go events I also mentioned veggie van go and I'll show you some pictures of that too veggie van go is a version of fresh produce that we do at 10 schools and 10 hospitals around the state and we're really looking to expand that it's been very very popular so another part of ET Fresh is really using the principles of behavioral economics to transform the environment in a food shelf so I don't know a lot of people haven't been to food shelves some of you may have and they vary a closet in a church basement serving the people in that church to the just basics here in Montpelier the Montpelier food pantry, they do a beautiful job to the Chittenden emergency food shelf which serves 12,000 people a year and is a 5 day a week professional operation and they have food processing going on there kind of a real shopping experience but the Vermonters feeding ET Fresh looks to help transform the environment in a food shelf to make it more appealing and to really make the healthy choice the easy choice so this is what people usually think about when they see a food shelf some nice metal shelves a lot of cans and boxes and bags of shelf stable food and here is a central Vermont food shelf before ET Fresh came in you can see the selection and the presentation of the produce isn't very appealing I don't know if I would walk in there and want to take anything well here's what it actually looks like now and so we come in and help transform the environment and provide grants for the bins and the shelving and the signage again boxes on the floor with a few things in them not very appealing and this is what it looks like now the principles of behavioral economics will tell you that people will take more when it seems like there's a lot somebody won't take the last cucumber in the bin but if the bin's overflowing they'll take three or four very interesting and then of course beautiful signage and making sure that everything is displayed well and fresh so we call that those ways to get people to make the healthy choice the easy choice nudges and we employ a lot of nudges with our network partners and at our veggie van goes really to make sure that that people feel comfortable and even excited about that fresh food so we want to have beautiful displays and signage draw attention we know that and research that that can increase consumption you know it just has to look good it just has to look good now that is something I want to eat and I don't even like Swiss chard and then the taste test and cooking demonstration so this is Sarah Whitehair who does a lot of our VT fresh work so she's actually there cooking at the food shelf and our recipes are always using a vegetable and vegetable as the primary ingredient and that vegetable is always available lots of it are available at the food shelf or the veggie van goes site where we're doing the distribution the recipes are available and here's the famous recipe for rutabaga fries you can actually it's not prominently displayed but if you go to our website vtfoodbank.org you can find our recipe book and it has we have hundreds of recipes that are all use a one vegetable as the primary ingredient and all the other ingredients are are simple and very readily available we want to make sure that somebody who's trying something at a food shelf can take everything they need to make that home with them so what about digging deeper into health a few years ago we decided to partner with the YMCA and their diabetes prevention program and you know there's been awful lot of research on diet and diabetes obviously I mentioned earlier that you can actually worse diabetes by changing somebody's diet and eating habits this was really a fabulous partnership the Y is no longer doing this it actually the program transferred to University of Vermont health network but we partnered with vt fresh and the Y and we just had some really amazing outcomes so the program consisted of lifestyle coaching and education and then which was the the basic program and that's what the control group got and the vt fresh group got cooking demos and tastings in addition and produce distribution so every time people would come and get their their lifestyle coaching and education they'd also have a cooking demo and a taste testing and they'd be able to take home like 20 pounds of fresh fresh vegetables with them the results compared to the control group were maybe not surprisingly that the participants we had increased attendance and completion of the program increased fruit and vegetable consumption and increased weight loss which is so important for diabetes some of the actual quotes that we got from people the an elderly woman who who said that she never ate fruits and vegetables until she went through this class and now she eats them in every meal it's just it can really be life changing for people to be exposed to something that they just weren't exposed to before and I also talked about veggie van go so here's the veggie van go at the northeastern Vermont regional hospital in St. Johnsbury as I said veggie van go is like a farmer's market and we have great volunteers who show up and we have our bins full of fresh vegetables and beautiful signage and happy people helping you fill your basket and take your vegetables out to the car along with a VT fresh cooking demonstration and often times at the hospitals the community health teams will be there we'll have our three squares Vermont outreach team to help people who who don't know if they're eligible and might be signed up for three squares Vermont so these are the hospitals that are right now part of veggie van go and there are 10 there there's 15 hospitals in Vermont and our goals in the next couple of years to be at all 15 hospitals some of the hospitals have even created a prescription for veggie van go this is from Mount Scutney hospital and health center where the doctors are actually referring their patients with diet related diseases and low incomes to our veggie van go in fact we hear at at northeastern Vermont regional hospital in St. Johnsbury that the majority of the people who show up and it's 250 people once a month are there are there because their doctors told them that they need to eat more fruits and vegetables and that they can go to veggie van go and get some so we know it's impactful we also do it at schools so hospitals we go once a month schools we go twice a month and year round because people still need food in the summer even though schools not open so so we show up and set up