 All right, good morning everybody or good afternoon depending on when and where you are watching this Welcome to this webinar We will be talking about The community food advocates program that we have been running and a lot of the research that has been going into that this past year My name is David Hutobar. I am the project coordinator here at livewell, Colorado And I am just introducing and just talking over a few housekeeping items to start off with So just to begin This webinar will be recorded. So we will email the link once it is Edited and we have the link for it and we'll send that out to everybody who signed up for this and Then one other thing is if you have any questions at any time, please feel free to use the chat function at the bottom so Go ahead and type in your questions any comments that you might have during any time of the Presentation and at the end we're gonna have time for question answers and I'll be moderating that so that we can answer some of those questions so Let's go ahead and get started. Let me pull up the Presentation right now and we will be starting with Wendy. Go ahead and introduce yourself Great. Good morning. And as David said, good afternoon This is Wendy Peters, Muscetti, and I am the food systems director here at live well, Colorado next slide, please And as David said, we just wanted to welcome you to this webinar On the learnings that we are in the middle of hearing about from our first season of the community food advocate program to support our Double-up Food Bucks Colorado program. There were over 60 people Registered for this webinar. So thank you and welcome to all of you from wherever you're calling in from People from all over the state of Colorado and from other states in the nation as well So thank you for joining us. I will also give one caveat to the webinar as as webinars will do and zoom sessions There often are technical difficulties And we have people calling in from across the state and rural parts of the state So do bear with us if there's ever a glitch or a lap so but welcome. Thank you for being here next slide, please So very quickly since there are some new folks on the line with us here today who may not be familiar with live Well, we are the statewide organization that manages both a double-up food box and community food advocate program across Colorado We have a mission to increase access to healthy eating and active living By removing barriers that inevitably and disproportionately affect low-income communities and people of color across the state But the two that mission we have a specific food systems goal to build a sustainable equitable and health-promoting food environment And to help us advance that goal is sort of what brought us to being involved with double-up food Bucks Colorado In the first place So next slide, please Great, so then a little bit about what you're going to hear today. You already met David Cuda Barrett and I am Wendy and Just to let you know a little bit about Who else you will be hearing from today as well? We have a series of speakers lined up for you for you. So Eva Corongato is on the line She is a part of our double-up food Bucks evaluation team. She's an undergraduate here at the University of Colorado Boulder Environmental studies where she focuses on the issues of food systems and sustainable urban development and environmental ethics and She is working on this evaluation as part of her honor thesis here at CU You will be hearing primarily from Eva today about her process and her findings of doing a series of in-depth interviews with the community food advocates from that works with us in 2017 After Eva we will be joined by a few community food advocates. So part of one of the Glitches I may have mentioned to you and warned you about and possibly a technical glitch We have lined up three community food advocates to hear from Only one is on the line right now. So and that is Tashara. So hopefully By the time Eva is done We will be joined by mid-curve who's the community who was a community food advocate in the southwest part of the state supporting the Cortez area in 2017 and from Wendell and Omania who was a community food advocate supporting the Durenger region in Southwest Colorado in 2017 and then finally from Tashara, Loiselle Who is currently a community food advocate in Garfield County supporting the rifle area and again? Apologies if we are not joined by midge in Wendell in today But we will get a lot of information from Eva and Tashara next slide, please So before I pass the buck or pass the mic over to Eva I just wanted to do a little bit of a background on the double up food bucks program Is that is the program's way the center of all this and what community food advocates are working around? So double up food bucks Colorado assuming a lot of you are familiar with the double up food bucks program Really coined and launched out of Fairfield Network in Michigan And we came in under the banner of Fairfield Network's double up food bucks model in 2016 when we at live all received a three-year Grant from the USDA called the food insecurity nutrition incentive grant to fund this what's called a SNAP incentive program SNAP being supplemental nutrition assistance program formerly called food stamps. So the way a double up food buck works in Colorado is akin to The other double up food buck model where for every dollar spent in SNAP benefits at one of our partner sites You get a dollar match up to $20 per visit, but that extra dollar the incentive can only be spent on fresh Colorado grown fruits and vegetables We grew a lot from 2016 to 2017 Last season we operated about a hundred different locations in 28 counties across the state Including an increasingly high number of winter and year-round markets next slide, please So this is just to demonstrate as well as we sort of grown in sites We've also been diversifying the types of sites where double up food bucks is offered And the types of sites where community food