December 10, 2004

"Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger"

Welcome to Leadership Talks with Robert Dostis and Joanne Heidkamp of the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger, and 2004 Leadership for a Changing World award recipients. Questions and answers will appear below starting at 1 pm EST on Friday, December 10. Dostis and Heidkamp will discuss their model program to end child hunger.

Leadership for a Changing World
Welcome to Leadership Talks with Robert Dostis and Joanne Heidkamp of the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger and 2004 Leadership for a Changing World awardees.

Robert and Joanne, can you give us a brief history of how you got involved in your work?

Robert Dostis
My social justice work began in my capacity as Nutrition Director at Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) in New York City. An organization that serves people infected and affected by HIV. In short order I began to see the struggles individuals and families were experiencing in meeting their most basic need. In response, at GMHC I began a nutrition counseling service, expanded an on site meal program, and established a food pantry for families with children. At my neighborhood church in Brooklyn, St. Augustine, I also started a food shelf. In 1995 I began working at the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger. It became obvious early on that most Vermonters didn’t know about the problem of hunger, and thus the focus of my work was educating the public and policy makers about its very existence. As I uncovered the stories about the type of hunger that existed – i.e. prolonged and episodic shortages of adequate food and nutrition – I began to realize that these stories were not unlike my own experiences of hunger as a child. The more I learned the clearer it became to me that my choice to work in the anti-hunger field was no coincidence.

Joanne: I was raised in a Roman Catholic family that was interested in the Church’s social justice teachings. In the 1960’s, when I was in grade school my family lived in South Africa, and my parents and older siblings were very articulate about the injustice of apartheid, and how we, as whites, were unjustly benefiting from the system. They pointed out how ridiculous it was that it was illegal for us to have a black catholic priest as a guest in our home – and they made a point to invite every black priest they met to dinner. When I was a teen my family lived in the Boston area, and we attended a church called the Paulist Center, which encouraged the community to get involved in issues such as civil rights, red lining, prison reform. The congregation hosted a visit by striking California grape and lettuce workers, who impressed me tremendously with their courage and spirit. After my freshman year in college I spent several years as a full time volunteer for the Farmworkers Union – first in Pittsburgh, promoting the boycott in local churches, and later in the union hiring hall for the workers who picked oranges for Minute Maid. During that time I met a local dietitian at the health department who was very concerned that the children of farmworkers were undernourished – they were often anemic and underweight. I was incensed that the people who put food on America’s tables struggled to provide their own kids with enough food to eat. The dietitian wanted the union’s help in getting the local schools to offer the federal breakfast program so that kids could start the day with good nutrition. I was appalled that the school board was against this – they said they didn’t want to assume the role of the parents. (Meantime, the parents were getting on the bus for the long ride to the groves long before light each morning.) This is when I decided that if I ever went back to college, I would study nutrition and become a dietitian.

Saginaw, MO
How much of your work is service-based (getting kids fed), how much is policy-based (working with the government), and how much is education (teaching kids to be nutritious)?

Robert Dostis
That is a good question. General education about nutrition and other nutrition-related issues probably encompasses about 35 percent of our work. The service component, that’s organizing local communities, I consider that to be service, is probably 50 percent. The rest would be the political arena.

Joanne: However, we’re really crystal clear that 100 percent of our work is focused on getting kids fed. The reason we go to the state house and the local school boards to do advocacy and the reason we educate the public about hunger is so the people in positions of power can take action, make decisions, that result in increased access to the federal nutrition program. So any opportunity that arises, an invitation to speak, partner with someone, before we do it we ask the question how is this going to result in more kids eating?

Chicago
You seem to attack the problem from both the top down and bottom up. Is that the way it has always been and what have been the benefits from using that approach?

Robert Dostis
No, initially we focused solely on organizing in communities to establish school meal programs and then, a little bit later on, working in communities to set up summer meal programs, and that kept us busy for the first 6 years of our existence in addition to the education piece, which was always a large component. As Joanne pointed out, first and foremost, people have to know the problem exists before we can motivate them or encourage them to do something about it. We first went to the statehouse. And I guess the time we got involved in political advocacy was after the federal welfare reform happened in the mid-1990s. Part of welfare reform was reduction in funding in the very nutrition programs that we were trying to expand. That obviously put a major crick in our efforts.

So we went to the legislature in Vermont and asked them to fill in for some of the federal dollars that were lost because of these cuts and were successful. And from that day on, we made it a point to every year go back to the legislature to educate them directly about the issue of hunger, inform them about the programs that exist to address it, to identify where the gaps in service were, and how the VTCECH and the state and other partners could work together to fill in those gaps. And we had tremendous success in getting funding for a lot of the programs that we were advocating for.

