 Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for this Community Development Week panel. I'm Mallory Sullivan, Community Development Block Grant Administrator for the town of Arlington. And I'm here today with three excellent panelists for a discussion on food insecurity, equity, and the role of federal grants at the local level. Before I introduce our speakers, I'd like to share with you what exactly we're celebrating this week. On Monday, the select board made a proclamation to declare April 5th through 9th Community Development Week, and we are joining communities across the country in celebrating National Community Development Week. The purpose of this week is to share the achievements of the organizations in town departments that are making a difference in the community by serving residents who make low to moderate incomes, seniors, people with disabilities, and all Arlington residents. Many of the organizations that are providing these services are supported by the Community Development Block Grant program, or CDBG, a program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and administered through Arlington's Planning and Community Development Department. These funds support a range of projects, including affordable housing, human services, economic development, and parks and public facilities. Today we'll learn how two of Arlington's CDBG-funded organizations, FoodLink and Arlington Eats, have responded to the issue of food insecurity, a socioeconomic condition in which households or individuals have limited or uncertain access to a nutritious diet. Each year, millions of Americans face food insecurity, but at the same time, experts estimate that half of all edible food in the U.S. ends up in landfills. Even though the pandemic drew attention to this problem, it's one that these two organizations have been working hard to address for years. Joining us today are Andy Doan of Arlington Eats, Elise Springle of FoodLink, and Jenny Rae of the Department of Planning and Community Development. I'd like to let the panelists introduce themselves and their work, and then we'll turn to questions and answers. First, we have Andy Doan, Executive Director at Arlington Eats. Thanks for joining us, Andy. Thanks for having me, Mallory. As Mallory said, I'm Andy Doan with Arlington Eats, and we are a local hunger relief organization. Our mission really is to engage the community in eliminating hunger and food insecurity in Arlington. Arlington Eats is an organization that's been around for a long time in some ways. We were originally known as the Arlington Food Pantry, which started in 1991. And then another group called the original Arlington Eats, which started in 2014 to address hunger in schools. Those two organizations merged together in 2019, and we have been working hard since then to really respond to the needs in our community. So we have our largest program, which many residents are familiar with, which is the Arlington Eats Market. Because of the pandemic, we are now offering home delivery of food. Pre-pandemic, we were serving about 165 families a week. Now we are on average around 280 to 85 families a week, and we provide not only staple food items, but also fresh produce, meat, dairy products. We were able to switch to a food delivery model when the pandemic hit, because we knew that many of the Arlington residents that were coming to us pre-pandemic actually are taking either public transportation or walking or biking to us. So, you know, around the country, you saw a lot of food pantries that had gone to drive through kind of model, but we knew that wasn't going to work for our town. And so thanks to collaborations with the Council on Aging and the Medical Reserve Corps, we were able to switch to a delivery model and continue to do that today to make sure that food is accessible in a safe and healthy way. Thank you, Andy. Let's turn it over to Elise Springle now. Elise is the Director of Operations and Community Partnerships at FoodLink. Thank you, Mallory. It's wonderful to be with you all this evening. FoodLink is a food rescue organization that got our start and makes our home in Arlington. We start in 2012, so we're going into our 10th year of operations now, and it's been really a bookmark year for us. Last year we moved 1.2 million pounds of food, which was double what we had done the year before. It's enough food for a million meals. And what we do is we do food rescue. So we're working to get surplus food from local grocery stores, wholesalers, and farms, and we redistribute it to organizations throughout eastern Massachusetts. We started in Arlington. Our first distributions were to Drake Village and quickly places like Arlington Eats, but we now serve all of eastern Massachusetts going as far north as Lowell and Lawrence and as far south as North Adelborough. I know there's a lot of interest in our new building that has recently opened on Summer Street, so I thought I'd give folks a quick peek inside with some photos. So bear with me for just a second while I bring up that slideshow. So we've moved into our new building on March 2nd. That was our first day of operations out of there. It's on Summer Street, really close to the intersection with Mill Street next to Scutra. So come on by. This is the way the front of the building from Summer Street. If you're coming from Mill Street, you'll come up this side, which is our