advocates will be supporting participation So this slide just shows that it's still about half of our sites really our farmers markets But increasingly diversified into like a farm stand model a Small corner store model and now actually for large grocery tailors around Metro Denver next slide, please It leads us to community food advocates and its role in the double up food bucks And it really is a support project to support double up food buck. There are two high-level goals We think many other benefits, but two high-level goals to community food advocates program to increase participation in the double up food bucks program and Also to increase skills and capacity for the advocates themselves. So professional development skills Advocates are primarily double up participants snap recipients themselves and all of them are very trusted community members and leaders locally Advocates lead local face-to-face outreach to other snap recipients and key community partners in order to increase participation in double up food bucks Advocates are reimbursed. They're paid a monthly stipend and reimbursed for all of their mileage done for the job And then we work together live well staff and advocates on a variety of trainings and opportunities and professional development opportunities next slide, please So the community food advocate program We piloted it last summer really in just two areas in Denver in the south-west corner of the state and Then this past fall. We received the USDA community food project grant To to expand it to grow it across the state and also to sustain it for two more years. So the program currently Is operating in Denver the Southwest part of the state Boulder County Garfield County Montrose County and the San Luis Valley Hopefully those mean things to people who are calling in from Colorado Our role here at live well is we we created sort of we're like logistically holding the reins here on this program You know, we we created the recruitment materials and sort of led recruitment the descriptions of scopes of work the invoicing and paperwork and all that really fun stuff We built a training manual for advocates and sort of organize sort of all the onboarding for advocates I should say as well I'm not spending a whole lot of time Talking about how we built this program, but if anyone anywhere is interested in seeing any of these materials Please let me know our email will show our emails at the end of the the talk here I am happy to share the grant rewrote Training manual rewrote recruitment materials anything that might be of interest to anyone else considering an advocate type program Advocates are supported by a regional partner. So when we reached out to certain regions Which we did very strategically and softly about where we really wanted to support double up food bucks We also reached out to a local partner local nonprofit or in some instances County Public Health Someone that we had been working with for a while around double up food bucks And they're there locally when we cannot be to be a strategy partner brainstorming partner Just a support for those advocates working locally statewide advocates and live well staff and regional partners We gather once a month for a monthly call to really just share and strategize and update each other About whatever it has been up to and then advocates submit monthly invoices along with monthly activity laws to us that live Well detailing sort of where they were and how many people they reached and what would affect it and things like that. So next slide, please So just one last note before I pass it over to Eva is Although we have two different grants This is really we see the community food advocate program as part of the double up program So we're really trying to integrate the way we do evaluation of the advocate program with our evaluation of double up food Bucks, Colorado. So in our original double up evaluation framework, we had a couple of questions That I'm showing here about what environmental social and institutional features best support redemption of double up and then what are factors and conditions that can affect the implementation of a highly effective healthy food incentive program and We felt like the use of community food advocates and what we're learning from them can help us answer these questions It was about what are these other conditions and activities that really can support a highly effective incentive program So that's where the community food advocate evaluation piece falls in and what Eve is going to share with you is one specific tool We've used although there have been many other inputs is this sort of what we call sort of exit interviews Are these in-depth phone interviews that Eva conducted with all of the 2017 advocates? is You know what? What we heard from those interviews and now hurt you know Eva's chance to really summarize those and share all the learnings on the process and Feedback even for us as we manage these programs But also you know what we've learned about what is really sort of a high effect highly effective for advocates to be doing to support the program So with that I will pass it over to Eva to dive right in. Thank you Eva Thanks Wendy Hi everyone as Wendy mentioned My name is Eva Coron Grotto, and I'm an undergraduate student in the environmental studies department at the University of Colorado Boulder And today I'm going to share some of the findings from the evaluation of the community food advocate program for the 2017 pilot season Before we begin I'd like to thank Dr. Jill Litt at the University of Colorado for her guidance through this process and the rest of The evaluation team for their contributions and support next slide, please So just an overview of what I'll be talking about today First I'll explain the goals of the evaluation and the data collection methods that were used and then I will be sharing the findings from the interviews with the advocates and Finally, I'll just discuss some of the