THE PARTNERSHIP

As a result of the grant funding from the Goldhirsh Foundation and the LA2050 Grants Challenge, Black Women for Wellness (BWW) and Golden State Opportunity (GSO) were able to collaborate to implement a pilot project that was designed engage in a multifaceted campaign to increase the awareness of and access to the health food through the CalFresh Program for at least 35,000 low-income Black women and their families in Los Angeles County during the past year. We are proud of our capacity to unite our efforts to increase awareness about the CalFresh Program and Resources that are available to eligible women and their families through our different outreach strategies and methodologies. We worked to inform, educate, encourage and guide women and their families through the process as they explored the CalFresh program and encouraged them to access the resources as they attempted to enroll into the program to claim the funds needed to access the food resources being offered.

ADDRESSING FOOD INSECURITY

In an effort to address the issue of food security in Los Angeles County and especially in South Los Angeles, where residents are faced with a food desert every day and a lack of access to quality fresh fruit and produce. We worked to meet our goals of this pilot project by:

∙ Sharing information about the CalFresh Program at our food distribution event twice a month to approximately 120 Families who come to our food distribution two times a month to receive fresh produce bags. At these food distribution events, BWW staff and approximately 10 volunteers distributed CalFresh program print collateral into the food bags that were given to food distribution participants. To increase the potential for reaching our direct impact number of 240 people, we worked with CalFresh representatives who came to our offices to provide support and engage with food distribution participants about the CalFresh Program and the process for getting enrolled and accessing the resources. We also thought that the presence of the CalFresh Representatives at our offices during the food distribution would eliminate the barriers that prevent community members from accessing the CalFresh resources.

∙ Conducting door-to-door canvassing to more than 4,000 households throughout South Los Angeles to distribute CalFresh Program Collateral information, answer questions, and encourage participation. The BWW Field canvassing team fanned out to the local neighborhoods and engaged community members at their homes to inform them about CalFresh Program and how to access the resources

∙ Conducting Community outreach by tabling at approximately 65 community events such as health fairs, community festivals, community baby showers, etc, where we were able to engage with more than 4,130 community members who received information about CalFresh Program and ways to access the resources. During our in person engagements with community members we were able to help over 160 households get connected to the CalFresh website and registration process and supported approximately 50 residents as they completed their benefits registration.

∙ Creating a CalFresh-focused social media toolkit to Implement a robust direct texting campaign to share information with community connect partners, local municipalities and other community partners about the CalFresh Program through digital collateral. We also shared the collateral Information by sending 24,803 text messages to likely eligible families, combined email blasts of more than 107,100 to Los Angeles County Residents, a print media campaign with a circulation rate of 20,000 individuals that ran for 5 weeks and digital online banners that ran for 4 weeks that received 200,000 impressions in La Opinión. With this campaign we were able to distribute approximately 11,750 flyers and mailers, where we were able to get more than 100 scan visits to the GSO unique GetCalFresh website (GetCalFresh.org/gso) online portal.

∙ Conducting a robust digital social media campaign that allowed us to raise awareness and promote the CalFresh Program and the resources available as well as lead followers to the GetCalFresh website. Through this campaign on the GSO Facebook and Instagram pages there were 2,086,840 impressions that reached 1,841,988 people.

LESSONS LEARNED

In our efforts to create inviting, welcoming and safe in person spaces to engage community members around accessing the CalFresh Program and reach our goal to directly impact the enrollment of 240 people. We were able to connect with the CalFresh Program to get them to come to our food distribution to promote CalFresh Program Resources and provide support for participants who had questions and needed support learning about how to access the CalFresh website. While tabling and crowd canvassing at community events we worked to build relationships with community members to be able to provide them with education about the benefits of the CalFresh program as well as offered ongoing support throughout the process. We provided follow up calls with those community members we connected with and attempted to provide support and walk them through the process of getting registered and connecting them to the CalFresh website and available representatives.

In efforts to track our work, determine and evaluate what some of the hesitancy was from community members about the CalFresh Program and the resources available through the program. We found that more people were actually engaged and interested in accessing the CalFresh Resources than we expected. Our Field Team would follow up and talk to community members who expressed an interest in accessing the resource to increase. In some cases, the field team learned that many of the community members they met had already researched the process and found that they either didn’t qualify for the services because they were either overqualified or underqualified. In some cases we learned from community members who mentioned that they had become discouraged by the process and the bureaucracy because reps from CalFresh were not following up or returning phone calls. Others felt the electronic process was too invasive and overwhelming due to the technology process. While one of the biggest issues was that they didn’t feel like the CalFresh allotment was actually enough to live off of considering food costs, cost of housing and just coming off the financial impact of the pandemic. Through our conversations with community members we found that there is an expressed need for increases in financial support. Much like the stimulus income checks that were distributed during the pandemic.

While community members appreciated our efforts and expressed gratitude for us serving as and being trusted messengers in the community and providing support during the administrative process for such programs like CalFresh, there is an expressed hesitancy towards accessing county resources historically due to a lack of real time inclusion, access and equity in the administrative and distribution process for resources. Members of the Black Community feel unseen and unsupported by county program support staff. Thus, while we were able to engage several thousand people about the CalFresh Program and actually have in-depth conversations with several hundred people about their CalFresh Program registration status, we were only able to help 160 households to actually start their CalFresh application and registration process. Unfortunately, we were only able to get 50 residents completely registered and enrolled in the program.

Both BWW and GSO will continue working together to engage community members to provide educate and provide access to healthy food resources, such as the BWW food distribution, as well as inform community members about the various resources for food access and poverty elimination throughout Los Angeles County. We will also continue to engage at administrative and policy levels to address inclusion, access and equity issues in the local food and economic systems that historically have impacted primarily Black and Brown people throughout Los Angeles County.

EMERGING OPPORTUNITIES

As a result of our partnership with GSO around educating community members about access to food through the CalFresh Program, we were able to access more resources pertaining to statewide efforts to eliminate poverty through raising awareness about the Earned Income Tax Credit for Foster Youth (CalEITC Tax Program). This allows us to expand our reach to foster youth and foster care providers and agencies to share information and engage folks about not only county programs and resources like CalFresh, but state resources as well. We trust that this partnership will allow for more opportunities to engage with community members, community leaders, elected officials, and local institutions to raise awareness about the various city, county and state efforts to increase access to healthy food and eliminate poverty. We also are excited about the opportunity to empower community members to become active participants in the process of advocating for themselves, their families and their communities to increase and impact strategies for inclusion, access and equity around the issues of food insecurity and poverty elimination.

Please see the pictures below of the flyers used to share with community members about CalFresh Resources during our food distribution, door to door canvassing and tabling at community events. Further down you will see the social media post used to engage our virtual community around CalFresh Resources in Los Angeles County.