East Parking Lot. Our volunteers come in right now in this photo. The box truck is blocking the door that you would see, but that box truck is our newest vehicle. We just got it last week and it's had three runs so far and moved probably 15,000 pounds worth of food. This is this side. You would see if you were going toward Mill Street. The bike path is along the edge and you can see a lot of features that the town really helps us fund. So just the building alone, our down payment was funded by the CDBG grant and we have a number of different rainwater mitigation systems that folks helped with. And you can't really see it here with there's bike parking and where I took this photo will be our bike garage shortly, which is all CDBG funded. Inside we have a fantastic new sorting area and area for repacking. If this picture I've been taken on a Saturday, those tables would have been full of bags that we were packing for Chestnut Manor. This is the Wellington Housing Authority buildings we work with. If you came in here another day there might be meals from Minuteman Technical High School on those tables being repacked for some of the other housing facilities as well. So they're currently the culinary program there prepares food for us with rescue food, which is amazing. This is really the reason we have this space, which is our cold storage. This is 300 square feet of cold storage. This is our fridge. You can see fantastic food from Stony Heel in here as well as some of the wholesalers with potatoes and other things. And finally that's our loading dock from the inside. You can see our box truck there which we can now take a pallet off a box truck and bring it into that cold storage, which is a huge change for us. So that's where we're at right now. That's fantastic. Thank you, Elise. Our final panelist is Jenny Rae. Jenny is the director of planning and community development for the town. Thank you, Mallory. I'm actually I was going to I might end up repeating some of the things that we're already talked about but that might be okay just for the people who are viewing this program. As you said, I'm Jennifer Rae. I'm the director of planning and community development for the town. The department, as you've heard, runs the town's CDBG program and has since the programs inception. CDBG is really this flexible resource for the community and it's been utilized for a very long time. We're one of 1200 communities throughout the US that receives this direct funding and we're empowered at the community level to make decisions about how to best address a wide range of local needs and issues. And that has really ranged from a lot of different issues that Mallory lifted up for you, as well as things that if you're following along on our social media accounts from the town. We've been actively promoting the various activities that we engage in, including things like preserving affordable housing opportunities by working with the Arlington Housing Authority and the Housing Corporation of Arlington. Fixing and constructing constructing new public facilities which includes the Arlington Housing Authority's monotony manner, life and skills building, making infrastructure improvements that include ensuring accessibility at our parks and in our public ways, creating and preserving jobs which has really become increasingly important, particularly in the business community as a result of COVID and the impact of COVID. And then of course public services, which is a category that covers community programs like the Arlington Boys and Girls Club, Fidelity House, and programs through our council on aging. And of course pertinent to this conversation, programs that support nutrition and address food insecurity, which you've now understand a lot more what that looks like and what it means. And in particular this past year we really, I think went well beyond what we would normally do because of pretty significant support from the federal government in the form of the CARES Act in two different tranches. So through that those funds as well as our regular funding, we've supported FoodLink in Arlington Eats and they've become much more active participants in the delivery system around various services to the community during the pandemic. And we'll hear more about those services. The CDBG has also been a really clear supporter of both the renovation at both FoodLink's new facility, which is a really wonderful addition to Summer Street, and also an adaptive reuse of an auto parts building, formerly. And FoodLink's new headquarters, which is actually, I'm sorry Arlington Eats new headquarters in their marketplace, which is a fit out of space that's on the ground floor of the new housing corporation for Arlington building on Broadway, which is close to the Thompson School and populations who really need access to the market. So, you know, I think for me when I think about the department and what we do to support these activities I think, you know, we do a lot in terms of short and long range planning and touch on all of the different things in different ways with regard to both, you know, longer range planning issues, but also the sort of in depth community needs and learn about I think what are the real issues that people are struggling with in the community, and how we can work together to address those changes. I think when it comes to food insecurity, when people, you know, are unable