Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger

There are many accomplishments we are proud of, but we are most proud of our ability to serve over 500,000 people throughout the Philadelphia area. In our work to increase access to snap benefits, we've cultivated 7 partnerships with community organizations serving spanish speaking immigrant communities. One of these groups also joined our vip program. Our work within this historically marginalized community has focused on eliminating the fear of deportation for mixed status families that can keep them from applying for snap benefits, often for their children, due to the public charge rule. In support of these efforts we also added a spanish voice message for our snap hotline, created a spanish email newsletter, and added a spanish language tab to our website. In our work to strengthen food networks through our vip program, we created quarterly in-person pantry tours to provide an opportunity for vip members to network and learn from each other. As a testament to the power of these networking programs, at one of our first pantry tours, vip members left with fresh produce from the host site to help fill the increased need for food that many programs are seeing in their service areas. With our partners across the state we interviewed 16 snap participants in Pennsylvania and co-hosted a virtual hearing at which these participants had the chance to testify in front of their legislative offices. We also compiled the stories, challenges, and successes from the interviews into a booklet, which was hand delivered to the Pennsylvania delegation during legislative visits. All participants in the project were compensated for their time and expertise. This project gives legislators a chance to connect the policies that we advocate for with their constituents and understand the real impact of the farm bill on the people that they serve. While delivering the booklets, we had a chance to meet with the offices of all representatives in our area of service (fitzpatrick, evans, scanlon, houlahan, dean and boyle). Our statewide delegation also met with the offices of senators casey and fetterman. During these meetings, in addition to highlighting the voices of snap participants through the snap matters booklet, we talked with our legislators about low- or no- cost opportunities to improve snap in the upcoming farm bill, recognizing that the bill will not have additional money to support transformative expansions. We will continue working with our legislative offices for as long as it takes to pass this legislation. With our switch to a new database and monthly reporting criteria, we were able to identify a more accurate number of people served. The previous year we reported that we had served 125,000 people. While we knew that this was likely a low estimate that didn't fully account for our work, we didn't have reliable data to support reporting serving a higher number of individuals served. This year we can confidently say that we are serving over 500,000 people across the Philadelphia region. And lastly, we are proud of the ways our small, but mighty team is working to align our work across all departments and cultivating an equitable culture both inside and outside of our organization.