outside in the parking lot we're really really excited we get calls from schools every week who want to be part of veggie van go and we're certainly doing the best we can to expand that we actually have plans in the next three years to raise the money to try and double the number of schools that have veggie van go we're also and I don't mind plugging them thanks to a really generous contribution from Hannaford of almost $200,000 we're expanding veggie van go to four new schools next year and we're also creating what we're calling veggie van go plus so we know that showing up every two weeks and giving students and their families access to fresh fruits and vegetables is really valuable and can be game changing we also know that it's not enough and so we're going to be adding healthy shelf stable products to our veggie van goes and when we pull out after that couple of hours of the distribution we're going to leave behind the shelf stable stuff that hasn't been taken yet and the schools are going to create a little in-school pantry that will be run by the schools so that they'll be food available to the students in between the veggie van goes and the veggie van go plus will be at this year we're just starting it in 2020 at Rutland Intermediate School at Spalding High School right here in Berry and at the Saint J. School so we're very excited about finding if that makes a bigger impact so we did we actually partnered with some graduate students at UVM and did a survey of people's attitudes and the benefits of veggie van go and what we found is you notice my favorite part of this is is that the chart actually starts at 75% because otherwise you know we wouldn't have room to show all the success so 95% of the people say they now have more produce in their household 94% have more food all around in their household by going to veggie van go they're eating more vegetables they're saving money for other household costs they're eating a bigger variety of fruits and vegetables and feeling healthier I think that's really key here people change their lifestyles when they notice a difference for themselves there's a food bank that provides food to people people use their own income to buy their own food and there's also the number one anti-hunger program in the United States the most efficient and effective way for people with low incomes to make sure that they get adequate food and that their health is supported is Three Squares Vermont which nationally is called SNAP and a lot of people know it as food stamps I wish you know we do feel like this we do everything we can to support people getting on and staying on Three Squares Vermont and getting all the benefits to which they're entitled so we have a Three Squares Vermont application assistance team and well we'll do that and tell you how it works so we know that again like in general providing food assistance to people reduces their health care costs there have been a number of studies that show that SNAP Three Squares Vermont in particular reduces health care spending you can see here people with low incomes who are not participating in the SNAP program you can see average annual per person health care spending and it's over $1000 less it's $1400 less if you're a participant in the SNAP program having the access to the resources to purchase food that is nourishing makes a difference in your health and reduces health care costs and most of this is Medicaid cost so it's actually a it's good for all of us it's good for all of us this is kind of an eye chart but the only reason I really have it here is it shows the lines here show the estimated impact on annual health care spending for different different kinds of categories for people who are on SNAP as opposed to not on SNAP what I really wanted to point out was if you look down here the whole line is the range and the square is the the average but just look at the impact that 3 Squares Vermont has on health care costs for people who have a disability for people who have hypertension or for people who have coronary artery disease it's really significant food makes a difference another of the many pieces of evidence we have is that SNAP benefits are associated with lower pregnancy related emergency room visits so you can see here this is the bottom axis is the number of the dollars that people get in SNAP benefits and this is the probability of a pregnancy related ER visit you can see clear clear correlation between more benefits to buy food healthy food and fewer HR visits or excuse me ER visits for pregnant women even more these are older adults who are on SNAP so older adults the yellow line is people who are older adults who have SNAP benefits and the orange line is non-eligible or people who don't have SNAP benefits and this is about skipping or delaying medication so basically what's telling you is when older adults have SNAP benefits they are less likely to skip or not take their medication which we know is going to reduce overall health care expenditures and help people be happier, more productive members of our community more studies so there's just evidence that SNAP makes a big difference in people's health and lowers health care costs so how do we do this? well we don't do it alone because at the food bank we don't do anything alone so we collaborate with community partners all those food shelves and meal sites all kinds of different community partners that are having events where people who might have low incomes would be present we are there with our SNAP outreach team a quick prescreen with people to determine whether they're eligible and whether it makes sense for them to apply we actually will sit down our teams will sit down with people and fill out the application it is an 18 page application and I don't know if any of you have heard of the three squares challenge where you're challenged to eat on the budget of what the benefits are for an average three squares participant my three squares challenge is fill out the application it is hard it is detailed it is amazingly intrusive and you have to have so much information financial information about you and your family and everyone that lives in your household is a real burden and I really applaud our people to sit down and go through that process with our clients and then support people throughout the process getting the application and then you get the confusing letter from economic services division you know they do a great job and they work very hard and I applaud our AHS employees