to afford or access nutritious food, and then perhaps are have access to only inexpensive or unhealthy foods, because that's the only option. It puts people at really high risk of disease and chronic health issues. Children are unable to concentrate. And people have, you know, essentially struggle to focus and succeed in school or at work. So to know that the CDBG program can be at any in any way a source of support to these programs in the community is really vital. I'm glad to be able to participate in that. Thank you. Thank you Jenny and thank all three of you for being here today. So I'd like to shift gears now and turn to the questions that were submitted by the public ahead of the panel. For each question, I'll turn it over to one of our panelists to start us off and then open it up to the others if they wish to respond. So the first question is, why is there still food insecurity and hunger? And why does it exist in Arlington? Elise, would you like to start us off here? I can. So unfortunately, food insecurity and hunger are really issues that have to do with income inequality and inequitable access to food. We have plenty of food to go around. We waste at least 40% of what we produce in this country, unfortunately. And it's not like we're wasting food that is always actually bad when it's getting wasted. It's often still in great shape. Let me tell you about the wonderful watercress that I brought home for dinner tonight that was not good enough for us to send to a pantry because it's kind of yellow, but it's going to make a wonderful salad. So we waste quite a bit of what we produce. So unfortunately, it has much more to do with the fact that we have inequitable systems of delivery, as well as increasing wage gap and increasing income inequality. So to solve it, we really need to start to address those issues as well. Thank you, Elise. Andy? I was going to add too, as Elise said, you know, hunger is, it's a pervasive issue throughout our country and even in suburban neighborhoods and towns like Arlington, we see hunger as an issue. And the root causes of hunger actually have, you know, are beyond kind of just the distribution of food to access to food, but it's also things like racism, access to affordable housing, education. All those things lead and can be a hunger is a symptom of those things. So I think it's a wider issue and unfortunately, no community is immune from those things. And I think that's why we have started recently in the last few years at Arlington. It's thinking more about what are the causes and effects of hunger and not that we're going to be able to solve all those issues, but I think we look at how we can partner with other agencies and the town to really look at some of those bigger issues to be able to address those things that are affecting the systemic things that are affecting, you know, our residents, our neighbors, and ultimately not allowing for enough food. Thank you. So thank you for these insights. This next question is highly relevant today, given the, given where we are, the changes that the pandemic has caused over the past year. So, Andy, maybe you'd like to begin this one too. So in thinking about the issue of food insecurity in Arlington, as well as these intertwining challenges, what's changed over the years for better or worse? And how do you expect the pandemic to impact food security down the road in the long term? I've been with Arlington Eats in the Food Pantry since 2015, and I remember when I first started, we had just moved to a space on Broadway. Actually, where our new headquarters is being built, we were there prior to that as part of the Broadway diner. And I remember people saying, I never knew there was a food pantry in Arlington. I never knew there was a need. Again, our school-based programs, we had a teacher who was noticing behavior issues over some of the students' issues, trying all these techniques, and ended up finding out that the student just needed a snack. The student was hungry. They came to school without breakfast. And so, you know, there is, again, lots of reasons for this, and it's something in our community. And of course, the pandemic has exasperated it. I mean, we obviously know a lot of people that are now unemployed at Eats were getting phone calls and emails at least once a week of someone saying, never had to use your services before. How do I qualify? And we're saying, you know, you need to be Arlington resident and we will serve you. You know, there's no questions asked there. We get a lot of data from the Greater Boston Food Bank and Feeding America, and we know that there's now 4,300 food insecure individuals in Arlington. So it's, you know, and we all have, we all play our parts. So, you know, Eats and FoodLink, we have our distribution sites. We also work closely with the Council on Aging and the SNAP application and the SNAP outreach that they do as well as Meals on Wheels. So, you know, it's definitely something that in the community, we all have to work together to address this larger issue. Yeah, when I, I've been working at FoodLink for getting close to five years now and when I started, one of the things that I was really impressed with in Arlington is the collaboration that happens here. And that's just expanded over the years. So I think the thing we really have going for us is that, you know, there is a group of nonprofits and social service