Champions for Children's Health Stroller Brigade

“The lives and health of millions of children depend on health reform this year. They will not get what they need unless you speak up and demand it. Children have no other voice but yours. Lift it high and loud.” Marian Wright Edelman

On Wednesday, November 4th, the Children’s Defense Fund is organizing a Champions for Children’s Health Stroller Brigade in the nation’s Capitol. The action is designed to send an urgent and clear message to our political leaders to keep children at the forefront of their minds when enacting health reform. Bread for the City supporters are encouraged to join the hundreds of children, parents, grandparents and champions for children as we “stroll” to the Capitol Building and the House and Senate Offices to ensure that millions of uninsured and underinsured children are not left behind.

Let’s be clear: DC has been a leader in providing children with access to health care services. Consider the national rate of uninsured children of 10.3% and the D.C. rate of 7.6%. Still, the Rand Corporation recently published a study of health and health care among youth in the District of Columbia that points to the need for D.C. to do even more. The study, which was supported by The Children’s National Medical Center, cites the lack of continuity in health insurance plans and services as a major barrier – especially for children with a chronic illness such as asthma.

When Congress passes health reform legislation, we want to be certain that it optimizes children’s access to health care and includes seamless, continuous coverage. Please join us and embrace Ms. Edelman’s Call To Action: “Grab your strollers, your scooter, or your walking shoes, and join our children's brigades on November 4th in Washington, D.C….In America, every child should have the health care they need - now. They have only one childhood. Together we can make it happen.”

To learn how to join a stroller brigade, create your own, or take action in other ways with simple steps, visit the Children's Defense Fund website.

We Are Under Siege!

BREAKING: SOS EMERGENCY! SOS

At 10:05AM, a horde of little monsters escaped from the nearby Kennedy Rec Center daycare coop. They stormed up 7th street to Bread for the City, stomping and eating everything in their path.At 10:12AM, the horde breached Bread for the City's facility, carting one (1) red wagon full of donated foods, while delivering terror and delight unto all.



Reports are uneven amidst the chaos, but some suggest that as many as 19 ankles have been bitten.



As this dispatch goes to print, supplies of lollipops are running low.



Please send help. More pictures here.

Everyone's voting for Glean for the City

We are in the final stretch for the Tom’s of Maine 50 States for Good contest to win $20,000 for Glean for the City. The voting ends this Saturday, October 31st, and the top 5 vote-getters win. We are currently in 3rd place — which means if we keep it up, we’ll win! So we need your votes now more than ever.

Bread for the City’s entire staff (and all of our families and friends and Facebook friends) are all deep in the daily voting groove. Meanwhile, the DC Food For All's Great Harvest party used our gleaned produce for its cookoff — and the attendees voted then too!

Finally, excitement about the contest has spread to our clients. Our food pantry clients have really enjoyed the gleaned produce in the past year — and they are thrilled to now have the opportunity to vote for this program.

But very few of our clients have access to the internet at home. And yet we believe they should be able to participate, too!

So for this final week of voting, we’ve set up a computer station in our pantries. We’ve got volunteers generously spending some time stationed there to help folks vote and keep traffic moving.

While sitting down to vote in the contest this morning, Gerri Williams-Harris (pictured left) remarked, “I love putting the fresh carrots in my roasts. Canned vegetables will do, but I really prefer fresh produce."

Only a few days remain in the contest, but you too can still help us win $20,000 for Glean for the City! Vote for Bread for the City here. (Tip!: type Ctrl-F and ‘bread’ to find our entry.) Vote every day this week!

(Are you on Twitter? Help us spread the word by retweeting our voting drive in this special campaign!)

Stalking Broccoli


As the harvest season winds down, Bread for the City's Glean for the City program is reaching its final stretch, and it's been a great success. Altogether, with the help of hundreds of volunteers, we've brought in roughly 35,000 pounds of fresh produce. And now we're in the lead for a major grant from Tom's of Maine in their 50 States for Good contest! Please vote for us now (shortcut: click Ctrl-F and type 'bread' to find us) and make yourself a note to vote each day between now and October 31st!

During this last stretch, we will be gleaning broccoli from Parker Farms. We started off the season gleaning 5,000 lbs. of sweet corn there, and Rod Parker is generously allowing us to return for the brocc. Over the coming months, we expect to harvest several tons of broccoli for our pantry -- all from just this one farm.

(We were going to do a big glean in tandem with the launch of the DC Food For All, but we got rained out! There will be more opportunities for Glean for the City to collaborate with the DC Food For All, I'm sure.)