implications of those findings and some overall recommendations based On the findings and the implications next slide, please So before setting off with the evaluation we outlined goals For the evaluation and some aspects of the community food advocate program that we wanted to understand First we sought to understand the outreach strategies used by advocates to reach potential participants in double up Second we wanted to understand how advocates were communicating with each other and whether they desired more or less collaboration in their outreach efforts We also wanted to identify any barriers to participation and double up as Perceived by the advocates so these would be barriers that advocates observe not barriers that participants experience since we were just speaking with advocates in these interviews and Finally through the evaluation process We wanted to be able to provide some recommendations to live well and potentially to others for how to improve This advocate program or similar advocate programs in the next market season Next slide, please So we to begin this process we identified several questions to use as a guide for the evaluation All revolving around the one of the central short-term goals of the advocate program Which is to increase participation and double up food bucks We first wanted to understand what role advocates play in increasing participation and double up Along with how they are increasing participation Both what has been effective and what they have found to maybe be less effective and In addition we wanted to identify any ways that the advocate Program could be more effective in increasing participation Next slide please And the evaluation was conducted through qualitative interviews with all of the advocates So this included six community food advocates and two regional coordinators Half of the advocates and one coordinator Conducted their outreach efforts in the Denver metro area and the other half of Advocates on the other regional coordinator did outreach in what Southwestern, Colorado as Wendy was mentioning earlier Which for those of you who are outside of the state the Southwest of Colorado is a bit more of a rural region And that's going to play into some of the findings that we have These interviews were conducted in December 7 2017 and January 2018 at the conclusion of the 2017 market season and Before we move on I would like to acknowledge that while we did interview all of the advocates in the entire advocate population That population is quite small. There were our only eight advocates So the power of these findings are somewhat limited beyond the scope of live well's specific advocate program and so to emphasize this in the results. I've included the number of advocates who mentioned things just to Kind of remind us all that we are working with a very small sample size and data set here But I still think that these findings are hopefully valuable Next slide, please So the first set of findings I'm going to discuss their findings on Program implementation, which was mostly revolving around the outreach strategies that advocates were using To increase participation and double up food bucks These included partnering with other institutions and community organizations Attending fargo mers markets and other locations where double up is accepted as well as attending Conducting outreach at supermarkets and another common Common strategy was posting flyers and around the community where where they might be seen by community members And some of the main takeaways from the discussion of these strategies Was the importance of face-to-face and personalized interaction with potential participants Advocate mentions that this builds a rapport with potential double up food bucks members and allows advocates to dispel myths about farmers markets address any concerns people might have with using the program or understanding how the program works and Allows them to highlight the benefits of double up Next slide, please So six advocates specifically mentioned Working with other institutions to promote double up food bucks All six reported having positive interactions with these other Institutions while one of the six had kind of a mixed experience where some institutions were responsive and one institution in that region Was kind of unresponsive and just had a little bit too much going on to incorporate double up into into their practices I provided a list of all of the organizations and institutions that out that advocates reached out to and all the ones listed here aided in promoting double up food bucks and were eager and positively engaged with at least one advocate so there are many partners here and I I Highlight some that were that came up a lot were wick and cookie matters were commonly partnered with with our advocates Next slide please Advocates also identified certain challenges in implementing double up food bucks These included difficulties to explain what some advocates called a complex program in a way that was understandable to potential participants in addition some advocates face challenges engaging with different communities and how to communicate with these communities and Finally one advocate described low-income communities as being somewhat of a moving target as to financially insecure Individuals and families are often vulnerable to displacement and Consequently this advocate lot saw lots of change in the population of double up food bucks bucks eligible people Throughout the season making it more difficult to do outreach and form relationships in the community Next slide please In addition three advocates made comments that map on to the concept of Essentially the level of receptivity community to a new input such as a new program like double up and This kind of mapped on to three areas of the community readiness the knowledge of the efforts Which would be the knowledge of food double up food bucks in the community the resources and leadership available in the