Joanne: In short, it wasn’t always that way. We did enter into the advocacy work and that’s become a larger component of our work every year.

New Haven, CT
You talk about working with and respecting the Vermont culture. What have been some lessons from learning how to work with people in Vermont that can be applicable to other places?

Robert Dostis
I would say it’s first and foremost respecting people, where they are in terms of their knowledge of the issue that we are raising and working hard to educate them using a variety of approaches to move them along to better understanding.

Joanne: In practical terms, on a community level, we have to accept that in Vermont, where 80 percent of the towns are under 2,000 people, the people are really focused on a solution that works in their community. We’ve learned that people initially aren’t particularly interested on a county-wide or a statewide level. They’re most interested in passing a local solution, and we work with them on that level. The other part of this is when we identify a community with a problem I’ll go in and start talking to people. And if the superintendent isn’t particularly concerned about this issue, I’ll go to the clergy. If the clergy isn’t interested, I’ll go to the librarians. Inevitably, we do find people who do want to work on a solution. But if somebody isn’t ready to be involved, we don’t criticize them, we don’t turn them into an enemy. We just find other people to work with.

boston, ma
It seems that your issue is not just a state issue, but a federal one as well. How do you confront issues at the federal level that affect the work in your community?

Joanne Heidkamp
We work closely with the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), the national anti-hunger policy organization, on federal child nutrition legislation, in an on-going effort to make these programs easier to use and more accessible. We often have our members and partners call or write to members of our congressional delegation about specific legislation or expressing general concern about hunger, and we stay in touch with staff members of the Vermont delegation. For all of the federal nutrition programs, we let the people at the federal level know what barriers and problems are encountered when these programs are implemented in a rural state.

Broomfield, CO
Robert, how does your work as a legislator impact your community work, and vice versa?

Keep up the great work!

Robert Dostis
As a legislator I am able to keep the issue of hunger and any anti-hunger initiatives on the front burner. I have ready access to other policy makers and the opportunity on a daily basis to talk about my work and the problem of hunger. I can most effectively advocate for changes in policy from within the law making body. If questions arise I am readily available to respond. On the flip side working at VTCECH keeps me well informed of the issues and thus best able to advocate when in the legislature. In short I serve as a direct link between the legislature and VTCECH.

Denver, Co
In some ways the topic of childhood hunger seems like an easy one to tackle although I'm sure it's not always. What has been the most difficult thing or a challenge about working on this issue?

Robert Dostis
The biggest challenge we face is that many people don’t believe hunger is a problem. There’s no question that no one wants to see a hungry child, but if you don’t believe it exists, then you don’t feel compelled to do anything about it. In the U.S., there are 36 million Americans who are hungry or at risk of hunger, and that includes over 13 million American children. Even with those statistics, many people still don’t believe it. And when we educate people about the issue of hunger we first present the statistics that exist, we provide the stories and anecdotes that we hear about firsthand just to drive it more home to the people we’re communicating with. And then we also educate people about the amount of poverty that exists in Vermont and throughout this nation. And when you look at the dollar amounts that people are trying to live with, taking care of their rent and basic necessities, once you look at those numbers you can’t leave without realizing there’s not enough money to meet all those needs and feed the family. The hope is that once we’ve presented those pieces of the equation, the statistics on hunger, the stories and anecdotes that tug at the heart strings and the realization of what people living in poverty or near the poverty line are struggling with, there’s a better appreciation and understanding of hunger in this country. That’s one.

Joanne: The first barrier is people not believing that hunger is a problem serious enough to be worth their attention. The next part, once people do understand that, often their first impulse is to collect canned goods, hold a food drive. So our next challenge is helping people understand that even though the emergency and charitable food network is important, it really isn’t a solution to hunger. It represents a fraction of the needed food assistance in this country.

So then we educate people about the federal nutrition safety net. And there the barrier is implementing federal programs designed for urban areas in a rural state where we don’t get the economy of scale that a school lunch program might get in Detroit or Boston. And the other barrier then is helping people overcome their myths and misconceptions of the federal nutrition programs. So a superintendent of schools certainly hates to think that a child is going hungry and he could be opposed to offering breakfast in his or her schools saying that it would take time away from learning or that it’s taking on a role that the family should take.