agencies in Arlington that really do care about hunger and are interested in moving the needle on it. Because as Andy said, no community is immune from hunger. And it really hides in many of these suburbs. People don't realize it's there, but we do a lot of work in what people would consider some wealthy suburbs. And there's plenty of hunger in those places and it's harder to access services often because people don't know that it's there. I like to say that unfortunately there's really no vaccine for hunger. And the issues that are the underlying causes of hunger were totally and utterly exasperated during the pandemic. And it was really heartbreaking to watch as someone who's worked on food insecurity for a long time. How quickly, you know, all the work that was done around, you know, coming back from the 2008 recession, how quickly some of that could be undone. There's a lot of shutdowns that happened and by the ways that things went down. So it's going to be, we've got a lot of work ahead of us to get us back there. But we've all learned a lot. And I think this collaborative attitude and just, you know, understanding that we're all in this together, and that this is a solvable problem if we start to look at those root causes. And we have a lot of good band-aids in the meantime. We've got some fantastic services here in Arlington between all the wonderful work that is done by Arlington Eats and the Council on Aging. And I look forward to the days when we get back into the Boys and Girls Club and Videllity House for the different ways that we used to work with them as well. So there's a lot of ways that people can access food here in Arlington. Mallory, I'll just add that, you know, I have to say that what you just said, Elise, is really the reason why it's so easy to want to support and to be able to support these types of programs. Not only because of the unique way that you're supporting individuals and families in the community, both of your organizations, but also the expansive support network that exists in the community, which really looks at sort of the holistic issues for the individual and the household in general. And I think that that really is the way that Arlington approaches this particular issue is looking at it much more broadly. And I want to lift up that the Department of Health and Human Services for the town really plays an active role in helping us to connect those dots and to really bring in the right people and bring and pull together the right organizations and minds to really help to address these issues and help people in need. Thank you all. So you've all alluded in a little bit of different ways to various networks and relationships and collaborations that have been a part of your work and Elise especially mentioned a lot of different organizations in town. Can you share a little bit more about how you've engaged in either local or regional efforts to address food insecurity or to reach some of those root causes a little bit more. And Elise, since I mentioned you, if you'd like to begin for us, you can go ahead. Sure, I can start. So, I think one of the reasons that the pandemic really feel like a whiplash to here in Massachusetts is because there's been such fantastic work in Massachusetts around combating food insecurity and getting at these root causes are sets for really trending in the right organizations and more and more people were accessing the assistance they needed and snap was expanding and things like that. So we, we participate in a number of different ways we work with a variety of policy councils and food security task force forces in the various towns we work in including the food safety net that I'm going to eat organizes here in Arlington. I also collaborate very closely with other food rescue and food security organizations. I'm talking to greater Boston food bank, every week with something or another I meet with the Boston area cleaners and London spoonfuls once a month. So this collaborative nature of working with these various other organizations helps us clean all of our efforts in the same direction. So, the greater Boston food banks and a really great job throughout Eastern Massachusetts of helping us all align they really work hard to understand what's going on in various communities and empower the communities with to seek the right solutions. I think it's great data and help us come together. So, I think the various efforts around kind of localized solutions really has to other things. Thank you. Andy or Jenny is there anything you'd like to add to that work that's available in town is the Arlington Human Services Network. So, we participate in that and that looks at, again the bigger issues of housing and health care access to kind of things and again it's the collaboration that makes the impact in terms of the work that we're doing and be able to cross sectors in a lot of ways because access to food is health. I mean, we need food to be healthy and we need to be housed in order to get access to food. So I think it's working even across sectors to make sure that we're addressing those needs together. The only thing I'll add is that these answers are so thorough but the only thing that I will add on to is that, you know, I think Massachusetts is really a leader when it comes to this particular issue and really, you know, looking at like the underlying systems and the issues that are driving