How Individuals and Their Stories Create Community-Informed Solutions
We believe that in order to solve food insecurity and hunger, solutions must come directly from the people living closest to the issue. People like Lisa, who is turning her experience navigating the emergency food system in Minnesota into advocacy work that helps others walking in similar shoes.
Lisa shared with us that before late 2022, she was working part time while caring for her family’s two children and her elderly parents. She was an active volunteer at her church. She was deeply involved in her community and at her children’s schools. But when a significant medical event left her husband — the family’s “principal breadwinner” — immediately disabled and unable to work, Lisa found herself stuck in a “Social Security black hole.”
“Overwhelming stress and anxiety became my constant companions,” she told us.
For 14 long months, Lisa waited on government benefits while she simultaneously took care of her family and tried to find a full-time job that would cover their living expenses and provide quality health insurance to cover her husband’s escalating needs. And it only got worse: During this waiting period, Lisa was downsized from her job. Her family’s savings and retirement funds ran out. Their credit card balances skyrocketed. During it all, Lisa struggled to navigate and access the benefits and programs that could provide her family support.
“I only became aware of the VEAP food shelf because a friend told me about it,” she said. “She’d had a life event that caused her to need their services too.”
VEAP, which stands for Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People, is a nonprofit organization in the Twin Cities metro area that offers in-person and drive-through food pantry shopping, among other programs and services. VEAP is a founding food shelf partner of The Food Group and partners to provide food to neighbors in the community. Through VEAP, Lisa learned about Hunger Solutions, which joined forces with The Food Group this past spring. During a food pickup at VEAP, Lisa was asked to participate in our Lived Experience Cohort.
“I didn’t really think I had anything to contribute,” Lisa told us, “But I agreed!”
Once a month for six months, the Lived Experience Cohort (an initiative of The Food Group) brought together individuals who have faced food insecurity or received food assistance such as SNAP and WIC with the goal of empowering them to help organizations like ours shape and advance public policy solutions.
“We met to discuss things that were important to us,” Lisa says. “We discussed ideas for change or improvement we thought would be beneficial, and we questioned why things were policy when they didn’t make sense.”
Through her participation in the Lived Experience Cohort, Lisa had the opportunity to attend Hunger Day on the Hill last March. There, she met with her state representative, told her story, and explained how proposed legislation would improve the lives of people like her.
“It was something I had never done before. I tend to be a more quiet, private person,” Lisa said. With the encouragement of her cohort leaders, she ultimately testified before a state Senate committee, which helped her realize that sharing her story has the power to help others.
Lisa’s family is not alone in facing challenges with unemployment and complex health needs, situations that are only made worse by food insecurity and hunger.
“Waiting on the results from benefits programs when we are in dire need fosters hopelessness,” she says. “More and more people are experiencing food insecurity, but Minnesotans are incredibly lucky to have organizations taking on the challenges to change things for the better.”
We’re grateful to Lisa — and to everyone who participates in our Lived Experience Cohort — for so generously sharing her story with us and shaping future solutions. We are proud to be a part of Lisa’s story. Working together, we will push public policy solutions forward in the coming legislative season.
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