community and the community climate The community's readiness was somewhat low and that most potential double up participants were not aware of the program when Advocates conducted outreach. However, this just points to the need for more messaging and more advocacy in the community The readiness was higher in terms of resources and leadership in that most institutions and community organizations were excited about the program and were eager to promote it and Finally community readiness was somewhat low and that many advocates revealed that some potential double up participants viewed farmers markets as unwelcoming expensive and elitist and This offered an opportunity with these kind of personalized and face-to-face interactions that advocates were having to dispel some of these Myths and answer questions people might have particularly for those who had never attended a farmers market All together these findings suggest that there is moderate readiness for double up food bucks and that increased outreach Through advocate programs could raise the level of readiness in the community Next slide please Similarly Five advocates mentioned specific barriers that they felt prevented or hindered people from participating in double up food bucks These included language barriers and experience cooking their own food which was a concern for buying fresh food at the farmers markets and Some intimidation of navigating a new shopping experience for the first time In particular several advocates emphasize that the timing of markets may be inconvenient Particularly for low-income individuals They noted that markets held on Saturday mornings as many are Is not an ideal time for those who work long hours or multiple jobs during the week as this timing intersects with Time they might be spending resting or spending time with family The location of the farmers markets May be an additional barrier particularly for those in the Southwest this came up with many of us advocates in the Southwest as People as that community is more rural people then have to drive into town on On Saturday morning to do their grocery shopping as opposed to having the convenience of shopping at a farmers market Excuse me at a supermarket or some other location after work when they may already be in town In addition advocates noted that there are cultural differences in food preferences and shopping norms and Traditional cultural foods may not be available or may not be available as consistently at farmers markets And it's kind of uncertainty in the availability of food and the kinds of foods that are available can discourage some individuals from shopping at these markets and Finally two advocates mentioned that particularly among Hispanic communities There is considerable distrust in federal programs and programs related to government programs In the current political climate Advocates mentioned that some potential participants were hesitant to reveal that they are snap recipients as they are wary of Identifying themselves in unnecessary ways and worry about sharing too much personal information And with this respect to addressing these barriers Outreach strategies like personalized one-on-one communication can help in breaking down in breaking down these barriers and The advocates interfacing with communities in this way allows them to address these merit of these barriers and come up with strategies to help Participants feel more comfortable or have more access to double up as a program Next slide, please Five advocates mentioned Strategies that they used to communicate amongst themselves which included mostly phone calls emails and texts Many advocates enjoyed sharing success stories and ideas with fellow advocates These advocate these advocates who spoke about communication amongst themselves Mention the importance of keeping track of contacts made in the community and communications with other organizations and institutions Both so that they can know which organizations or which areas of the community need to be reached out to and haven't been Haven't been addressed and also so that they can ensure that they don't contact the same organization twice Furthermore, it was useful to have a plan for meetings and call-ins as the advocates really valued this efficient use of their time Some advocates also identified challenges communicating with other advocates Which included slow response times and a regular communication throughout the season And to remedy these challenges a communication plan or Expectations surrounding the frequency of communication could address these challenges Next slide please Five advocates mentioned specific successes or reflected positively on their experience as an advocate Some of these successes included increasing participation generally Recruiting from social media breaking down barriers to participation as discussed in the barriers section and Receiving positive feedback from doublet food books participants that they enjoyed the program that they were sharing it with Friends that they have and that they really valued the benefit and that they felt that it was impacting their families positively In addition nearly all advocates seven of the eight showed perceived success or meaning making when reflecting on their experience as an advocate Meaning making refers to an effect where individuals make sense of their experience in this context advocate Experiences integrated into their life stories their passions and contributed purpose to their lives This effect I think is exemplified by a quote from one of the advocates below Saying this is really my passion. This is my heart. It builds me as a community member And this was kind of the sentiment I received from a lot of these advocates that they really felt engaged and purposeful in their work as advocates and This effect and this experience of meaning making is important in that advocates who feel purposeful in their work Will be more likely to be successful and fulfilled through it slide