Minutes

Alaska Food Coalition
First Quarterly Meeting
October 10, 2001

Present:

Susannah Morgan - Food Bank of Alaska - Anchorage
Sam Castle-Kirstein - Community Food Bank - Fairbanks
Beth Pond - Nome
Diane Disanto - Office of the Commissioner
Jim Fisher and Pam Olsen - Peninsula Food Bank - Kenai
George Hieronymous - Rasmusson Foundation- Anchorage
Sara Jackson - St. Francis House/CSS - Anchorage
Betty Mercer - Senior Services - Wasilla
Juan San Miguel - Salvation Army (Elder Program) - Anchorage
Annabelle Stevens - United Way - Anchorage
Trevor Jones - Food Bank/Baptist Mission Kodiak
David Steelman Lutheran Social Services - Anchorage
Jim Dahlman - Public Assistance
Marquita Pierre-Nuriddin - Welfare to Work Program
Craig Johnson - God's Place - Anchorage

Susannah Morgan was introduced as the new treasurer of the Food Coalition. She is completing the term of George Hieronymus who resigned due to his new position with the Rasmusson Foundation. Time permitting, George would like to continue to be involved with the Food Coalition until or unless his participation becomes a conflict of interest with his new job.

We reviewed how we did on our goals for FY 2001
Susannah explained to the membership that we accidentally exceeded our budgeted expenses for FY '01 by ordering food from the Food Bank of Alaska without including the cost of the handling fees. The state of Alaska graciously granted us a $17,000 supplement to last year's budget to cover this shortfall. Thank you, Jim Dahlman!

We did succeed in getting our web page up and running, but the membership needs to be encouraged to make better use of it, to ensure that we get our money's worth. Some grant requests came through the site.

Betty Mercer from Wasilla was our most impressive advocate for free school breakfast. She has been advocating relentlessly with the school district and politicians in her community and has finally seen some result. There is now a proposition on the borough agenda to build a new, fully equipped kitchen at the school. It should be completed in about four years.

Kathleen Wayne reported that she has not seen a significant increase in the number of schools accessing the free breakfast program. There has been only a slight increase in number of children served. The state is looking at getting a waiver from USDA to allow non-profits to provide the breakfasts off of the school site. They are trying to determine which communities need to be targeted. They should know more after December 15 and will inform the Food Coalition, so that we can try to find sponsors. These would include schools themselves, non-profit organizations willing to vend on the school site, or a non-profit organization willing to take on the challenge off site.

Jim Fisher commented that his community has two functioning free breakfast programs. One is at the alternative high school and is prepared on site. This is funded by FEMA. The other is at Nikiski elementary school.

Susannah asked what the barriers to the program were and those stated were altering the school schedule and the labor costs of providing adult supervision.

Sam asked Kathleen to please update us at our next meeting, and asked the membership to keep working on this issue.

Betty gave an exciting update on a Mall Project in her community that houses a Food Bank and a shelter and two work training programs (cooking and automotive) all under one roof.

We talked about what we can do to enhance our membership and Susannah offered to educate and encourage those communities that the Food Bank interacts with to join.

We discussed the importance of our individual programs continuing to build better and stronger relationship with legislators. Jim Fisher reported that there were three local legislators had their most recent fund-raiser and that his Food Bank has lots of cooperation by local legislators.

Sam continues to encourage us to build these connections in any way possible.

We have stated that we want to build our programs with professional training. We did not do that at last year's annual meeting. Do we want to commit $10,000 to training this year? Can we add a day for training to the Juneau meeting?

Two years ago when we brought Michelle up from Frac the cost was not that much and the benefits were great. Trevor, Sam and Sara will work on whom we might be able to bring up for this year's meeting.

Jim Fisher talked about our need to publicize our local hunger and referred us to some of the good work that the Quaker community is doing legislatively on this issue on a national level. Check out their website at fcnl.org

FY 02 Budget

The FY 02 Budget was discussed:

Diane moved to adopt the budget. Juan seconded the motion. Motion passed.

FY 03

Discussion: Would like to see some expansion. Suggestions: part-time employee - hunger summit.

We expect to receive $100,000.

George suggested we use $15,000 for a hunger summit instead of special projects.

Transition the Food Coalition back into DPA and out of the Commissioner's office.

Build capacity with other partners instead of the state.

Hunger campaign. Diane will work with Susannah and George on this.

General Discussion

Nelson Lagoon. Suggestion that this year we set some of our purchased food aside as a safety net for this type of emergency.

Susannah will review the formula for purchased food distribution and see if it is still viable.

Do members have any concerns about grant policies? Hearing none, we will leave it as is.

Susannah wants better data specific to Alaska. How do we pull data together? What about a survey of people who are food insecure? Will try to have and idea by January or the face to face meeting. Jim Dahlman will look into this and Diane Peck will investigate the Behavioral Risk Factor Study to see if the method is applicable.

Jaun will be attending the national "Meals on Wheels" conference. Will report back on January 9. Discussed the limitations on home deliveries due to the limited work hours of Title 5 employees.

Meeting Adjourned.