In another situation where we promote access of eligible Vermonters to the Food Stamp program we run into people who think that recipients use this assistance to buy junk food or luxury food, so they’re not sure they want to support such a program. Numerous studies have shown dollar for dollar Food Stamp recipients make excellent nutrition decisions, certainly no worse than middle-class Americans. So in sum, you’re right, no one is in favor of children being hungry, but there are a lot of challenges implementing solutions that provide kids with a dependable food supply.

Robert: Everybody wants to see a well-fed child, but on a national level, programs have been cut significantly. So we have a problem, but it’s not being addressed in Washington. Part of our charge is to work with our congressional delegations and other states to keep the pressure on Washington to make sure that they provide the funding that is needed for these programs. In fact, at this point, they need to increase the funding because it’s been so underfunded for quite some time. That’s why hunger statistics continue to go up and this year are higher than last year.

Lincoln
What are your strengths and skills that led to the success of your organization and your mission?

Robert Dostis
One of the exercises that we did as an organization in the past year was a branding exercise. And what came out of that were key attributes about our organization, which also reflects Joanne and my personalities. And the key attributes are that we are both very passionate about the issue, we are very practical in how we advance, and we’re ready to move, meaning when opportunities present themselves we go after them. We are both very driven by results. And from an organizational perspective that’s why we’ve been very successful because we can show results for the work we have done.

In the broader scheme of things, I tend to look at the bigger picture and deal with issues about where we as an organization want to go. It’s Joanne then who takes care of many of the details in moving the organization in that direction. So that’s one of the ways in which we complement each other.

We also keep good lines of communication between us. We respect each other’s talents and we use each other in a way that advances our work individually and that of the organization.

Joanne: Because I do a lot of work town by town at the local level, it seems that issues are emerging. I bring them to Robert, who as executive director and a member of the legislature can bring these to the attention of the people at the policy level. My work at the local level can open doors. If I’m working with three or four Episcopal congregations, that presents an opportunity for me and Robert to meet with Episcopal bishops to see if we can replicate that across the diocese.

Robert: We do that with other religious entities as well. It’s the connection that Joanne makes on the front lines and the connection that I make in the policy realm and using those connections to advance our issue across the spectrum.

St. Cloud, MN
Where does most of your funding come from, and how does that affect they ways you work?

Robert Dostis
We have a healthy diversity in our funding sources. We’re a membership organization, so a large piece of our funding comes from individuals. We have foundation support. We get some state dollars and, when we’re lucky, competitive grants from the federal government. We hold one annual fund-raising event and that’s called the Hike for Hunger. And our funding is broken down into unrestricted and restricted funding. Restricted is targeted to a specific program and we must answer to that funder, showing results in that particular program. And the unrestricted we use where we need it. But in all cases, we feel a great sense of responsibility and obligation to our donors to show we are using their money effectively, efficiently, and in all cases are able to show very tangible results of our work. And because of that I think we have been able to grow our organization. In the 10 years that I’ve been here now, we went from a staff of 3 to now a staff of 11. And to me, that only comes about by being responsible with people’s money and showing results.

Des Moines, IA
What do you find are the challenges of working in a rural area, and what are the advantages?

Joanne Heidkamp
The biggest challenge is that the federal nutrition programs were designed for urban areas with concentrations of poverty – the program funding is only adequate when you have economy of scale from preparing hundreds or thousands of meals. We’re trying to implement these programs in a rural state, where the typical school has fewer than 300 kids. So, the problems we face have to do with small scale, isolated communities that are too small to have much in the way of infrastructure for after school care or summer programming, and there isn’t much community infrastructure such as civic organizations or businesses that can provide support.

The advantages to working in a rural area is the sense of connectedness that people have to a member of their community -- I think it might be harder for a kid to totally fall through the cracks. It is also moving to see how people will go the extra mile for a child – although that may also happen in urban areas, sometimes the sheer volume of need can be overwhelming in a city, and in a rural community problems may seem more manageable.

Washington, DC
How has Vermont's demographic makeup changed since you started at VTCECH and how has that affected your work?

Joanne Heidkamp
From the ’90 Census to the 2000 Census, we actually haven’t shown significant demographic changes. One trend is an increase in the number of immigrants and refugees coming to Vermont, so we’re very conscious of focusing on those populations, making sure materials are translated, working closely with the organizations that serve that population.