but the systems in which they are working are broken and it is really challenging for people who are in crisis and are suffering from toxic stress and have lots of other things going on in their life to get a confusing letter from economic services division about some piece of information that's missing or some deadline and so folks can call our SNAP team and they'll walk them through that because we've seen it before so we have a I talked about a screening you can actually do a screen on your smart phone if you text F511 it will take you through a quick screen and then at the end of that if you screen you might be eligible for three squares Vermont it will help you connect to our team so they can take you through the process so how do you get involved well what we like to say for people to get involved is first of all get engaged in your local community and go to your local food shelf and see the kind of services that are being provided volunteer advocate and donate that's the way we make change so we run on volunteers we have at the food bank I think about 15,000 volunteer hours there are volunteer opportunities that are all of our facilities are very facility Rutland, Brattleboro there are volunteer opportunities gleaning in the field in the summertime in the fall you can go to our website vtfoodbank.org and click on the volunteer button and it will give you all the information about volunteering I know that I was saying earlier I worked for the state for 10 years and spent about four years at ANR and after I left there you know kept in touch with people and now the water quality division at the Department of Environmental Conservation comes every year and does a team building volunteer opportunity at the food bank it's a real great way you can come in with a group of up to 10 or 15 it's fun it's good team building and you're doing a really essential essential work for the food bank we cannot do the work we do without our volunteers advocate so I told you about Vermonters Feeding Vermonters and feedingvermonters.org and the opportunity to talk to your representatives about the importance of funding Vermonters Feeding Vermonters but there's also things happening at the federal level in fact right now this is the third time this year that the Trump Administration is promulgating rules to roll back access to Three Squares Vermont in fact if you go to I don't have the URL up here but if you go to Hunger Free Vermont's website there's a place where you can submit you can click on it and find a quick way to submit your comments opposing the current changes the changes right now there's something called heat and eat so if you get fuel assistance then you have enhanced eligibility for Three Squares Vermont assistance they want to take that away and actually it will reduce SNAP SNAP benefits to Vermonters an average of $82 a person and it would be $25 million a year less that will be coming into the Vermont economy this particular change is hitting Vermont harder than any other state so I encourage people to go to Hunger Free Vermont's website and check this out and I think I think it's through December the comment period is open and it makes a difference when you submit a comment you can always call us or find us on the web at vtfoodbank.org and I'd be happy to answer any questions people have oh yes thank you yes and state of Vermont employees you have your annual fundraising campaign and I don't remember what it's called VT shares thank you very much and let me just say thank you to all state employees who will be looking at this or see it on Orca you're very generous to the Vermont food bank and we certainly encourage you to continue donating through VT shares to the Vermont food bank I did when I was a state employee yes thank you especially like at a local level like at charges or something like that donations or something people will sometimes bump on donating to the food bank because of charges that local food shelves have to pay and I never really know how to respond to that so first of all when people ask me should I donate to the food bank or to my local food shelf my answer is always both because it's a symbiotic relationship and we can't get food to people so to be a network partner of the food bank there is a cost there is a a partnership there's a small fee and the minimum is $75 so for a lot of our partners and it's based on the amount of food amount of donated food you distributed prior year so it starts at $75 a year and the Chittenden food shelf which is now called Feeding Chittenden which I mentioned theirs is about $2500 a year so there's a small member fee and then there is a delivery fee for donated food of 8 cents a pound there is no delivery fee for any federal food and there are two federal programs that the food bank runs so there's the USDA commodities to get distributed and there's no fee for produce for fresh food so yes there is a cost and there's also I should mention because we can't get enough food donated about about 15% of the food the food bank distributes has actually purchased food and so we act like a co-op the food bank purchases by the truck load and then our local partners can purchase through us and get delivered by the case which is often times cheaper than them going to the local grocery store and purchasing so almost every network partner has a food budget and they do buy food from the Vermont food bank but there's also donated food that's available by being a network partner no it's not the perfect answer it's complicated but there's no there are some food banks around the country that charge what they call a shared maintenance fee which is a charge of usually between 10 and 25 cents a pound on all food that's donated food that goes to the food shelf in order to support the food banks operations but we haven't done that for over a decade so the cost of the food shelves is the annual membership fee and then the delivery fee if they get food delivered and then any purchases that they make no absolutely not in fact we raise we have an operating budget of about eight and a half million dollars a year and 90% of that is towards food distribution so yeah well thank you all I really appreciate it and I look forward to coming back sometime maybe and talking more about what we do oh I didn't show you the that's an actual potato that came in the food bank yeah and Michelle Wallace who's our director of health and fresh food programs found it and that's her hand she took a picture of it so thank you all