Welcome to our new blog series, No Kid Hungry New York SNAP Spotlights! We’ll be speaking to our grantees across the state learning about the ways they’re increasing SNAP access and supporting families. This month, we heard from Megan Donovan, Senior Manager of Institutional Advancement at the Chinese-American Planning Council, the nation’s largest Asian American social services organization, serving community members in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.
Tell us about your community. What makes it unique and what challenges do families face when it comes to accessing food?
The Chinese-American Planning Council’s (CPC) mission is to promote the social economic empowerment of Chinese American, immigrant and low income communities. CPC is the nation’s largest nonprofit social services organization serving the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community and is a trusted partner facilitating benefits access for AAPI/immigrant New York City (NYC) residents who seek help from agencies that offer linguistically- and culturally-appropriate assistance. We serve community members consisting of monolingual immigrant communities often speaking in regional dialects. NYC immigrant/AAPI residents frequently will travel across the city to access services at one of CPC’s locations in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn to interact with staff who represent their backgrounds and speak their languages.
Unique challenges that our families face include education, for example, the majority of our older adult community members did not receive education beyond middle school (and often times elementary school), so technology and digital literacy is often a barrier; language accessibility and limited English proficiency; culturally-appropriate meals and ingredients; rising costs of food and household essentials; accessible and reliable transportation; as well as barriers associated with mixed-status and undocumented families.
How does SNAP help overcome food insecurity in your community, and what role does your organization play in helping families access these benefits?
SNAP helps seniors and families in our community overcome food insecurity by supplementing their food budget so they can afford more nutritious and healthy food for a strong diet. Especially when families are on a fixed income or when their wages are not increasing at the same rate as the inflation rate, having SNAP benefits is a great assistance to them and also to the community and local businesses where they can purchase food.
What are some of the barriers that families encounter when trying to apply for or access SNAP, and how have you worked to address them?
The majority of our community members face a language barrier and technical barriers and they struggle when trying to apply for or access SNAP themselves. With CPC’s culturally competent staff and linguistic competent staff, we are able to assist community members in applying for SNAP, complete recertification processes, and assist in any other SNAP forms required by the NYC Human Resources Administration.
If you could share one thing with people across the country about SNAP’s impact, especially during times of crisis or need, what would it be?
The positive impact of SNAP can clearly be discerned in the lives of families especially during the times of crisis as shown during the pandemic, when a lot of community members working in the restaurant or housekeepers had lost their employment when the city shut down and their only lifeline for food purchase was from SNAP.
How have families in your community expressed their appreciation for SNAP or shared stories of how the benefits have improved their lives?
CPC has helped many families who were victims of EBT skimming. When they learned of their benefits stolen from them, everyone was upset and anxious. CPC would assist them through all the steps of setting up an account with EBT Edge, canceling and ordering a new card, and submitting a replacement benefit claim. We are now able to put a lock on their EBT card that would stop their card being used online, as many of these stolen were through out of state online transactions. When they come back to our office with the approval letter of their replacement benefits, they are very appreciative of all the assistance they received from CPC.
How has the SNAP grant from No Kid Hungry impacted your ability to support families? Can you share any specific outcomes or success stories?
Support for our SNAP benefits access team in the Lower East Side has been a tremendous resource, especially for our older adult and AAPI communities and families of New York. We serve 10,000 individuals every year with walk-in services, many of them seeking support so that they can not only survive but also make a connection with a caring person who they trust, who respects their dignity, and who is rooting for them in a vulnerable time.
Through this grant, we were able to assist a single mother with two young toddlers navigate the claims process to recoup her stolen funds. The single mother was trying to shop for groceries only to find out that there was zero balance on her EBT card. She did not understand why she had no money left in the card when she knew that she should have over $2,000 left in benefits. She contacted CPC for assistance. We helped her open an EBT Edge account to help her review all the activities. In reviewing, it was evident that all the funds were stolen from purchases from another State. We helped her report the skimming fraud and submit a claim. She was able to recoup only two months of benefits and not the enough balance that was lost. She is very frugal because she is a single mom, always watching every penny. She was very sad that the much-needed SNAP benefits were stolen from her and her kids. However, she was grateful that an organization like CPC was around to help her with the claim and to at least get something back.