The other newly arising issue is, in terms of per capita, Vermont appears to be second in the nation after Hawaii in the number of our Guard men and women called up to serve in Iraq. And when a family member is deployed it can cause a dramatic change in the income. And especially in Vermont where people are more likely to work for a small company or be self-employed, the employer’s less likely to be able to make up the difference between the regular salary and the Guard salary. So we’ve launched an initiative to work with those families to make sure they know about free school meals, the Food Stamp program, and other assistance programs that they may never have thought that they would need.

St. Louis, MO
How do you work with other groups to help tackle some of the underlying roots of hunger?

Robert Dostis
We recognize that hunger can be prevented by implementing long-term solutions such as affordable housing, health care, and a livable minimum wage, and we collaborate with the organizations that address these issues. In the meantime, the campaign’s work focuses on creating a strong nutrition safety net now because we believe a child can’t wait and, in fact, shouldn’t have to.

Part of the advantage of us being involved with other organizations who are working on some of the broader social issues has to do with what you pointed out earlier, no one wanting to see a hungry child. When we can educate people about the existence of hunger and motivate them to do something about it the next step is for them to start asking why does hunger exist? Our hope then is it allows them to look at the bigger issue of poverty and the policies that we put forth in this nation that allows poverty to exist and, in fact, to worsen.

Omaha, NE
Is it easier to get people involved when their own children are at risk for "food insecurity" or when they are stable and want to give back?

Joanne Heidkamp
In general, our work focuses on approaching those people in a position of being able to make a decision, people with power -- school principals, superintendents, city leaders, legislators -- to ask them to take the responsibility to implement the nutrition programs. And we do that because it is the fastest, most effective way to get a program set up to feed as many kids as possible, as quickly as possible. It can be a challenge to work with families who are in the stressful position of not having a dependable food supply. It usually means there are other issues they’re facing: affordable housing, earning enough money. And there is a lot of shame and stigma around the issue of not being able to provide your kids with nutritious food. So we as an organization always want to be very careful and respectful of putting someone in a public position of sharing that information. It’s easier for people to talk about the situation of being hungry when their lives have stabilized. And some of our strongest, most passionate partners and advocates are people who look like the essence of the middle-class, but can talk about their experience as a single parent when they had trouble putting food on the table.

New York, New York
How are you tracking your impact, and how important is that your effort?

Robert Dostis
It’s about looking at our results. Are we feeding more children now than we did a year ago and than we did a year prior to that? And are we expanding the programs where children can obtain food in the environment they are accustomed to being in and obtain that food as well in a socially acceptable way? In the 11 years the campaign has been in existence, for example, the number of schools with school breakfast programs went from 30 percent to, this year, over 90 percent. When we began our work 11 years ago, Vermont ranked among the 10 worst states in the nation for participation in the breakfast program by low-income children. Today we rank in the top 10 states. When we began our work, a few hundred children had access to summer meals. This past summer, over 5,000 children had access not only to summer meals, but a program that provided recreational and educational activities in addition to the meals. We do not want children to lose ground in the summertime because of their economic status. We want to make sure that when they return to school they are ready to learn and they are on the same footing as any other child.

We track by numbers and we have similar successes with all the other programs that we work on. And those are the numbers that we show to our funders, to our policymakers, to our partners, and to ourselves that we are, in fact, making a difference in this state. And we acknowledge that the reason that we’re able to make a difference is that we have all those players working in partnership.

Leadership for a Changing World
We're about out of time. This will be the last question today.

How do you both sustain yourselves and your staff while working on difficult social issues?

Joanne Heidkamp
We take our work seriously, but we try to have some fun. We laugh a lot at our staff meetings. We share the stories of the people and situations that we encounter in our work that show we are making a difference, and that our work matters. We get comments and letters and emails of appreciation from kids, teachers, school nurses, and people who attend out trainings – and we make sure that staff and board get to see these.

I encourage staff to avoid burnout by keeping the work week reasonable.

Robert: I am sustained by our results. Our efforts mean more people know about the issue of hunger – measured by new donors to our organization. Our efforts mean that more children and families are obtaining food in a dignified manner – measured by the number of meals served at schools, Summer Food Service Programs, and child care settings, as well as the number of people receiving Food Stamps, and who have graduated from our Cooking for Life Program. I am sustained know that increasingly less children and adults are going hunger.

Leadership for a Changing World
Thank you again for joining us for today's Leadership Talk with Robert Dostis and Joanne Heidkamp. For more information about the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger:

Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger
180 Flynn Avenue
Burlington, VT 05401
Phone: 802-865-0255
Email: rdostis@vtnohunger.org; jheidkamp@vtnohunger.org
Web: www.vtnohunger.org

Joanne Heidkamp

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