please and Finally for the findings that I'll be discussing today I have a list of recommendations and feedback for live well and these recommendations and feedback are are coming directly from advocates Some of the recommendations include more opportunities for advocates to meet face-to-face and to collaborate on outreach strategies Some advocates mentioned the importance of establishing institutional relationships early in the season So generally before markets begin if it's a less kind of summer seasonal market As this allows this connection to be built before Before the market is going and possibly when the these institutions have less on their plate In addition it was recommended by some advocates to map the areas where outreach is being conducted to have a Geographic understanding of the extent and distribution of outreach efforts and to identify areas that may be missed and maybe more opportunities to reach eligible double-up participants In terms of feedback for live well Some advocates mentioned that the time they spent building relationships in the community should be valued and that they felt that these These efforts were not captured by the forms that they were filling out to record their outreach efforts and their time As they are as these forms were geared towards more formal types of advocacy and outreach work In addition Some advocates requested the opportunity to give live well feedback other than in the form of their comments that they need to meet during these interviews to maybe have a more More formal or more regular opportunity to give feedback As well some advocates commented that live well staff felt distant at times and that they would enjoy Regular individual check-ins in the future both for troubleshooting an organization and to be able to ask questions and get prompt responses And finally some advocates felt the extent of work that they conducted and the Expectations of the program did not align with the amount of compensation. They received and that was not all advocates who felt these ways but these These items were mentioned several times Next slide, please now movement is Disagreement Of these findings We saw earlier that a common implementation strategy was to involve other organizations and institutions And I think this is an important point to focus on This is important for outreach as well as building community readiness, but perhaps the most valuable effect of these institutional partners and strengthening bonds and capacity between institutions is that institutions can serve as nodes and social networks as Individuals advocates like all of the rest of us are immersed in our own social network web as the as illustrated by these colors in the graphics Most individuals in a network tend to know the same kinds of people or send to tend to associate with the same groups Which makes connecting with nodes very important as nodes offer The opportunity to bridge between these smaller communities and groups so in engaging with institutions and We can access these nodes and bridge the gap between between communities and in this way Institutions are really valuable in outreach efforts and can act as a multiplier in reaching potential participants Next slide, please And another implication I wanted to discuss is the Efficacy of the community food advocate program to encourage behavior change So throughout this analysis of these interviews one component that really stuck out to me Was the need to integrate the model of the community food advocate program with models of behavior change Looking at the image on the left with the concentric circles double up food bucks acts at the organizational level as a as a excuse me Organizational level so it's affecting the environment and gives Gives individuals the opportunity and resources to change their health behaviors However, there's still a behavior here that needs to be changed even when the environment is conducive to the behavior change So sometimes providing opportunity or incentive like double up is not always enough Especially in this case when we are asking Participants to change their shopping habits, which for some may be a significant behavior change And this is where the community food advocate program can effectively intervene on the interpersonal and community levels to encourage behavior change looking at the example of Be of a behavior change model on the right in the rightmost image It seems that advocates can play a role in the preparation action and maintenance phases of behavior change Thus, I think it's reasonable to consider the community food advocate model in this light Say for example is one point of contact such as discussing double up With a snap recipient at a supermarket enough to encourage behavior change For some people it may be and simply having the information may prompt them to make behavior change and for others They need may need more encouragement It may then be reasonable to explore how advocates can engage with potential participants Several times and in different ways throughout these various stages of behavior change I don't have a complete answer here But I think it's worth considering the ways that advocates can engage in the action and maintenance stages of behavior change Which I think will be effective in encouraging and maintaining participation in double up next slide please and Finally, I have some more general recommendations based on the findings of this evaluation Well, it's challenging to generalize beyond the context of this program particularly as I mentioned that these These results in these findings are from interviews with only eight advocates These would be my recommendations for others thinking of implementing similar programs. I would suggest focusing on outreach on developing networks between Institutions and establishing these relationships early in the process as suggested by advocates Create systems for cataloging advocate activity and communication Consider how advocate activities can