Mountaineer Food Bank of West Virginia is cracking the code on how to serve food-insecure children – one of the most difficult populations for food banks to reach.
Its Extra Mile home delivery program works in deep partnership with area school districts to get boxes of food right onto the doorsteps of hundreds of families in two local counties.
A defining feature of the program is that it is confidential, dampening the stigma associated with in-school pantries or backpack programs more commonly used to address food insecurity among school kids. While those solutions often work at the elementary school level, they tend to be shunned by middle and high schoolers.
The delivery program is so welcome that some families reach out about it thanks to word of mouth, giving Mountaineer visibility into children in need that it wasn’t able to previously identify. “Our ultimate goal was to be able to reach those kids and those families that are the hardest to reach,” said Tabitha Mays, Kids Program Coordinator.
Launching the program, which was seeded by a grant from Save the Children, involved nurturing relationships with area schools and related partners. Various touchpoints included the superintendent, child nutritionist, transportation director, guidance counselors, teachers, and the McKinney-Vento liaison, which is an employee appointed under federal law to ensure youth experiencing homelessness have access to education and support services.
“Utilizing the school system was a very important part of the program,” Mays said. “They see the children every day. They already have that trust built up with the children and their families.”
Fortuitously, one of the school districts had developed a technology platform called ICARE that lets students and families use a QR code to anonymously submit requests for all kinds of help to school support staff. The county is now working to expand the ICARE platform throughout the state. “That was perfect because I needed the school to be able to get these families enrolled and be that main point of contact with the families,” Mays said.
Mountaineer had to get creative in terms of actually executing the deliveries. In one of the counties, it relies on DoorDash. The other county, however, is much less populous with limited cellphone service, which meant that DoorDash drivers could not reliably access their assigned deliveries and route maps.
Brainstorming sessions ultimately led to the idea of using school personnel, mostly school bus drivers plus some maintenance workers, to act as delivery drivers, using their personal vehicles and getting paid by the hour plus mileage reimbursement. The bus drivers, who deliver during their downtime between shifts, already know the routes and the families, and sometimes reach out to remind people of their deliveries. “It’s just an extra element of customer service,” Mays said.
Families receive 18 deliveries throughout the year, generally one a month plus an extra box during the summer and holiday months. Each box, filled with healthy food that’s customized to address allergies and preferences, is intended to serve five members of a household. Given 100% input into the content of the boxes, families consistently request basic necessities like meat, eggs, bread, milk and fruits and vegetables, Mays said.
The program is expensive to run, but not overly so, given its impact. It costs just over $200,000 annually to make 18 deliveries to 250 households, including food, travel, supplies, staffing and time. Mountaineer delivers to just over 400 households in total throughout the two counties, sourcing the bulk of the food from local farmers and companies.
Despite the expense, which continues to be covered by Save the Children as well as other funding sources, the goal is to bring the program to all of the 48 counties that Mountaineer serves. The food bank hopes to show the program’s effectiveness and drive further support through an evaluation effort being conducted by a team at Baylor University that includes Dr. Craig Gundersen, a professor there.
“It’s a program where we’re actually crossing all the barriers that are out there,” Mays said. “We are making huge strides in serving people that have been the hardest to reach and that we’ve never been able to serve before.” – Chris Costanzo
PHOTO, TOP: Tabitha Mays of Mountaineer Food Bank preparing boxes for home delivery.
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