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Ms. Izzy Thompson, the Chapter Advisor Leader, discusses food insecurities with her group in Alliance Nebraska. They mention community partners such as the Backpack Program, Principal's Fund, APS Survey, Western Community Health Resources, and the Community Table. They explain that Alliance Nebraska has a population of 8,037 with a median household income of $56,866. The Community Table provides meals for those in need and the Bulldog Backpack Program provides food for students and their families over the weekend. The Principal's Fund collects money from teachers wearing jeans and seniors painting their parking spots to provide meals for students and families in need. Western Community Health Resources also helps with food assistance. Welcome. I am Ms. Izzy Thompson, the Chapter Advisor Leader in Alliance Nebraska. Today we will be speaking about food insecurities with my group, Espen Lonick, Jet Harian, Joe Steele, and Hayden Taylor. In today's episode, we're diving into the topic that affects millions worldwide, food insecurities. I'm Jet Harian. As the Chapter, our mission is to bring awareness to the amount of food insecurity we have in our school and community. Through research, we can make an impact on our community and school with the people who experience food insecurities. First off, we are going to start talking about our community partners. The Backpack Program with Mr. Lonick. The Principal's Fund with Mr. Stein. The APS Survey that we sent out. Western Community Health Resources and the Community Table. Hello, I'm Espen Lonick. We are from Alliance Nebraska. It is found in the western panhandle of the state. The population of Alliance in the 2020 Census was 8,037. The median household income in Alliance Nebraska is $56,866. Next up, we're going to talk about the Community Table. The Community Table has a motto where they believe that no one should ever go hungry. That's why a group of our local community leaders came together to tackle this issue once and for all. At the Community Table, all are welcome and no one leaves hungry. The Community Table is open for lunch Monday through Thursday, 1130 to 1230. A SAC lunch goes home on Friday to cover Friday's meal. Saturday, it is open for lunch in a different location at The Haven. This is a great resource for our community. During COVID, they made SAC lunches and delivered them to people, so everybody was assured that they would have a meal for the day. I'm here with Mr. Nate Lonick on behalf of the Bulldog Backpack Program. First question we got is, what is the Backpack Program? So the Bulldog Backpack Program is a way to get some students and their families some needed food over the weekend. Our kids come to school and maybe don't have the food or the resources after they leave on Fridays, so the community has put together some backpack type of items, snacks, a couple meals for over the weekend that the kids can either do with themselves or utilize as a family. And so essentially what it is is a SAC, a plastic one that you get from the grocery store, and they put some stuff in there, and then the kids just throw them in their backpack and they head off for the weekend. So I believe that's where it got its name. It kind of originated before I got into my position as counselor here, but the reference of Bulldog is we are the Alliance Bulldogs, and then the backpack is where the kids throw it in before they head off for the weekend. All right. What is your role in the program? So my role as the high school counselor is to find the students that have a need for the program itself over the weekend. We're looking at students that have the free and reduced or maybe just it's a kid who has become homeless without a lot of people knowing really what the situation is going on behind the scenes, a kid that's come in and maybe missed lunch or something like that. There's lots of different reasons, but my role is to find those kids that could utilize some extra food over the weekend, and then I go ahead and give them the sheet. They apply for it. Their parents sign off on it, and then we turn that over to the community, people that make the backpacks themselves. So how often is this backpack given? The backpacks go out once a week. We've partnered with the local grocery stores where students will get once a month some sheets where they go in and redeem, like, a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, a carton of eggs, and stuff like that. And then the program itself gives kickback to the grocery store for allowing them to come in and get some of those essential items that they don't necessarily get on a regular basis. But, yes, the backpacks go out on usually Thursday or Friday is the last day of the week. And we have roughly 25 to 30 high school students that get backpacks on a regular basis. A lot of times when new kids come into the school, we encourage them to sign up for it, and then they kind of just get it at a rolling basis in terms of entering into the program. But we do give it out once a week. And then even for summer school, we try to hold back a few of those and give the kids the opportunity to take them home in the summer as well. How can students help with this program? We've had students do numerous different things to help with the program. A lot of our outside groups, your FCCLAs, FBLAs, National Honor Society students, they volunteer, they fill the program backpack sacks on usually a Monday or Tuesday night. So they volunteer to help with that. We've had students actually go pick up the bags from the other community sources and then bring them to the high school so we can hand them out to the kids. We've had groups go above and beyond, do like a donation to the Goodwill or the food pantry, and then create their own bags. So we've been able to give multiple sacks to students, especially if it's a long weekend. We've also had some students reach out in terms of what they can do for like the bigger holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and we're able to give extra food for those families when we have a longer break, such as a three- or four-day