interact with behavior change models in developing the strategies and outreach activities that advocates conduct and Develop paper and digital promotional materials that are specific to the community this came out particularly in the the contextual differences between the The Denver metro area and the Southwest and maybe a need for different kinds of Distributional materials based on the communities and the social networks that exist in those communities and Finally leveraging institutional resources to plan events and outreach aimed at reducing barriers to participation Thank you for your attention today. This is all I have in terms of my formal presentation and I will be Available for questions at the end if you have any But for now, I'll be turning the floor over to oh, yes, this is our contact information Um Wendy is definitely the best person to go to for general double up food bucks questions And I'm happy to answer any questions about the evaluation And this is also as Wendy mentioned. I'm an undergraduate. This is my first time doing anything like this And if you are inclined to offer feedback on this presentation, that would be very welcome So thank you and I'll turn this over to our advocates I don't know if we have midge on the line or not or maybe it's Tushara Thank you Yes, I think Tushara will be speaking next Hi, this is Tushara Lois Al. I'm located in rifle Colorado in Garfield County Not a large town, but we are here. I Have a six-year-old almost a six-year-old child who is on the autism spectrum And he is the reason that I believe in this program The healthier our children eat no matter what Their background is or what their needs are the better for them and Something that we can just doesn't cut it when your child has autism so when I was given this opportunity through my certified diabetes Specialists because I'm a diabetic on an insulin pump When she for this to me she was like this sounds like it's up your alley, you know look into this I did I contacted Wendy and after Qualifications or whatever Wendy, you know sent me an email and said yes Let's you know are if you're so interested. Let's do this and I jumped on board Some positive things about this endeavor that I'm on with everyone is I get to put my story out there and I'll tell you it's hard Not everyone wants to hear that your child is high-functioning autism or all of the other challenges that my son has Especially when you're in a small town that is very Pro-self is what I'll say So being in things like having interviews on the phone being in Publications that are on the internet and things like that most people in this town If I post it they they may or may not look at it and they may or may not respond So I can't give feedback from any of those Honest to be honest with you. I Have noticed that the phone stuff speaking to people on the phone like the school board or the principal or Our local food banks like lift up and reach out Colorado And the Adventist Church places like that That is the first way to start and then you set up an appointment and you go in and you're honest And you say hello and you're friendly and I'm from down south I've only been in Colorado three years. So I do use the word y'all and I do use the words leading and beer and Some people like that and some people that you have to know What people are going to like and that is where the whole psychology part of this Being a community food as a kid is Especially when you're coming from a town like Tampa, Florida and moving to a town like Brickell, Colorado So know who your audience is and be able to put yourself out there. It's hard To be honest and give a little piece of yourself to everyone that you meet But it makes it a personal experience and that's what people want There's not enough personal experience of these days and we all hide behind our mask So that's one thing that community food advocates. I believe need to do is to say hey This is my situation. This is what I'm doing. This is why I believe in us One of the cons that I found in my little town is things like door hangers and flyers if they're Unsolicited let's say that you put them on a car or something like that 99% of the time are not going to be effective here because You don't know if they're gonna blow off people just kind of take them and toss them on the ground or whatever So it's definitely speaking to businesses and to individuals and to recipients Directly face-to-face and social media. Oh my goodness social media is one of the biggest things That influences anything in the town that I live in and the little towns around it too Everyone that very very well the more positive you speak about something The more people are going to jump on it But if you speak negative like they say you tell say one bad thing It's gonna go to 10 people one good thing It's gonna go to three and that's the experience that I've had here As far as the language barrier, that's definitely something that I am learning it to I Don't speak Spanish. I only speak English. I even though I had a cute student background and That is a huge barrier. So I do rely on my friend to speak Spanish To help me out with the Spanish community If we had something that would help with that that would be great I'm looking into learning Spanish so I can communicate more freely in my community and that's something that We'd be a suggestion and as far as communications with other community food advocates That would be a lovely. I wouldn't mind if someone texted me or phone called me or Anything like that to be able to balance ideas off of each other It's a more personal experience to meet in person, but That's not always Doable and I understand that I hope that we become budget-friendly and be able to meet more than you know once a year or something like that and Let me see. I think I've touched on everything actually Thank you so much to Sharra for sharing your experience with the community food advocates program No worries. Thank you. Yeah, it's