what's going on with food insecurity. So the state maybe about five years ago or more than that now created a food plan to really tackle issues around access to food, affordability of food, and, you know, all issues related to community access to food. So not just at the regional level or the state level, but looking at agriculture, looking at food access and food deserts which is sort of access to the healthy foods that we were talking about before. And looking at the participation of multiple sectors as part of solving the problem from the business community to schools to the social service support networks that we were just talking about. So I think Massachusetts is really well positioned to address a lot of these issues, which is good for Arlington, of course. And, you know, I think that there's also a lot of political advocacy around these topics at the state level, which is also very important. I'm including, you know, in terms of emergency food assistance programming to advocating for relief for people through the COVID relief funding that we all will soon receive. And then also through, you know, making sure that people can have fast access to things so that they don't have to go to multiple institutions for support, but making one clear pathway for people to access these opportunities. So I think just knowing that we're in a state that really is thoughtful about this issue and planful about it is is also good for Arlington. Great. Thank you all. It's very encouraging to hear about all the different networks and collaborative efforts that are happening to address not only singular issues, but those that collectively feed off each other. I'd like to pause from questions for just a moment to let our audience know if you're joining us on the Zoom webinar and you have a question. We will have a little bit of time, so feel free to add it to the question and answer box, and we will get through as many of those as we can as well. But we can move back to our other questions. So we are in Community Development Week, so if you were missed, if I didn't ask a little bit more about your community development block grant funded projects, both operational and capital projects. But Jenny, I thought maybe you could start us off here. You've given us a little bit of a background on how other organizations have used CDBG to create impact, but is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience that they might not know about the program? Sure. Well, I think that, you know, what is important to know about the program is what I mentioned in the beginning about it being a very flexible resource. But being clear that it's also to serve people who are low or moderate income, who earn an income that is below typically 80% of the area meeting income. And I think that almost wholly across the program, we serve individuals who earn a much lower income. And so I think that through that flexibility of the program and then also the assistance directly to lower income households, we're able to actually support such a broad range of activities, and I outlined a lot of them. And I think that the support that we provide actually is really a leverage to so many other opportunities, both for those organizations, but also of course it supports some town organizations as well, so nonprofits as well as town. And for that, you know, being able to support programs for the parks programs and recreation access to those opportunities in the form of scholarships. And then, you know, sort of coupling that with opportunities for additional tutoring and school supports to, of course, food assistance, you know, it's really being able to look at everything holistically, I think it's very important. And I would be remiss to not mention that we do all of this by making these decisions with the support of the town manager, Adam chapter lane and select board, as well as a subcommittee of the select board called the CBBG subcommittee, who helps us to at various points in our ongoing years to evaluate programs and proposals and to help us to make decisions about funding and applications. And those are residents from the community who are just providing perspectives and understanding about the social systems and networks to help us to understand the best systems programs and activities to support. So I think I think that that's those are the things that I wanted to additionally mention. I also do this without you Mallory so it's a credit to your work in running the program and administering all of these funds, particularly over this past year. Thank you. Elise, Andy, feel free to chime in. We are very excited to be able to use CBBG money as a big part of our capital campaign. So as we alluded to earlier, we are getting ready to have our own space, which is the first time in 30 years to be able to do our work. And so we're building out 2,700 square feet at 117 Broadway. We'll be on the first floor of Housing Corporation of Arlington affordable housing building. And we were, we're just so grateful for that those funds. They really helped spearhead our campaign to be able to get the funding necessary to build up this space. So we're going to be having increased hours. So we've again always shared space with other folks and then other other buildings and which has been great but it limits what we can do. And so we'll be able to actually have access to a building, whatever we need it so we'll