weekend. As a counselor, how do you view food insecurity in our school? Food insecurity in our school may be like an underlying factor that not a lot of people would think about. But I think in our attendance and even some of our test results kind of show that we do have a need for food in the community for our students. Some kids show up to school to get a breakfast and a lunch, and that's really the reason they're here. I think, too, like kids won't necessarily say that, hey, we don't have a lot of money at home or we can't provide food, but they will show up on Fridays asking for their bag. And that just is an indicator that they do rely on some of that stuff over the weekend, whereas sometimes we forget about, hey, the kid left on a Friday. We'll see him back on Monday. That might be the only food that they have over the weekend, depending on the financial stability of their household. And that shows up in the classroom, and then some teachers maybe don't realize that, yeah, on Monday morning they didn't have much food to eat over the weekend. And so ideally you would hope that that isn't true, but in our community we do have a need for the Bulldog Backpack Program. It's a nice program to utilize and get those kids that need the food and stuff like that over the weekend a chance to have a couple of meals. Thank you. Now we'll interview Mr. Christine. What is the Principal's Fund? The Principal's Fund, first off, shouldn't be named the Principal's Fund. It was for accounting purposes. They had a fund that the Principal used at his discretion before I got here for whatever they used it for. I'm not sure. I wasn't here. And I believe they ran the pot machines and ran it through what was called the Principal Fund. So when I got here, we gave the pot machine money back to the Student Council to try to keep that amongst our students and not us. And then we basically just deposit the money that we make into what we call the Principal Fund just because that's what it was always called. The Principal Fund is a way for us to collect money and make money on a couple different projects that we can use to help feed students within our school. And that is the primary use of it is we try to turn in all that. We try to turn all that money into basically meals for students that families may need a little help from time to time or especially at Christmas. We try to provide Christmas meals basically to our students that families may not have the means to provide a big fancy Christmas dinner. And it's just kind of one of our ways of giving back. So where does this money for the Principal's Fund come from? We take and our teachers are not allowed to wear jeans unless they contribute to the Principal Fund. And the take on professional dress is not jeans. And so every Friday, if they choose to wear jeans, it basically costs them $5 to do so. So $20 a month, a lot of people pay the whole year up front and then they know that every Friday they can wear jeans. It's also nice because they don't have to wear jeans if they don't want to. If they don't want to spend the $5, that's fine. And so we take a large portion of the Principal Fund comes from our teachers on Fridays paying the $5 for jeans. And another thing that we just started was our seniors are able to paint their parking spots. They can reserve a parking spot for them. They paint it. Nobody else can park there because they paid $50 in order to reserve a parking spot. And with that $50, we also put that into the Principal Fund. I believe this year between the jean monies that the teachers gave and the money that we raised from students paying for their parking spot, I believe we raised $2,500 is what we gave out at Christmastime to families. And we generally do that in $50 gift certificates, which we'll buy a family of four a good Christmas dinner. And then we try to find one family that maybe needs a little more help due to whatever circumstance it may be, and we give out one for about $250 and sometimes two for $250. Grocery cart takes care of us as far as giving us the gift cards. And then we have the teachers who have the student in their dog pound. They are the ones that distribute them because it's really the teachers and the students that is where that money comes from. So it is a great way for us to give back as a school and try to help some of those people that might need a little extra help. Okay, thank you. The next community partner that we have is Western Community Health Resources. The data of the food bank, which we observed that November is the heaviest impacted month, where they serve 245 individuals, which is 122 USDA households. We went to Western Community Health Resources in December, and it was very impactful for these boys. They had never seen anything like this, and it was really an eye-opener. We packed food bags and helped hand them out. And Espen Monick is here, and he's going to also tell you what he felt about Western Community Health Resources. It's a pretty cool program they have there with helping families getting food, especially before the holidays. You could tell when we first showed up that it was going to be busy. They opened, I think, it was earlier in the morning. We showed up 15 minutes early. It seemed like there were a lot of people ready to get their food and accessories that they needed because they supplied different meats. They also gave out dog food, everything like that. It was really eye-opening to see how many people in an alliance that need the help before the holidays. According to the USDA, the prevalence of food insecurity in Nebraska has increased over the past five years from 10.8% of households in 2017 to 12.1% of households in 2022. However, today in our state, an estimated 13.5% of children experience food insecurity in their homes. In conclusion, this podcast has shed light on the issue of food insecurity. Though the personal story shared by individuals affected by food insecurities, we have gained deeper understanding of the challenges faced by our community and school. We would like to give a big thank you to our community partners for helping us out.
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