awesome to have you So if anybody has any questions right now, you can feel free to jump on to the chat box and And we'll take some questions That we can go ahead and answer Okay, so we have one question from the audience right now and it is What type of materials did organizations and partners say they needed most and this is for anybody I can offer Go ahead if you like This wasn't addressed specifically in many of the advocate interviews from last season other than they just wanted to know What How the program worked and how to refer people so kind of like a Actionable way to Be involved in the program. I don't know much beyond that perhaps Perhaps to Sharra what could Has insight from any anyone she's talked to I don't know about that. Maybe you do maybe don't I actually have spoken to places like lift up and reach out to Colorado who distribute who distribute food bags and food out to the community and The rock is what we call reach out to Colorado give something to our schools Parents sign up for this. It's a really very basic simple form your name address How many children you have it's no really financial information And we can't and I say we because every Thursday I do this we hand out bags of food To children in the school they come down and it's called the garden club in our school So it's not embarrassing for the students And we hand them a bag of food And I think that the opportunity to put flyers in those bags for my community is coming up It's a lot of volunteering on my end If you want something down you do it especially if you want it done To your specifications and there's a lot of Need but not volunteers. There's not a lot of people that are going out in the community and giving as they receive so What I've been speaking to them about is the Double-sided that we literally just got them um double-sided Paper that has in English and Spanish What the double-up food box program is and what it does and basically the school number In to find that participating venue in your area That's been a really big thing that people have been like. Oh That's nice, you know, I can take that and I can put it up I can put it on my on the wall because a lot of people Organizations here mind springs things like that Has places where you can put stuff up But it has to be in English and Spanish because they cater to both and things like the big posters that we just received That are only in English or that I start I received at the beginning that are only in English There and I hate to use the term wishy-washy Because they do what the Spanish although because even though some of our participants Do know English they may not speak English in front of other people Because of stereotypes and things like that. Some of them do not speak at all But you don't know what language they speak and I've run into that Multiple times where I live And this is wendy if you're um Thank you to sir. I just wanted to add in a few other things that maybe we have heard As requested from advocates around the state as well um swag is definitely a big one just having things to constantly give give give and so um It's not something we did a good job budgeting for very early on but we have double up food box Um Bags we know we have grocery bags the double up food box logo and just even having something like that That people can simply hand out has been helpful Having like t-shirts and pins double up food box t-shirts that advocates can wear We actually ran out of t-shirts. We're going to try to order some more has been helpful We also have received many requests and have been Slowly but fulfilling them. Do you have very regionalized flyers? And like into t-shirts point that the flyers and door hangers and things like that Um are somewhat limited um And how you use them but having something that's really clear really simple steps and very regionalized in nature about where to go for more information Has been very helpful. So we actually have completely redesigned Um, all of our outreach materials this year from 2017. We made them much simpler um As always all of our materials our website every flyer every door hanger every poster everything is always available in english and spanish Um and additional languages upon request Um this year, they're just simpler and then we're customizing some regional flyers for some partners, which will help some of these issues And then david, I don't know back to you to see if there are other questions we can address. Yes. I've been able to join Yes. Um, so next question Uh, what was the work time expectation for the advocates time per week and overall hours for the season? Sure. I can answer that question. This is wendy. Um, So we have been probably pretty lucy goosey about this. We we wanted to avoid Very formalized set Our requirement so the way we said it is um The advocates have monthly stipend was through is 300 a month plus mileage With the expectation that that equates to about maybe 15 hours or so of double up food bucks Focus work a month However, we don't require actual hour documentation on the invoice when they submit the invoices and the activity logs There is a place we ask, you know, for how many hours you spend doing each activity But we are not tracking it. We do not we do not base the stipend on that We also realize that things have been slow months to months So we had an advocate had a very very slow january But then had a very very busy february and she still just received a flat 300 a month Um because that worked for her we also have said that you know, we asked for about a six month commitment knowing that things happen and life changes Um, but we have a very simple scope of work that we assign with each other to get us, you know into six months blocks, which really gives us time to build relationships Some advocates obviously have and will stay with us longer than that even Um, we also have tried to be flexible with that stipend in that if it works better for someone to do like two really really busy