be able to expand hours. Because we know that that no people may have issues with a changing job schedule or childcare and can't come at a specific time that we're open. You know, part of the pandemic where only open three hours a week in terms of distribution time so we're going to be able to be at least 12 if not more hours a week depending on what the need is there. We're increasing our cold storage and and so we can get more food out and again we've talked about how food access to food is important for our nutrition and our health. And so of course cold access means that you can have things like fresh produce and meats and dairy products. So we're excited for that. And I think the other opportunity this new building in the new space provides us is again back to that concept of partnerships. So in some ways we've learned that we are one of the largest social service providers in Arlington, you know, we're serving 285 families a week. And, and prior to the pandemic when people would come to us they would be around for a while, we're trying to mitigate lines in the future but people were coming and standing in line and so we had a captive we have captive audiences so you know in the past we've even worked with the Council on the aging to increase snap applications because we know that when someone gets snap. I don't remember the staff but it's something like seven times, seven times better to get your snap dollars and it is to get food at a food pantry. And it also sparks the local economy because you're shopping in your own stores. So we really want to encourage people to get signed up for snap. So we're actually space in our building where we'll have the Council on aging soon to come and it's not snap applications for folks will have access to WIC services at our new building. We're also looking at immigration mental health services. In some ways it's going to be a little hub for other organizations and resources for people to access when they're coming to the market to shop so you can go get your food but you can also be with a financial counselor or talk to an immigration specialist. So we're super excited about how this new building is going to get not only provide food and access to food to people but it's going to be able to be a hallmark to help get people connected to other resources. Fantastic. Thank you so much Andy. I see someone asked in the question and answer. Well in Starlington needs is in its new home will there be other services offered there so we got our answer there will be many other services so that's that's excellent. Thank you. Yeah, I mean I think the theme of the evening to some extent is how how we've all leveraged CDBG funding for our buildings, which is really a fantastic use of them and a really, you know, it's a community development piece that is beyond just like the services we get to offer because we're offering other community spaces. So the CDBG funding was our initial down payment on our building and has subsequent grants have funded us in a variety of ways from site work to design work. One of my favorite features of the new building is that we have a lift that makes our building accessible. So we are able to welcome in volunteers who have various kinds of abilities we've also moved around quite a bit the last few years and not always had spaces that I can invite all the folks who want to volunteer in our space. So this has allowed us to already even during COVID times expand the folks who can volunteer with us. So we're able to work with programs like lab to welcome in students so that they not only get out of the classroom and get some really great experience giving back to the community but there's a lot of job development skills that they can learn at sorting food cleaning repacking food interacting with our other volunteers so it's a really community building space. In future times we look forward to inviting the community into our building for educational events as well around food waste reduction and environmental issues as well as wisdom awareness around food security. And we are building also has a couple rental spaces, which we're still looking to rent out for businesses. So we've, we really look forward to maybe attracting new businesses to Arlington as a result of it or finding homes for businesses that maybe are growing out of their home office or looking forward to getting out of their home office after this past year. So our building really expands out in a number of ways. Community Development Block Grant funding has also helped with our work in the housing facilities. So we're able to supplement some of the amazing food assistance work of Arlington needs by doing direct distributions to our Arlington Housing Authority building. So we work right now in monotony manner sectoris and chestnut manner with a variety of different kinds of distributions. And so we're able to serve many different families and individuals through that as well. It's always so invigorating to hear about the work that's happening and to know that CBG can support these programs. So it's personally been an exciting time to have joined the department within the last year and to get to work with grant recipients like Arlington needs and food link. We're doing tremendous work. I'd like to remind the audience on the zoom webinar if you have a question feel free to put it in the question and answer box and we will get to some