Hunger and food insecurity.

Those words seem the same, but they mean different things.

Hunger is the feeling someone has when you don't have enough food.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, food insecurity is the consistent lack of food to have a healthy life because of a person's economic situation.

More than 34 million people experience food insecurity in the United States, and that figure includes more than 700,000 persons.

Here in the Hoosier State.

In Indiana, the percentage of children going hungry has long been worse than the national average.

About 15% statewide.

Especially now with a renewed national focus on hunger.

You'll hear many statistics on families and children unable to access quality nutritional food.

In Indiana, the rate of childhood hunger varies from county to county, ranging from one in six children all the way to one in four, all numbers that are far too high.

Looking at it another way, the Indiana Youth Institute's annual Kids Count report asks parents about their ability to feed their children in 2022.

One third of families reported that food costs keep their kids from eating enough.

Contrary to what you might think, most of these children are not homeless or neglected.

They actually live in working families and have parents who are employed.

But still struggle to put nutritious food on the table.

These are the kids next to my kids in classrooms.

This is the person on the soccer team that I sit next to their parents and have no clue that they struggle every week.

There are pockets of hunger throughout the entire state, not just in urban or rural areas.

And I think that that will be one of the biggest fallacies that needs to be addressed, that hunger only exists in certain areas in the state.

Hunger does not look like for every child.

The need for food assistance is being addressed by food pantries, by charities like churches and by government programs like school meals and SNAP, which provides 85% of the food.

But food insecurity and hunger still reach deep into our Hoosier communities, into the lives of families you may know.

It is all around us.

Often hidden.

And often where you least expect to find it.

Families, especially those working hard to create the most normal life they can for their kids, don't want their neighbors to know how they struggle to keep food on the table.

Yet it's a crisis that can impact every aspect of a child's life now and far into the future.

That video is part of a half hour film that shares the stories of three Indiana families dealing with the challenges of food insecurity.

And you can see the working hungry this Sunday afternoon at two on PBS's Fort Wayne.

What makes food insecurity so difficult to solve and what's being done?

We'll explore these questions with our guests on this edition of Prime Time.

And good evening.

I'm Bruce Haines.

With us are Mary Ann Mings.

She is the director and executive director with Inasmuch Ministry and the Circles Program in Fort Wayne.

And next to her, Mary Tyndall Communications and food programs director at the Saint Joseph Community Health Foundation.

Welcome to you both.

Thanks for having, Bruce.

I wonder what you think of when you hear what I saw and was certainly impacted by when it scrolls across my screen.

Indiana is the 11th hungriest state in the country.

One out of every six children in Indiana live in poverty.

One in seven households in Indiana struggle to put food on the table.

This is our collective reality.

And for both of you, your son, on a daily basis, Mary.

Yes.

Yes.

So and as much ministries, we have a large food pantry.

And over the last year, we have just seen the numbers just go through the roof of people coming in to the food pantry and just telling us, never in my life did I expect to come to a food pantry and these are people who are working.

We have been partnering with a local elementary school to deliver food for their families.

And every time we've gone, more than ten working families have said to us, we have zero food in our house.

I feel like we need to become more secure about our sense of understanding about what food insecurity really is.

Absolutely.

And when you think of it in there, in numbers, just in our own community.

So in Allen County, in terms of numbers, that's about 40.

Eight.

Thousand people here just in Allen County that don't have enough food for a good and healthy life.

And then when we break it down further to children, it's 8500 children.

That's a lot of our most precious residents that just really aren't getting not only the food that they need, but the nutrition they need.

And that's where the Saint Joe Foundation, as a health foundation, is extremely concerned because the lack of nutritious food leads to so many chronic illnesses like diabetes and obesity and cardiovascular disease.

And there are long term impacts for all of those chronic diseases.

So the numbers are really a little bit overwhelming.

Yes.

And here are some of those numbers related indeed, to some of those those health concerns.

And and that graphic is really I think it does a really good job of talking about the impact on health.

So the if you have high food security and you really don't have any trouble going to the grocery and getting healthy foods, you have a 37% likelihood of having some sort of chronic disease.

But if you have very low food security, that goes up to 53%.

Yes.

And so it really has a strong impact on health in our community.

So it's a critical problem.

It is.

You know, I see 600,000 deaths.

600,000, 600,000 deaths per year due to poor nutrition.

And then when we realized that a lot of our poor, nutritious eating habits started when we were children, the interventions that you all are working with your colleagues in providing, it's almost like there is no wrong place to start, but a better place for a longer term impact or important would be to start when they're smaller.

