Behind the Story: An Interview with Doreen Wohl, West Side Campaign Against Hunger
Posted by Mark Foggin
Foggin: When I was asked to visit the West Side Campaign Against Hunger’s emergency food program at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Certainly not aisles of stocked shelves nor checkout counters. I didn’t expect to see people with shopping carts picking their way past one another in the aisles. But that’s exactly what I found. It felt like a small supermarket. And the people in it seemed just like shoppers I might find in my local grocery store. There wasn’t much around that screamed out “food pantry.” And that’s just the way Doreen Wohl likes it. Doreen Wohl arrived at West Side 16 years ago. And while the program was well intentioned, she saw a lot of things that struck her as not quite right about West Side’s approach to emergency food.
Wohl: When this program was founded in 1979, it was a traditional pantry where church members packed bags and they were handed out to people. For the most part, the bags were the same size, regardless of household size. And it was a very uniform bag with a set of list of food: tuna fish, macaroni & cheese, peanut butter & jelly, canned beans, canned vegetables, canned fruit, rice, pasta. Customers were handed a bag. I saw them looking through them and exchanging items. And they were told, “No please don’t do that. Please take your bag and leave.” But what they were doing made sense because they basically know what their family needs. They know what they have at home, they know their health conditions, and they can make the best selections.
Foggin: So in 1993, a few months after Wohl arrived, West Side changed over to being a customer choice super-market style food pantry where customers would have the ability to select food based on their families’ preferences, health needs, and other home requirements like, for instance, the size of their refrigerators.
Wohl: We were the first in the country really allowing customers to select their own food. There’s a grain section with bread, brown rice, white rice, pasta, cereal. On the protein shelves we have the widest range we can get: peanut butter, canned beans, black eyes, chick peas, red kidney beans, dry beans, whole green peas. And we have the jack-rabbit pinto beans. So people regardless of their cultural background, whether they’re Hispanic, Afro-American, Russian, Jewish – they should be able to find something that they can use.
Foggin: When customers arrive at West Side they’re not just provided with emergency food. Each customer checks in with a social service staff person who speaks with them about a range of needs they or their families might be able to address with some of the 20 agencies that the WSCAH works with.
Wohl: They’re referring people for child care, for housing, to Dress for Success, and for job training programs. The Children’s Aid Society comes here two days a week to enroll children for health insurance. The New York City Human Resources Administration is now coming here two days a week and enrolls people in food stamps. We have 27 different categories of services we’re referring people to and we’ve developed fantastic partnerships with other agencies (And) that helps people gain the service.
Foggin: When Wohl says that, she isn’t just speculating. Not long after she arrived at West Side, Wohl — who studied economics and sociology in England where she is from — began collecting information on every customer who walked through the door in an effort to understand the needs of the seven or eight thousand unique customers that visit the pantry each year. And maybe even more importantly, those data help her to understand the impact of the services they are connecting customers to.
Wohl: Over the years, the percentage of people who follow-up and gain the service they are referred to has increased from 18% to 34%. And of the people who keep the appointment, something like 79% are gaining the service. When we did an analysis of what services the customer are referred to based on the frequency of their visits, we found: of those who visit us once, 35% are referred for another service. For those who come twice, 50% are referred. People who come 6-9 times, 96% are being referred for other services. It shows that the people who continue to come back are needy and are getting services. And those that are referred the most are gaining those services. So there’s a value in terms of people coming back.
Foggin: This is perhaps not surprising since those customers who return frequently probably have the greatest need. But, Wohl says, it’s also because trust is developed between the social service staff and returning customers who are treated with dignity and respect. But that requires constant attention, Wohl says, especially among the volunteers at WSCAH.
Wohl: A middle class volunteer will see a customer come in and they will take the customer’s card from them and reading it to them to say “You can do this, you can do that.” And I say to the middle class volunteer “You have just snatched somebody’s handbag away from them. If somebody came to you in a supermarket and took your handbag, what would you do? You have just taken away somebody’s ability to make their own selection.” And I purposely say it in those terms to startle them. The volunteer wants the satisfaction of feeling that they’ve helped somebody without realizing that that is taking away somebody else’s sense of dignity. So, it pleases me no end when I see customers just coming in and functioning as if they’re in a supermarket. That’s what it should be.
Foggin: Wohl’s focus on data carries over from the social service aspect of West Side’s work to the actual food choices made available, too.
Wohl: We’ve paid a lot of attention to good nutrition. Starting when Fern Gale Estrow was our nutrition consultant, we have tracked and analyzed the nutritional value of all of the food that comes in here. We put that on a spreadsheet and divided it by where the food comes from. (It primarily comes from Food Bank of NYC, NYC HRA, US DA TEFAP, and City Harvest. We’ve been able to work with these agencies to point out to them when items that they have purchased have been high in high fructose corn syrup or high in salt. I, stubbornly, have presented the analysis at every Food Bank Advisory meeting there was, and now the Food Bank is purchasing fruit in juice. They have a policy that they will not purchase fruit with high fructose corn syrup, and they will attempt to purchase vegetables with a salt content of 120mg or less.
Foggin: Wohl points to several reasons for West Side’s success, from its supermarket customer-choice model to its use of data to make management decisions. Good management practices means they have food on the shelves every day. It also doesn’t hurt that over the past 16 years she has managed to grow the Campaign’s fulltime staff from three to fourteen. But she is adamant when she says the biggest reason for the program’s success is also what she’s proudest of.
Wohl: We involve the customers. We go to customers and say, “Can you help?” Customers help on delivery day, bringing in the food. Every day they are constantly restocking the pantry shelves. They help break down boxes. They work the checkout table. It’s functioning with customers that changes the atmosphere here. I’ve seen the supermarket model used other places without the customer cooperative. That means it continues to be done in a charitable manner.
Foggin: And that frustrates Wohl. She’s acutely aware of the larger realities for people who come to receive emergency food.
Wohl: This is a band-aid. For people to come to emergency food, they don’t have sufficient money to be able to go to the local supermarket—if it exists—to purchase their food. And so they’re coming to emergency food outlets. It is separate and unequal. Everybody ought to be able, ideally, to shop in their local neighborhood at a wonderful supermarket, or greenmarket that carries fresh produce as well as good quality canned goods at a decent price. Everybody should have easy access to healthy food in their own neighborhoods. Instead, you have minimum wages that are not living wages. You have welfare that has not increased the grant quota since 1990. And you’ve got disability and unemployment that are not providing a living income. So emergency food is part of a dysfunctional system in terms of income and wages. It’s discriminatory that low-income people have to come to emergency food programs. We try to put the best face on it and do the best job and use it as an advocacy tool for change. But we should not be something that goes on and on and on for 50 years.
To find out more about West Side Campaign Against Hunger, visit http://www.wscah.org
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