To sign up for FAN to receive our advocacy alerts and calls-to-action, or for questions or more information on our advocacy efforts, email advocacy@midohiofoodbank.org
Did you know that:
Mid-Ohio Food Collective provides enough food for more than 189,000 meals-per-day?
It takes 1,000 volunteers every week to support our mission of ending hunger. Sign up today:http://vhub.at/MOFC
Sharing Our Story with Congressman Carey
Thank you to Congressman Mike Carey (Columbus-15th District) and his staff for spending time with us recently and learning about our assets and outreach. We toured the food bank and onsite pantry and visited our urban farm. We appreciate their interest in how we are innovatively meeting community needs and look forward to working with Congressman Carey and his staff to end hunger and poverty.
Feeding America Organizational EDI Assessment
Mid-Ohio Food Collective was selected by Feeding America to participate in a process to understand our organization’s strengths, challenges and opportunities related to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). MOFC and 11 other food banks across the country will take part in the evaluation between now and July. Consultants from the Center for Equity and Inclusion, in partnership with Ten02 Consulting LLC, will distribute surveys to employees and host focus groups and review MOFC’s existing policies.
The consultant team will look to understand where more support is needed to ensure that food banks in Feeding America’s network are welcoming, supportive and productive environments for all employees. The consultant team will also use the process to identify existing programs and tools that can be shared with others across Feeding America’s network.
Once our assessment is complete, the team will develop a brief report to share with MOFC leadership, which we will use to advance our organization’s EDI work. As an organization committed to ending hunger and the underlying causes of poverty, Mid-Ohio Food Collective will continue to build upon this work to co-create equitable communities where everyone thrives.
Social Determinants of Health
The Root Cause Coalition recently released its public insights pulse survey, which shares behavior and social trends from the past year. These monthly reports are a good tool to track a broad spectrum of social behaviors impacting overall determinants of health. Be sure to browse the collection of publicly available surveys and other research findings.
Public Health Emergency and Waivers
The National Emergency Declaration (NED), which is the underpinning order for all Public Health Emergency (PHE) orders from federal agencies enacted through the pandemic, was set to expire March 1 but was extended. Expectations are that the administration will set future expiration dates for the NED and the various PHE orders.
The question remains how long the declarations will be extended. The concern is that if waivers for Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs are suddenly ended, it will cause thousands of Ohioans to lose access to public assistance programs even as the need continues. We have joined other groups in urging a thoughtful, well-planned end to pandemic response policies to ensure an orderly return to normalcy. We have also joined other groups in urging for an extension of child nutrition program waivers through the 2022/23 school year, to ensure kids have access to healthy food through multiple learning and home settings.
Impact of COVID-19 on Nonprofits
TheCenter for Civil Society Studies has tracked job losses in the nonprofit sector throughout the pandemic. The last update showed that more than 450,000 jobs remain lost from the 1.64 million lost between March 2020 and December 2021. Prior to the pandemic, this sector accounted for at least 12.5 million jobs nationally. It is projected that it will take at least another year to recover all the lost jobs, likely longer because of the uneven impact across various fields.