of those. Elise brought up a good point though about welcoming volunteers back. So Andy and Elise if if there's someone tuning in today and they want to get involved today or they are interested in availing of your services how can they get in touch with you or what is possible now or going into the future. So we we have a very small staff we have four staff members and we have hundreds of volunteers that make all of our programming work whether it's bagging packing bags individual grocery bags right now for people to delivering to hopefully in the summer doing our summer lunch program. We have a program at Drake Village where we distribute groceries to seniors living there. So it's pretty easy to get involved to go to our website Arlington needs org and you know sign up get in touch with us that we'd be glad to welcome you in. Really on our end. The website is foodlink ma.org and it's foodlink ma.org slash volunteer, we fill out a form our fantastic volunteer program associate rose will be in touch with you and match you up. There's lots of opportunities get involved at foodlink right now. So we do a lot of our food sorting for our grocery store rescues outdoors. So it's a great time of year to start because this is the perfect weather for it it's not too hot not too cold. And it's a great way to get to know folks. We also are increasingly needing people to do deliveries to some of our further away recipients that can be a really fun quick thing to do that just takes me been an hour, hour and a half of your time to go stop by grab food and deliver it to one of our recipient agencies. And we will be looking for more volunteers to do various tasks in our new building now that it's starting to open we've been doing a lot of food repacking. We start to get more food from wholesalers and sometimes you know you get a 20 pound bag of this week it's chocolate chips. It's kind of a fun one this week. We're doing smaller bags of chocolate chips to send to places not our healthiest, but it smells really great in there this week. So there's a variety of different ways please reach out we're always looking for assistance. And if you're looking for food assistance I will direct you back to our friends at Arlington eats sometimes there's a little bit of confusion of who they should pop folks should call looking for direct food assistance. So let me remind you to call Arlington eats if you're looking for that. We're happy to welcome in folks who volunteering or if you are looking work at a nonprofit that is interested in receiving food. We can talk about that. Great. So hopefully, some folks who joined us today will will be able to reach out to you they've know how with the information that you provided. So I see we have a question, and it is how many of the 4300 people who live with hunger in Arlington our children to either of you have estimates on that or provide other demographic information. It's been a while since I've looked at the state demographic so I'm not going to try to quote it. But I can tell you that 30% of the folks that we serve in our market are kids. Of course we serve kids in the schools whether it's through our summer lunch program or a vacation program. We also have our snack program, where we're giving out snacks and all the schools. So, and we know that oftentimes it's kids who are more often affected by food insecurity so families are are often the ones that suffer the most be and don't always have the access to the food they need. So I would imagine that that number 4300, you know, is a good number of children too. The only thing I'd add is the the Massachusetts number for children in food insecurity right now is one in five, which is just too many. I mean one child hungry. It's too many. But that we've seen they estimate that the number might even be higher because of the way it is calculated. Thank you both for that. It's an unsettling but important reminder that these issues really are intertwined and that food insecurity is just one piece of the puzzle. But we've so appreciated having the two of you here to speak directly by your organizations and Jenny to speak to the overall context of Community Development Week and how our department works with organizations around town to address some of these issues. So I'd like to thank Andy, Elise and Jenny for joining us today. Thank our attendees for joining as well. This has been our Community Development Week panel on food insecurity equity and federal grants at the local level. If you'd like to learn more, you can visit the websites of FoodLink or Arlington Eats, or you can visit the town's website at ArlingtonMA.gov slash CDBG, as well as the town's social media pages where you'll find other CDBG recipients and activities highlighted all throughout the week. And if you know someone who wasn't able to attend this evening, this recording will be available on the town's Facebook page and on the ACMI public channel next week. I'd also like to let the public know that we are currently in the public comment period putting together our annual action plan for the next year of CDBG funding. Next week on April 14th, we'll be hosting a public hearing. It will also be held by Zoom. You can find out more information about that at ArlingtonMA.gov slash CDBG. Again, I'd like to thank our panelists and thank our audience for joining us today and wish you a happy Community Development Week. Thank you.