by Chris Bernard, President and Chief Executive Officer
Dear Friends, Partners, and Allies,
We at Hunger Free Oklahoma are reflecting on 2022 with gratitude for you and so many others who continued to press on with us in the movement to end hunger across our state and our nation. Last year brought historical movements in the antihunger space nationally, continued progress towards building a stronger food safety net locally, and amazing collaborations and projects for Hunger Free Oklahoma and our partners. I cannot pretend to cover everything that happened over the year, acknowledge every worthwhile project, or acknowledge every partner. Even so, please know that Hunger Free Oklahoma is honored to work with so many of you to make sure every Oklahoman has access to enough food every day.
Nationally, 2022 will be a year of significance for the antihunger movement for decades to come for two reasons. First, it is the year that the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, only the second in history, was held. Hunger Free Oklahoma was honored to attend the conference with national organizations, other state advocacy groups, experts with lived experience, and many others. It was a day of significance that set an ambitious goal, garnered unprecedented commitments, and sought to mobilize a diverse group of stakeholders into a shared mission. Second, the Omnibus bill that passed at the end of 2022 made permanent Summer EBT and non-congregate summer feeding for rural areas; two solutions that Hunger Free Oklahoma and many of you have been advocating to have for years. Unfortunately, it also set a definitive date for the end of the temporary emergency allotment increases to SNAP at the end of February. These are important moments to remember as we reflect on the year and look at what is to come.
This year, we have much to be proud of at Hunger Free Oklahoma. Our team has continued to build on our strengths of fostering collaboration, providing technical assistance, and scaling programs that work.
Our Statewide SNAP Outreach Plan in partnership with Oklahoma Human Services and our many community partners, including Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma and Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, continues to see impressive results with more than 6,584 applications processed through partners and 4,001 through our hotline. We also finalized our new and what we believe to be industry-leading Learning Management System for SNAP enrollment assistance training. It has never been simpler to become a certified SNAP partner, and you will have all the resources and assistance you need at your fingertips.
We also received the largest federal GusNIP (Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program) grant in history, $14.2M, to expand our Double Up Oklahoma (DUO) program to as many as 44 counties in the next four years. This was a matching grant that required us to raise the equivalent before receiving the funds. The support of our amazing philanthropic partners and TSET (Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust) helped us to get that match, and the amazing support of our legislature took us over the top when they voted to include $1.1M annually for the program in the state budget, thanks to the work of our policy team, our partners at the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy, and the LOCAL Coalition. This year alone, DUO helped on average over 14,000 households per month to afford fresh fruits and vegetables to the tune of $2,863,000 in total benefits redeemed.
Our team continued to support and participate in collaborations across the state including the Oklahoma Childhood Food Security Coalition, Tulsa Food Security Council, The statewide Obesity Plan Committee, the Hunger Free Community Coalition in Perry, and the Oklahoma Department of Commerce’s Nonprofit Advisory Council. The Hunger Free Oklahoma team also served as regional and national leaders through leading regional advocacy with the Southwest Regional Office of the USDA, a coalition to support federal policies that enable great nutrition incentive program expansion in states. We are honored to play various roles in each of these important bodies and in each of them can see the core of our mission, collaboration, at work.
We also continued to work to bring new perspectives to the table and make them accessible to stakeholders across the state through our Hungry for Action Speaker Series. With nearly 140 people attending each session on average, we know that people have new ideas to try, new perspectives to consider, and new information to use to advocate for best practices and policies to end hunger in Oklahoma.
There is so much more that I could list that happened over the last year, but we must also look ahead. 2023 is a year that both a new Farm Bill and Child Nutrition Reauthorization could pass. These two pieces of legislation along with consideration of making the Child Tax Credit permanent could bring millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans out of poverty and out of food insecurity. We also know that the long anticipated but uncertain end to emergency allotments, or max benefits, for all SNAP recipients will end in February. We must be sure people are educated about the end of these benefits, that our emergency food assistance partners are supported, that this change is acknowledged, and the impact tracked. We can advocate for more adequate SNAP benefits in this next Farm Bill, for programs that reflect today’s financial realities, and for the supports that senior citizens, families, the disabled, and everyone else needs to have enough food every day.