By Jackie Shelley | Executive Director, Paz de Cristo Community Center
Most of the time when people think about food assistance for those that are food insecure, they think about the national Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — SNAP — program, what many of us used to know as food stamps.
However, as impactful as this program is, there are more than half a million people in Maricopa County who are food insecure, and more than a quarter of a million who don’t qualify for SNAP because they make a little too much money to qualify for SNAP and other nutrition assistance programs and struggle to provide healthy, nutritious meals to their family.
At Paz de Cristo Community Center in Mesa, we’ve started the SNAP Gap Food and Empowerment program. We focus on serving the more than 108,000 people in our geographic district (data from Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap report) that fall into this gap — they are above the income threshold to qualify for SNAP and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), a USDA program that provides food boxes to struggling families, yet they struggle to get enough food on the table for their families.
Clients are encouraged to apply for SNAP through the Department of Economic Security. While they await a decision, they are eligible for TEFAP food boxes. When they receive their decline letter, they meet with a Paz de Cristo staff member who can enroll them in our SNAP Gap food box program, and discuss their barriers to earning enough money to cover basic necessities such as food, rent, utilities and medical care.
They have access to trusted resources, both internally and through partner agencies, and we work with the client to begin removing those barriers.
This program was designed to assist people such as Kenny, who is a single father raising a small child. He is a regular guest in our dining room at our nightly meal service, and was using his SNAP benefits to provide meals for himself and his daughter throughout the day.
However, Kenny got a promotion at work that pushed his income to $25 a month above the eligible threshold. He was provided a SNAP Gap food box while he looked for a less expensive apartment and attended classes and training so he could secure a better-paying job.
The SNAP Gap program is just one of many Paz de Cristo Community Center offers to help those who are experiencing homelessness and food insecurity. For more information on how you can get involved, visit www.pazdecristo.org.
Editor’s note: Jackie Shelley is executive director of Paz de Cristo Community Center in Mesa. She is a long-time advocate in the fight against food insecurity and has worked with several agencies in the East Valley that work to improve the lives of the food insecure. Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at AzOpinions@iniusa.org.