Yes, yes.

Yes.

And that's one of the things, as Mary said, with the Saint Joe Foundation is on nutrition, is that with our food pantry at Inasmuch is that we have worked hard to build a very well-balanced food pantry so that they are getting everything they need.

They're getting their fruits or vegetables, their whole grains, their proteins and the ingredients they need to make the whatever it is that we're giving them that they can make this.

And then with our Circles of Allen County program, which is dealing with people in generational poverty, is teaching them how to make healthy meals on a budget, how if they do get benefits, how do they use those benefits to buy the healthy food and then prepare the healthy food?

Because we all know it's it's staggering how many people don't know how to cook anymore.

Absolutely.

So we're trying to teach them how to do this.

It's a button on my microwave, right?

Yes.

And, you know, I think if you saw just this week there was a study released that poverty is now the fourth leading cause of death in the United States.

And and in encompassed in that poverty.

Is this food insecurity?

Absolutely.

And lack of healthy, nutritious tissues?

Yes.

And part of that is accessibility.

Yes.

You know, it's difficult if you're working two jobs, maybe you have very limited transportation.

But there's a convenience store just across the street from your house or a couple of blocks away.

You can go get a big gulp and two burritos and be done with it.

Right.

But and that might fill your belly for a little while, but it doesn't provide that nutrition.

And so it involves not only the the finances to be able to purchase the food, but also that access to know where to go to get the healthy foods.

Yes.

And, you know, when those drives come throughout the year, different nonprofits or service agencies will say, put a little something out there by your mailbox.

And I go into the pantry and think, well, here's a box from out of of mac and cheese and that first state.

So there.

You bet I.

Feel good about that.

And will they should but yet not really.

Right.

Yeah.

If you can think just a couple steps further and I think I have definitely done that too.

You know, you go in, oh, what haven't I used in a while?

Here's whatever I have in my cupboard and, and that's good.

That's a, that's a good start.

But if you can just think a couple steps ahead, like you said, Maryann, about whole grains, the rice.

Yes, even canned lean proteins like canned fish and chicken.

Yes.

Lean proteins are very difficult on a very expensive.

They are very expensive.

Yes.

And even if you give that box of macaroni and cheese and it goes to a food pantry, depending on which food pantry it goes to, they may not be like an in as much where we have the dairy.

Right.

So we can give them the milk and the butter to actually make.

Them make mac and cheese or it may not be able to make it.

Exactly.

If they're in a motel or they're in a car, they can't make it.

Right.

Yeah.

Take me back to the origins of in as much of an industry.

I think we're looking at three decades and change or so.

40 years.

Okay.

We'll go for that.

Tell me about that.

So 40 years ago and you know, I'm not from Fort Wayne, but I think the downtown was significantly different 40 years ago than it is now.

Very much.

So.

And so the pastor is a secretary at Broadway Christian Church on the corner of Broadway.

And Wayne started realizing there were an awful lot of people who were homeless and indigent.

And so she began to bring in extra food for for lunch.

And she would invite them in and they would have soup and sandwiches together and they would pray with them.

And then the pastor at the time, Pastor Youngberg, said, we should do this on a bigger scale.

So they started with the the food pantry and the clothing bank, and now it has expanded.

And we've really expanded the food pantry.

So food, clothes, hygiene, because even if you get SNAP benefits, you can't buy hygiene items.

So we do hygiene, we do bus passes, we help people get birth certificates, and then we do financial assistance.

But of late, again, the biggest need is food.

And in that, from a foundation perspective, this is a challenging thing, as you were sharing with us that for some families that monthly revenue has to go more places than it probably can.

And food is one of the options.

Rent, medicine, the car needs a tire.

And, you.

Know, and you can't go to a food pantry and get rent money.

There's no rent pantry.

Right.

And so people will try to pay that rent first and then they'll have nothing left and need to go to a food pantry or they will, you know, not fill their prescriptions, that sort of thing.

And I think really all of your audience members, Bruce, can identify with the rising costs right now, inflation is tremendous, especially for housing, rental costs and even, you know, the property taxes on homes are just going way up.

And so people just can't make those budgets stretch any further.

Yes.

And through all of this.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

I will tell you.

So when we went, we partnered with the elementary school and we went the first time right before Christmas.

So we took our 110 boxes of food and we took hygiene items and we took toys.

So we had the food set up in the parking lot.

We had tables full of toys, and then we had hygiene items and there were two little boys, two brothers, and they were about eight and six.

