Posts Tagged ‘District of Columbia’

Posted by Allison Burket | October 5th, 2010

Last Monday, DC Food For All gathered for our monthly community meal and workshop at the Center for Green Urbanism in downtown Ward 7. Our host, Dennis Chestnut, the Executive Director of Groundwork Anacostia, gave us an overview of Groundwork’s programming, as well as a tour the newly-opened Center.

Dennis’ organization, Groundwork Anacostia, is part of a larger network of “trusts” established across the country through Groundwork USA to help revitalize neighborhoods whose physical and social environments have undergone significant decline. Supported by the EPA’s Brownfields program, as well as the National Park Service, Groundwork aims to empower individuals in communities typically identified as under-served to engage in their community’s environmental, social, and economic revitalization, largely by identifying and converting brownfields (a term for abandoned facilities or unused land that may have been damaged or polluted by industrial use) into greenfields.For Dennis, who has been an environmental activist and community organizer since his days as a Boy Scout, “under-served” is a relative term. Despite Ward 7′s limited food access, public services, and commercial development, Dennis considers the small-town feel of the surrounding community and asset, and the abundance of open space as an opportunity to take some of the food access challenges of into their own hands.

Since formally launching in 2009, Groundwork Anacostia has helped establish numerous community gardens as well as a gardening club, now led by the senior community in Mayfair apartment complexes who lack land of their own to garden. As part of the 10.10.10 day of work and action around climate change, Groundwork will be launching a garden at the Mayfair Community Center, which Dennis hopes will also be the site of a farmers’ market accompanied by cooking classes and community events in the spring. The Community Center is located in a neighborhood between the river and the highway whose options for purchasing are currently limited to a convenience store.

Groundwork has been involved in numerous other efforts, such as lead the calls for the Benning Library across the street from the center to be renovated into a green building. Now a LEED-silver buidling, this library is the first DC public facility with a green roof. Groundwork will also work to ensure the 12-acre site of a nearby Pepco power plant that is scheduled to come offline within the next couple of years, will be remediated for public use, rather than sold to developers.

Groundwork was also instrumental in establishing the site for our evening’s meal: The Center for Green Urbanism – a “green business incubator” that acts as model and a hub for sustainable living and green enterprise in Ward 7. With an art gallery featuring reused and recycled materials, offices for rent for small businesses, meeting spaces for community groups and organizations, and a green interior design that includes everything from low-flow fixtures to solar shade window treatments, Dennis hopes the center can serve as place where folks can come and learn everything they need to know about living sustainably. The center has also hosted youth volunteer and employment programs involving the neighboring Fort Mahan park. During our tour of the renovated house originally built in 1926 and located at the edge of, we also got to admire the stellar views of downtown DC from its back porch.

The Center will be having its grand opening on October 15, formally launching its art gallery and “ReCREATE” exhibit. In the meantime, DC Food For All was grateful for its hospitality and fabulous water filtration system (“best water in the district,” Dennis promises). We shared fresh-baked bread and muffins, homemade lentil salad, plum dip, and ricotta spread, and discussed upcoming events – the 10.10.10 global work party, as well as meetings about the FEED DC Act, legislation introduced this summer. A public hearing on the Act will take place October 18, preceded by public working groups.

Join DC Food For All at any and all of these upcoming events – especially the 10.10.10 work day at Mayfair Community Center (3744 1/2 Hayes Street N.E.) Volunteers will help build build raised beds, lay soil, and learn about community gardening techniques and strategies. They need 15-20 volunteers to get down and dirty. The action will be from 9am-12pm, followed by rides back to Bread for the City NW for the Sustainable Food Block Party! (Learn more here)

For more on the Center for Green Urbanism, visit its website or contact Dennis Chestnut at Dchestn@msn.com.

Posted by Kathryn Baer | February 24th, 2010

Cross-posted on Poverty and Policy

Tucked away in the Fiscal Year 2010 appropriations for the Department of Defense are some other appropriations Congress wanted to fast-track. One provides a total of $400 million more to help states–and the District of Columbia–cope with increasing pressures on their food stamp programs.

The costs of food stamps themselves are covered by the federal government. But state and local agencies have to administer the program. The federal government ordinarily picks up about 50% of the administrative costs, leaving states responsible for the rest.

The supplement will increase the federal share, with the greatest amounts going to the states with the highest percentages of households in the food stamp program and the greatest recent increases in the number participating. The District will get nearly $1.5 million.

The recession has vastly increased applications, caseloads and, with them, needs to periodically re-verify eligibility. Backlogs have become a serious problem. In our own backyard, Maryland is under court order because of excessive processing delays. At least four other states have settled similar class action lawsuits. Texas has been told it may lose federal funds if it doesn’t speed up its system.

Last year, the District got a bonus performance award for the timeliness of its applications processing, along with an award for program access, i.e., the percentage of eligible residents enrolled in its program.

But applications processing doesn’t measure how long people have to wait to complete the intake process. We read of people waiting hours–even days–to get the required meeting with an Income Maintenance Administration staff member. No wonder, given the staff cutbacks and rising unemployment rate.

And bonus award notwithstanding, the participation rate here leaves room for improvement. This means that IMA should be investing resources in outreach to low-income people who don’t know they’re eligible or are deterred by barriers real and imagined. The hassle factor, including the costs of repeated trips to an IMA service center, are surely among the former.

Now IMA could have reduced its administrative burdens by swiftly implementing the Food Stamp Expansion Act because making more people categorically eligible would reduce needs to go through the complex process of calculating assets. It might have gotten a larger share of the supplement too.

We’re given to understand that it will complete implementation some time this spring. By then, it will also have its extra administrative funds. So we should see shorter waiting times in the service centers, quick turnarounds on applications and a higher participation rate.

This, of course, assumes that the Fenty administration uses the extra funds as Congress intended. Staff at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have warned that states could reduce their own funding for food administration and use the new federal funds instead.

But surely that won’t happen here. Will it?

Posted by Xi Wang | February 19th, 2010

With shovels and forks, local food justice advocates will descend on the Historical Society of Washington tomorrow for Rooting DC, the District’s own urban agriculture forum. Workshops are organized around four themes–production, distribution, preparation and preservation–in order to explore how food finds its way from the field to our forks.

For the first time in it’s 3-year history, Rooting DC will feature cooking demonstrations.  Steve Seuser, who planned and coordinated the demonstrations, says that presenters will share how to prepare cooked, raw, and fermented foods, as well as canning basics. In particular, the demonstrations will feature recipes that are fast and affordable for families, as well as processes for gardeners who grow a lot and aren’t sure what to do with the overabundance.

Tracye McQuirter, a nutritionist with the UDC Center for Nutrition, Diet, and Health, will present during Workshop Session 2. We talked with Tracye about the importance of eating hea

Posted by Kathryn Baer | February 16th, 2010

Cross-posted from Poverty and Policy.

Under TEFAP (the Emergency Food Assistance Program), the U.S. Department of Agriculture distributes food commodities to states, which then distribute them to food banks and/or directly to emergency food providers like soup kitchens and pantries. As I recently wrote, the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) is said to need a supplemental appropriation because it can’t otherwise provide enough food commodities to meet the increasing pressures on food banks.

Still on my learning curve, I contacted Marian Peele, the Director of Agency Relations at the Capital Area Food Bank, to find out what the situation is there.

CAFB is the Feeding America network partner for the greater Washington D.C. area. It uses federal funds channeled through the D.C. and Virginia state governments to purchase TEFAP food commodities. It also gets free TEFAP bonus commodities when they’re available and suitable to its needs.