Broccoli will be a new and challenging harvest for us. Apple picking, for instance, is as easy as it is fun. When we picked up cucumbers, they'd already been harvested and sorted and were just waiting for our truck. Broccoli, on the other hand, will have to be removed from its stalk, right out of the ground.




This is a relatively labor intensive harvest. You need a knife to strip the leaves and cut the stalk. Large leaves protrude from the sides of the stalk and cover the edible heads of broccoli -- which means it's easy to miss.


There's also a lot that deliberately gets left behind: the farmers pay harvesters to make just one pass through the field. In that pass, they look for the best pieces. Variations in soil and sunlight cause some plants to reach maturity later, and a lot of broccoli gets left behind because it's insufficiently ripe.

It's a sad reality of today's market that stores will only accept broccoli of a certain size, because they cater to shoppers' picky demand for full crops. In the meantime, farms can’t afford to take another pass when the broccoli reaches maturity. Most of these plants reach the perfect size days later -- but they are left to rot in the field. Unless of course Glean for the City is on the scene.

Thanks to all the volunteers, farmers and market managers who've made Glean for the City such a success so far. Check out this great recent New York Times article about a sophisticated gleaning network in California - I think we could get to that level very soon!

And last but not least, please vote for us in the Tom's of Maine contest. With your help, we'll ensure that all the food that's fit to eat gets to the people who need it.

Set AmeriCorps Funding Free (From Taxation)!

There’s an opportunity right now to make volunteer service at a place like Bread for the City just a little more feasible.

A good chunk of Bread for the City’s staff comes to us through various Volunteer Corps programs, like the AmeriCorps Health Corps or the Lutheran Volunteer Corps. These are mostly young people, recent college grads, working for Bread for the City under a year-long contract.

Currently, nine of these full time volunteers fill important roles at Bread, like Medical Clinic Coordinators, Social Service Case Workers, and the Volunteer Coordinator (that’s me!). Volunteers receive a stipend that is only designed to meet very basic needs. Jesuit Volunteers, for instance, receive $75/month for personal expenses after rent and food costs.

One benefit of performing this year of service is the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award, a $4725 grant from the government to help pay for tuition or student loans (next year it will be $5350). Like Jo has written here before, "this funding is not a primary motivating factor in driving someone to service. It’s the “youthful idealism,” rather than the funding, that makes these slots so competitive." But for those of us with new student loans, or saving up to attend graduate school, it does make a real difference.

The way policy is currently written, however, this grant is taxed as income by at least 15%. Since the Award isn’t given in cash—you can think of it as a type of credit that is exchanged between the government and a loan agency—paying the tax comes out of pocket, not out of the Award. This means that some former Corpsmembers end up paying upwards of $500 after using their award. That’s as much as the recent increase yielded by the Kennedy Service Act, about which we've already posted. Also, if a Volunteer Corps worker enters into a full-time position after a year of service, the Education Award can easily bump them up into a higher tax bracket than their payroll, resulting in an often unforeseen tax burden.

A bill is currently before the House Ways and Means Committee, H.R. 1596, the Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards Tax Relief Act, which would exempt the Award from taxes and give volunteers more opportunity to use their dollars in pursuit of educating and bettering themselves. You can take a few minutes out of your day to help ensure the passage of this bill by letting your representatives know that you support the tax relief of AmeriCorps volunteers and that such relief will help supply our communities with educated, economically stable service-minded individuals. (Of course, if you don’t happen to live in DC, then you can take additional comfort in the knowledge that your representative happens to have a vote in Congress.)

We Want $20,000!

Glean for the City currently stands in third place in the Tom's of Maine 50 States for Good contest. This is great news, as the top five projects will receive $20,000!

Remember, you can vote every day until October 30th. So vote today -- and tomorrow, and the day after that, and the -- then tell your friends to do the same. Glean for the City needs this cash ... and our clients need the veggies.

Volunteer Spotlight: The HEALing Clinic

[Today's post was contributed by Bread for the City's Medical Director, Dr. Randi Abramson — ed]

Most evenings around 5 pm, the staff at Bread for the City begins to wrap up their work for the day. But for the past 2 years, the end of our business day has marked the beginning of another program: a special, after-hours session at our medical clinic run by a very energetic and unique group of medical students.