And they had gone to the event without their parents because they told us their parents were at work and they lived across the field in the apartment complex from the school.

And they came out and they saw the box of food and what was in it, and their eyes lit up and then they saw the toys and they said, We want the food, not the toys.

And these two little boys, one took one end it banana boxes, one took the front, one took the back, and they carried that box of food across that field to their apartment.

But they picked food over toys.

Over toys.

And we had some pretty cool toys.

Yeah, exactly like it.

I don't know if I would have done the same.

Understanding tells you a lot about their situation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The the interventions that need to take place to break the cycle or build a new venture and to go forward.

I know of two programs, among others, Mary, that you're you and the foundation are involved in.

Talk a little bit about Double Up and heal.

Yeah, we're really excited about Double Up, Indiana.

It is a program that is partially funded by the United States Department of Agriculture.

So we went ahead and took a grant from the USDA to implement this.

And what it does is it matches SNAP dollars or food stamps.

And so when you go to spend your food stamps at a farmer's market or a retail location, let's say you spend $20, then you get an additional $20 to spend on fruits and vegetables.

So what they call a nutrition incentive.

So incentivizes gives you a reward for purchasing healthy foods.

And this is a program that really operates all over the country.

And what we're really excited about is that it's seeing tremendous health benefits.

It's help alleviating food, alleviate food insecurity, but also nutrition security.

And we're seeing that people who take part in double.

Up.

Eat more fruits and vegetables than the average American.

You you know, us Americans sometimes we're not always the best at eating our fruits and veggies.

Right.

And it is it's difficult to do when you're busy.

Right.

But so people involved with this program double up using their SNAP benefits, they eat more fruits and vegetables and that has an impact on their health.

And they're actually showing that through research and statistics and data.

So we're really excited about that program.

And then heal.

Yes, HEAL has two parts and one is farm market locations in what we call food desert areas, places where there is very little access to healthy and nutritious food.

And so we work with our partners at Parkview and Health Vision's Midwest to operate farm markets in those areas.

And then the other part is our cooking classes, and they're called the Hill Cooking classes, and we work with partners like churches and not for profits all over the community to implement these healthy cooking classes.

And perhaps in some regard addressing the green on the screen, which usually is a healthy color, not so much in this case, hard to imagine when you're realizing this is right downtown.

Yeah, exactly.

That is Fort Wayne, as you can see, with 69 and for 69 going around.

And those are areas in our community that have low access and they're also low income areas.

They have low access to nutritious food.

Some of you and this is a good story if if you know Vincent Village, it's a homeless, transitional homeless shelter in the southeast part of Fort Wayne and they tell a story.

Sharon Tucker is the director there.

She tells a story about a woman who has to she has no transportation.

She has her children, gets her bus pass, has to go from her location to the transfer station downtown, then to the Wal-Mart out south, get her groceries, haul all of that with her kids onto the bus, go back downtown, transfer, go back to tour her location to her home that she's renting.

And that's what a food desert does to families.

There's not a grocery nearby.

And so that's part of the problem.

And by segway to the circle's program in as much ministries is reporting with yes this is the next circle up from the food part is to address housing and access and in a way.

For world poverty.

And and I will tell you, we are getting ready to do the HEAL program with our participants starting in June, and they are thrilled to pieces.

So Circles has been around the US and Canada for about 30 years and it's about helping people get out of generational poverty.

And so, you know, people in generational poverty don't have anybody to ask questions about things like nutrition or or emergency funds or budgeting or even how to open doors for getting a job.

And so we come alongside, we meet once a week, we have child care.

We serve an extremely nutritious meal with all of them.

And then we do training in finances, in setting goals and connecting them with people.

There's no exchange of money.

This is just someone who's not in generational poverty, who can walk the journey with them and answer questions.

And so, you know, we have an individual and her husband was in a was in a job, but not a high paying job, not a great job.

And the person that she is paired up with was connected to a very large organization here in Fort Wayne, knew of an opening of a position that was coming going to be available.

So said, hey, let's go walk over, let's go interview.

Well, he got that job.

That's wonderful.

It wasn't even posted.

But that's what happens to people in the middle, in the upper class.

Right.

You know, people.

You know people.

At.

Exactly.

Generational poverty.

Don't we have another woman who when she started the program in October, she was sleeping on somebody's couch.

She had borrowed money from everybody she knew.

She now has her own apartment.

She's paid off her debt and she has over 1500 dollars in an emergency fund.

And we started in October.

Wow.

