‘Alarming’ rise seen in need for local food assistance

Listen to the Rivertowns Dispatch Podcast on the link above. You can also finde the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or visit anchor.fm/rivertownsdispatch.

Rivertowns Dispatch Podcast host Timothy Reuter recently spoke with Feeding Westchester Chief Operating Officer Tami Wilson and PepsiCo Foundation President C.D. Glin for our joint series on hunger in Westchester.

The series examines the rise in food insecurity and highlights people and organizations coping with that trend. The following excerpts were lightly edited for clarity. For the full interviews, find the Rivertowns Dispatch Podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or visit anchor.fm/rivertownsdispatch.

Timothy Reuter: Let’s start out by talking about the state of food insecurity in Westchester. Can you paint us a picture of how many people are food insecure here, who they are, and how food insecurity is similar or different in Westchester County from other parts of the country?

Tami Wilson: In Westchester County, we have roughly a million residents in about 500 square miles of terrain, and throughout our county we are seeing that one in three households are at risk of being food insecure. What that means, and what we’re seeing, is that we are seeing approximately 240,000 neighbor visits to our food pantries and partner locations throughout our county …

Because hunger looks like anyone and can be anyone. We’re talking about seniors, single parents, and of course, children. Children are in need. We service about 80,000 children within our community. We serve 30,000 seniors within our community a month. This past fiscal year, neighbor visits were about 2.9 million in total. So it is alarming and still has steadily increased, especially with the different policy changes that we’ve seen.

Timothy Reuter: You mentioned a significant decline in support that you’re getting in federal dollars. How are you being impacted by the federal budget cuts to your programs?

Tami Wilson: We just lost about 2.5 million dollars from June 30 to July 1. We lost about a million pounds in the spring from the federal government cutting the CCC [Commodity Credit Corporation] program, which is another program where we just got free produce and shelf-stable items. And so we are not seeing those dollars this year. There’s quite a few things that we had to adjust within our budget …

We moved about a little over 21 million pounds of food last year, right? And ideally, could we move 25 or 40 million pounds? Absolutely. And what we had to do to manage our own resources and budget, we had to scale back. So we may distribute less because we don’t have the resources. 

Timothy Reuter: Let’s talk about the impact of that downstream. You are distributing less food. There are more people who need the food, according to what we talked about earlier on. So, how do you think the families cope? What’s the impact on the ground at the family level of you and pretty much everybody else being able to provide less support?

Tami Wilson: I think on the ground families are having to choose. So now, if you’re looking at, if you think about all the changes, you’re looking at the reduction of SNAP, you’re looking at the reduction of food. And please be clear, Feeding Westchester is gonna scrape and get as much food out as possible as best as we can. But if you’re looking at medical costs and expenses, medicine, people are sitting and making choices.

Right before the school year started, I had a father of three stop me in the store because he had seen me on something before with Feeding Westchester, and I actually had on my Feeding Westchester jacket. And he was just saying, “I can’t buy school supplies right now because I have to buy the food that goes to the lunch,” and you know people are making choices that they should not have to make.

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Next, the Dispatch Podcast spoke with PepsiCo Foundation President C.D. Glin.

Timothy Reuter: I know you’ve had a long-standing relationship with Feeding Westchester. Please tell us about the partnership.

C.D. Glin: Thousands of our employees call this area home. We support this community and it’s personal to us. Our neighbors, our coworkers, our families, they live here. And so we’ve actually partnered with Feeding Westchester for more than 30 years, providing funding, food donations, volunteer engagement and board leadership. And that’s a really proud aspect for us because the leadership commitment deepens our partnership. So PepsiCo’s chief people officer in North America, Jennifer Wells, serves as the vice chair of Feeding Westchester’s board of directors. And she’s done so for more than five years. And that helps strengthen our community ties and amplifies our advocacy for hunger relief. But we’ve done a lot in this county, in our backyard. 

Timothy Reuter: What advice do you have for others who may be interested in getting involved in the social impact sector as a career?

C.D. Glin: It really is starting by doing something. Literally, how do you get involved? By getting involved, by being a part of the change. And I work in a big company where a lot of people do feel like “I’d love to do that, I’d love to do that work.” Now this isn’t about addressing a supply problem. There’s a system that needs to be reconfigured and we have to really think about the different ways that we can impact the system. But it does start from giving of ourselves. 

They say luck is when preparation meets opportunity. I joined the Peace Corps almost 30 years ago. I decided to live a life of service, creating, of giving of myself. I decided to live a life of trying to create opportunities. And I decided to live a life where I was trying to put myself in a position to have as much impact as possible. And that led to the things that led me today to be the president of the PepsiCo Foundation. But it did start with thinking, “What can I do for others?” and giving of myself. And people caught me doing good. The preparation led to other opportunities.

Dispatch Podcast

Listen to Feeding Westchester COO Tami Wilson and PepsiCo Foundation President C.D. Glin