Three years ago, when they were just first-year medical students at George Washington University, Rani Nandiwada, Deb Bear, Jay Chelluri, Irina Fox, and Patrick Lowerre approached Bread for the City and asked if they could run an evening health clinic. They were new to DC and even new to health care. But (along with the help of Lisa Alexander, the Assistant Dean for Community-Based Partnership at the GWU Medical Center) they had a vision in which they would practice medicine as part of their community.

We were thrilled with the idea and the HEALing (Health Education And Learning) clinic was born.

Since the HEALing clinic launched two years ago, a steady flow of enthusiastic GWU medical students have volunteered each week. The students see patients, work in the lab, provide health education, and help out wherever we need them — all in an environment of learning. It was a joy to see the students teach each other, to see the fourth-year students take on leadership roles, and to see the newer students jump right in and share ownership of the clinic.

Given that our community is in a major healthcare crisis in large part because there aren't enough doctors practicing community healthcare, we are proud to say that Bread for the City is a training ground for tomorrow's primary care physicians.

The HEALing clinic is also criticaly important to our client community. Many Bread for the City patients can't come to see a doctor during the day, due to tough work schedules. The HEALing clinic provides yeat another much-needed medical alternative.


Although the original founders of the clinic are graduating this year, they have made certain that the clinic they began can continue long after they have moved on. And so, it was with tremendous gratitude, that we awarded Rani Nandiwada, Deb Bear, Jay Chelluri, Irina Fox, Patrick Lowerre, and Lisa Alexandar a Good Hope Award for their Beyond Bread Community Reformation at our 4th Annual GHA breakfast.

Volunteer Spotlight: DLA Piper

I am constantly inspired by all of Bread for the City’s volunteers. But in the past year especially, I have been struck by how inspirational—even heroic—corporate tax assistance can be.

Two years ago, I phoned DLA Piper partner, David Krohn, to discuss Bread for the City’s longtime plan of expanding our Northwest Center. (At 9500 square feet, it can just barely accommodate the 2,500 families who come each month to our Northwest Center seeking food, medical, legal, and social services.) I shared with David our vision of an expanded center — more than twice our current size, with modernized facilities and improved common spaces. I explained that we had already secured a $5,000,000 grant from the DC Primary Care Association. However, the project would cost $6,800,000 altogether. We still needed additional capital.

David began exploring. Through his diligent work, we discovered that a new kind of federal tax credits, the so-called New Market Tax Credits, could be the answer to that $1.8 million gap. The New Markets Tax Credit Program is a federal program that provides tax credits for private investment in economically distressed communities.

Given that Bread for the City’s expansion will nearly triple our capacity to provide medical care to the uninsured and underinsured of our community, this project qualified for the program. And with tremendously generous effort on David’s part, that has made all the difference in securing the additional funding that we required.

I am thrilled that construction on our building is only weeks away. Our vision is finally coming to fruition. It is with tremendous pride and gratitude that I say it would not have been possible without the assistance and generosity of David Krohn and DLA Piper.

The Great Harvest! A Launch Party

We're helping to launch a new project: a collaborative community food blog called The DC Food For All, about all things related to DC's food infrastructure and food culture, looking towards a healthier future for all of the city's residents.

Umm, the site's not live yet! But you can already start to make plans to celebrate it, as we'll be hosting a launch party at the Big Bear Cafe on October 24th, at 5pm.

RSVP here on Facebook, or by emailing DCFoodForAll@gmail.com.

Event details are broken down below.

The DC Food For All presents:
"The Great Harvest"
A launch party for DCFoodForAll.com

Big Bear Cafe, 1st and R street NW

Saturday October 24th, 5pm to 9pm
$15 suggested donation*
Plentiful food and drink! Lots of music! Some speakers!

RSVP on Facebook or by emailing dcfoodforall@gmail.com

*Proceeds will go to support the DC Food Finder, an interactive map of food resources in DC. But we mean the "suggested" part - all are welcome, regardless of ability to donate!

Vote for our Gleaning Program!

Democracy is good, right? Well you can help make democracy great: by voting for Bread for the City's Glean for the City program in the Tom's of Maine 50 States for Good contest.

All it takes is a few clicks (every day!), and you can help us win $20,000 -- money that will ensure that we have the staff capacity to coordinate this program in the years ahead. If you really want to help us bring in tons of fresh, free produce each week for the poorest of our neighbors, take this pledge on Facebook to vote every day between today and October 30th, and invite your friends to do the same.

This post isn't just another reminder of this contest. Bread for the City's staff took a field trip last week to Crooked Run Orchard, to do some gleaning ourselves. And dang there were tons of apples just waiting to be picked up - we collected 1800 lbs in just an hour and a half! Check out the photos in our Flickr set here, or on our Facebook page.