months Maybe it's you know, $600 a month for two months Um instead of spread out over a longer period of time Um, so we do we have never went into this yet if we were to to see you know activity law come back with like a couple hours a month A couple months in a row we would have a conversation about that but that of course has not happened The note i'll say about this stipend as well. We are um Constantly trying to do one-on-one work. Most of the advocates we work with now. I think all but two are snap recipients Um and just being really careful about how that affects sort of their monthly sort of the gross revenue And how um, you know at some point to any dollars may make people in eligible and sort of that balance of We want to be fair, of course And we want to pay everyone a lot more than we do right now But also working with individuals about what's going to work with their budget Thanks, david um, so I we got a couple questions talking about the farmer markets themselves Um, so i'm going to try and summarize these questions um, so based off of the community food advocates experience um and what they were hearing from snap recipients Could you talk a little about about what makes a welcoming or an exceptional double up location or a farmers market? um, and what are some of your recommendations or suggestions based on these findings to um to uh for For uh locations to be more welcoming and exceptional uh double up locations Tashara, maybe you can take that one first our farmers market recently Literally this past year relocated from one place to another um The first time that I went to the farmers market here in rifle. It was on a I Grab like an asphalt gravel ground um when the sun hit when the sun hit, you know, it gets Pretty hot in colorado. Um, it was just like being with heat and and it was hard to go you Practically waited till it was, you know dark to go. I mean it was it was awful. So they relocated it to A small park that we have on our main one of our main roads, which is called rail ride It literally goes Through the town Um all the way So that was so much better and although it's the parking's a little bit more complicated We do have the middle school and high school across the street So we can practice and walk across the street. The police force has come out and you know They're helping us go across the street and things like that. So that's very helpful. There's a quark crosswalk It's about accessibility um Necessarily have to park right there, you know in front of one of the stands but being able or to get to The farmers get instead of having To walk a very long distance Or to go Over the street. I mean we have a one lane So Something that's accessible Is a good idea and something that's comfortable that's not hot that the farmers that did the since the farmers market the vendors can set up easily and be able to section your farmers market off to where They're not piled on top of each other um Where you can move easily between each and every vendor because although it's not only Farmers there. There's other vendors there to them make up. I don't know about any other farmers markets, but our farmers market has La Rue or that's like the tights or Hydroponics and all of these other things. So There's out of farmers market is really good. We don't have that down south. We have farmers markets Terry There's vegetables. There's all of that kind of thing. So we don't have Other business at our farmers market. So it's a very nice. It's a very nice a neat model here Where you have other Things like mary k or something in a farmers market in our town awesome um So let me Finish this up with one more question. Um How do you think farmer market managers can use these findings from the komifu advocates to better use promote operate double up at their locations um, I can This is eva possibly some Some answers here or suggestions. Um, we got some information from advocates both in terms of Feedback from participants that they you know want the process to be streamlined. They want to understand how to how to navigate the farmers market, but um, also doing that in a way that doesn't draw so much attention to They're using the program. I think sometimes there's a little bit of self-consciousness around You know identifying yourself as a as a snap recipient or a double up food box user Even if they're enthusiastic about the program um, so I think having Market managers as well as vendors who are who are welcoming and who understand the process is really helpful and making new New farmers market goers new double up food box users comfortable in the markets as well as um, Sometimes there's some there was a suggestion of having some graphics in the markets You know, what kind of things you can buy with double up what's seasonal? um, and when just so that that's more easily understandable um and Kind of facilitating The use of the market without maybe necessarily having this huge bright double up food box kiosk that everyone's meant to go to go to so it's I guess kind of a A balance there is I guess what I heard most Great. Thank you. Thank you Eva. Thank you to sarah. Thank you David. This is wendy again. Thank you all for joining us Thank you mid wherever you are for trying to join from cortes, colorado um, and to all of you who called in today and those of you that Didn't you will all be hearing from us if you registered for this webinar. We will send out Uh, the recording link to this webinar. Um, share it far and wide if you want to we will also attach the power point Uh that that Eva developed Um, please share that as well as you know as we even I even I shared our email addresses They're also in the power point. Please feel free to Follow up with either one of us with questions and we're happy to connect you Um to others um to other community food advocates as well If you have a question for advocates themselves So thank you all for your time and have a wonderful afternoon. Bye. Bye Thank you everyone. Bye. Bye