But it's because people are walking the journey with her and helping her make good, solid financial decisions that she didn't have anybody before.

So that's the whole goal of circles, is to move them out of poverty.

Exciting.

I'm wondering if the circle of coordination got larger and more robust coming out of the pandemic.

Everybody is talking to all of their their associates, wondering, what are we doing to be able to sustain service now that we're in 23 and out of 20, we're now seeing the city take on a whole new approach to homelessness.

Yes, we're seeing expanded services for the nutrition front.

We're seeing additional activity regarding jobs that pay a living wage at least 15 to $18 an hour.

Plus benefits, I think, is the magic word from your perspectives as a way forward to try to get more of a secure net around food insecurity.

How important is that coordination and communication?

It's critical.

It is really there's so many different layers of as we've talked about, and causes of food insecurity.

And so if we can partner with you to do the heal cooking classes and reach the people that you're serving and then some of the food from, well, for most of our pantries, they're getting it from Community Harvest Food Bank or Associated Churches.

And so coordinating with them and their outreach efforts, it's just critical because we can't reach everybody just as one organization now.

It has to be it has to be people working together, not, you know, not in silos.

Yeah.

And I'm hearing just neighbors is another one I believe the Interfaith Homeless and Homeless Network is another connecting point.

Yes.

And my guess is a legal pad could fill in that we are blessed with this capacity.

Yes, if there is, as long as there continues to be ways to explore, to get the connections between those that need and those that have to address that.

Yes.

And so one of the things we've done it in as much because, you know, the the church and in as much have been blessed with a huge building on the corner of Washington and Broadway.

So we've expanded it.

So now that we've got all these different partner agencies in the building with us, so just neighbors is in the building.

Fort Wayne housing is in the building.

We have a licensed health navigator in the building.

We have the people who do the phones and tablets in the building.

Manpower is in the building, anthem is in the building.

We have all of these agency so that when someone comes in and says, I don't have any idea how to get marketplace insurance, oh, well, she's right there.

Or I have a question about Fort Wayne housing.

Oh, they're right there.

Or I need a phone.

I, you know, oh, they're right there or I really need a job.

He's right there.

So the whole idea is partnering together.

Sure.

Because when you're in poverty, everything is a harder.

So much.

Harder and having to take one more step is is that can be what pushes you over the edge.

And so that's why.

Oh, no, they're right there.

Right.

Big, deep breath or we're right here.

I love it.

Yeah.

And from the foundation perspective, hope continues to to reign.

Absolutely.

So we are we've been coordinating recently a food insecurity nutrition network.

We call it thin for short, so, so creative.

But what that is, is bringing people together in this one space to collaborate and coordinate.

So people from Community Harvest Food Bank and associated churches and FSA that provides SNAP dollars for one community schools that does all of their nutritional work, foundations and funders, those kinds of groups together to to work on food and nutrition insecurity.

And we meet quarterly and talk and try to problem solve and share resources.

So so that's the hope I think, that you were talking about.

And this is where you can find hope on your Internet, among other places.

We have the Saint Joe's Community Health Solutions, which is CHF dot org, and you can find links on its homepage for Double Up and Heal among other resources and Maryann, all sorts of things available there.

Yes, it is.

But ministries in this much Fort Wayne dot org and further we have a chance to share with you circles of Allen County is another place where you can again get this connection.

Yes.

And more importantly, if you would like to or as importantly to watch the full documentary on Sunday afternoon at two for the working hungry on on PBS Fort Wayne.

So in there there can be a way to marshal the forces around which this region is able to essentially break through the hunger that's hiding in plain sight and do something constructive with it.

Yes.

Yes.

And it starts with the knowledge.

It does.

Just just knowing that it exists.

Right.

And the willingness to help and not judge, because, again, hunger doesn't look like what you might think.

It does.

It really is the child sitting next to your child in the classroom or the person who's working next to you as well.

You know, for whatever reason, not being able to make ends meet.

And so it's everywhere.

It is.

It is.

And so our thanks to you both and to all who are involved in addressing issues of homelessness, of poverty, of hunger.

Our aspirations are with you as well.

And we will continue to check in on the state of hunger.

We will learn more and grow through this together.

We're very grateful.

Mary Tyndall with us, our programs and communications director of Saint Joseph Health Foundation.

Mary Ann Mings is the executive director of Inasmuch Ministries and the Circles Program.

Thank you both very much.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Likewise.

And for all of you, thank you for allowing us to be a part of your evening for everyone with prime time, I bring saints.

Take care.

We'll see you soon.

Goodnight.