Re-up our Defibrillator!

So, Bread for the City has a new defibrillator.

Our old defibrillator was old. No one seems to really know how old – Dr. Randi, the medical clinic director, has been here almost two decades and says it had been there longer than that.

We never used it, though! When I suggested to our medical clinic staff that our old defibrillator maybe had never been used because of how awesome our medical clinic staff is, they just laughed. But still, I think that’s probably a big reason why.

Anyway, the old defibrillator: yeah, it recently disappeared. And then we had to replace it immediately. Even though we've never used it, a clinic’s still gotta have one. So that’s that. Specifically, that’s about $1,500 in costs that we hadn’t budgeted.

It feels weird asking you to donate for something that’s we never used in the first place, but hey: safety first. Can you help us cover the cost of a replacement defibrillator by donating today?

This is how a defibrillator works. Help us be a safe place for hearts.

Good Hope Awards 2009

Thank you to everyone who came out to our 4th Annual Good Hope Awards on October 1 at the Capital Hilton. This event is our opportunity to honor the many incredible volunteers whose generosity is essential to our work. So check out our video recap (and at 1:49 in the video you'll see some classic Vytas V. Vergeer). Enjoy!



A very special thank you and congratulations to our Good Hope Award winners! (To learn more about the winners, take a look at the past few weeks of Good Hope Awards-related blog posts.)

Street Sense Silent Auction Fundraiser on Thursday

Our favorite local newspaper, Street Sense has been busy: it recently upgraded its website, recorded a theme song with Peaches (!), and now is having its 4th annual silent auction fundraiser this Thursday. As Sommer wrote yesterday on DCist, this great publication needs the community's support during to survive during this recession. And anyway, this event always has good food, an interesting crowd, and compelling speakers. Highly recommended!

Oh and a ps: there are special 2-for-1 coupons available in the current print issue of the paper, so pick one up and grab a date. --ed

The Details

WHAT: Street Sense Silent Auction

WHERE: WVSA Arts Connection, 1100 16th Street, NW, Grand Room, Washington, D.C.

WHEN: Thursday, October 8, 2009, at 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.

WASHINGTON (October 5, 2009) – On Thursday, October 8th, Street Sense, Washington’s newspaper written and sold by members of the local homeless community, will host “Bidding for Change, its fourth annual silent auction. Over 50 items, donated by members of the local business community and individuals, will be available. All proceeds benefit Street Sense and, by extension, its network of homeless writers and vendors.

Items available in the auction include:

* Tickets Washington Wizards and Capitals games,
* Tickets to the Strathmore and Studio Theater
* A Bethany Beach getaway
* A Lush gift basket
* Handmade pottery
* Tickets to the Newseum
* Gift certificates to Brassiere Beck, Big Bear Café, Busboys and Poets, and Café Saint Ex
* Signed photographs of Alexander Ovechkin and Antawn Jamison
* Many other wonderful items.

“We so appreciate the support of our many donors to this year’s auction,” noted Laura Thompson Osuri, former Street Sense Executive Director. “Without the support of the local community, we could not continue our mission to raise public awareness on the issues of homelessness and poverty in the city, which is more important than ever as we face increasing homelessness in the face of the current economic crisis.”

This is the fourth year of the silent action, and the first held at the WVSA Arts Connection. During the event, Street Sense vendors will read poetry and one will be singing the Street Sense song.

Shredder Guy!

At our 4th Annual Good Hope Awards ceremony on October 1, we took some time to get to know one of the more unusual honorees: Bill Irving of Mid-Atlantic Shredding. That's right: shredding. (It's interesting, we promise!) We thank Bill for his great work and his touching acceptance speech. — ed



Here at Bread for the City, Bill Irving is affectionately known as "the shredder guy." We always look forward to his visits to the downstairs fishbowl office in our Northwest Center.

We store of our old files that need to be shredded in a locked closet — when it's packed to the max, we call Bill. He always enters with a smile and a wave then carries box after box after box out for disposal. This year, at Bread for the City, as we began making the daunting transition from paper charts to electronic records, our shredding needs increased tenfold. But Bill never winced — not even when our shredding closet was so full that the doors barely closed.

And he's so nice - just so, so nice! We couldn't ask for a friendlier, more helpful shredder guy. Thanks Bill and Mid Atlantic Shredding!

With Bill's commitment, Mid Atlantic Shredding has been donating their services to us for the past 7 years. Mid Atlantic Shredding is a bunch of long-time vets of the record destruction business, with an uncompromising commitment to security and customer service. (Plus, they ship 99% of their shredded paper products on to domestic mills for recycling.)

Thanks, Bill, for your generosity!

—Today's post was contributed by Bread for the City Northwest Social Services Director, Tracy Knight.

Help us glean for another year!

Today's post is by our new Gleaning Coordinator-in-Training, Vince Hill. But before we let Vince take the stage, first we want to note that Glean for the City is nominated to win $20,000 in the Tom's of Maine "50 States for Good" contest... and we need you to help us win!

To vote for us: a) click here b) find Bread for the City's entry (shortcut it by typing Ctrl-F and 'bread') and click to vote for us! You can vote every day, so the best way to help is by taking a pledge to make that daily vote on our Facebook petition here — and spread the word to your friends!

Okay take it away Vince. —ed


Hello! I was thrilled to take my first gleaning trip a week ago, as a new part of Bread for the City's staff. I took a drive out with Jeff Wankel to Crooked Run where we met with 4 more volunteers -- including people from an organization called Mover Moms. This being my first time participating in the gleaning project, I had no idea what to expect when we arrived.

What I saw was incredible. I’d already heard staggering statics on the amount of food waste in our country – but the numbers are hard to grasp in and of themselves. As bag after bag of apples accumulated under the mere 10 trees that we gleaned from, I realized the extent of this opportunity. 1000 lbs of apples filled the floor of our cargo van by the end of the day—store-bought quality produce for Bread for the City’s clients, who often have little to no access to fresh produce. The Mover Moms were also gracious enough to give us a sizable donation of children’s books.

In the van ride back, Jeff and I talked about ways to improve the weekly gleaning. My hope is to expand this project to the next level, so that we can do that much more to fight the food crisis in DC. Publicity, coordination and cooperation with other organization– and though the opportunity to open up new access to farm surplus is great in the DC area, I even think it’s something with national potential. I’m excited for the next trip, and even more excited for the upcoming year.

Road to Recovery: SOME captures success on video

[Another post from our new intern, Liz Whitehurst. —ed]

Last week, I blogged about the Invisible People project, which brings “the face and voice” of homelessness to the web. Locally, SOME’s “Success Stories” show us the powerful stories of DC residents who are moving out of poverty.

“My thing was that I was gonna die shooting dope,” says Lenny Ferguson, looking straight ahead. “Without a doubt, that’s what I thought. I had no idea that I would ever be clean.”
But when Tracy Monson met Lenny, he was well-dressed, carrying his dry cleaning and an iced tea from Starbucks. “It was hard to imagine him ever being on the streets,” says Tracy, who is Manager of Special Events and Marketing at SOME.

Lenny’s was one of several stories filmed this spring as part of a story collection effort that began with interviews conducted in 2008 with 10 graduates of SOME’s addiction treatment program. That series of interviews was initiated by SOME’s addiction counselors and social workers, who were looking for ways to encourage SOME’s clients who were dealing with addiction to enter treatment. “The goal was to have people who had gone through the process speak to them through the videos,” said Tracy.

SOME counselors engaged SOME’s recovery community in the process of screening the footage and editing it, using those who had gone through treatment to help decide what was most compelling.

The result is a series of five-minute videos, which now play in the waiting room of SOME’s Dining Room for the Homeless at 1st and O streets. “While folks are waiting, they can hear these people’s stories,” says Tracy.

In particular, Lenny’s story resonated with Tracy; her hope is that people like him will serve as an inspiration to others. “I wish more people could hear stories like that and really understand…that things can turn around completely,” says Tracy.

Lenny’s expression is unchanged as he describes his own transformation: “The old days I would wake up a lot of times with no money, sick, nose running, eyes running, couldn’t hardly stand up, didn’t know if I was gonna get enough money to go get some dope,” says Lenny. “Now I wake up, the birds sound good, the sky is beautiful, everything around me is beautiful.”

More recently, filmmaker Thom Wolf shared the experiences of formerly homeless families through interviews filmed at SOME’s Zagami House. On the SOME website, Letitia’s story is featured alongside Flash presentations that provide a virtual tour of the building and trace its transformation from an abandoned shell to a fully-renovated, 12-unit apartment complex.

Looking forward, Tracy wants to use video to reach a different audience: “We’ll work with the advocacy department to capture stories, both that are inspiring but also that help us to affect change in the city by having people speak to the challenges that they face and the things that are needed to help people move people out of poverty.”

—Liz Whitehurst