The One-in-Seven Project

[Source: The Leichtag Family Foundation, by Deirdre Maloney, September 9, 2011]

The Project

Like so many organizations around the country and the world, we at the Leichtag Family Foundation take the issue of hunger very seriously. Knowing how many people in the United States make it through each day without proper nutrition is not only incomprehensible – it is also heart-breaking.

To truly understand the issue as it stands in our community, we partnered with the Jewish Community Foundation San Diego in 2009 to commission a study on hunger in San Diego County. The study put what we knew to be a serious issue into real numbers.

Once the study was complete, we knew we couldn’t stop there. We decided to use the information to raise awareness of the issue, and knew that putting real faces to the statistics would help create true understanding.

We provided funding to an incredible group of talented students at Carlsbad High School’s television station (CHSTV) to make it happen. Their charge: create a video illustrating the issue of food insecurity in San Diego. The result was the powerful film One in Seven. The film’s title emphasized the statistic that one in seven people living in the United States are food insecure.  (Sadly, that number is now one in five.)

With such a compelling tool in-hand to tell the story, our next task was to get as many people as possible to watch it – and act as a result. That’s when we embarked on a new project, one that brought together seven nonprofit organizations, all committed to addressing the issue of hunger/food stamp utilization in San Diego County.

The One-in-Seven Project provided funding to these organizations to screen the film with their stakeholders, and to provide follow-up discussion and calls to action. The project was designed to not only increase awareness of the changing face of hunger in San Diego, but also reduce the stigma around food stamps (known in California as CalFresh).

In the end the project’s ultimate goal was to do more than educate. It was to inspire. Specifically, we wanted participants to get involved and advocate on behalf of the CalFresh Act of 2011, which would reduce barriers to participation in the CalFresh program.

The Process

As a foundation managing a number of grants we knew we’d need assistance to coordinate this project, which would begin in January of 2011 and continue through May. For this reason and purpose we brought in an outside consultant, Momentum San Diego.

In fall 2010, we worked closely with Momentum to plan the project, and in early January invited potential partners to a strategic planning meeting to discuss the initiative and brainstorm ways to make the film screenings/discussions most impactful.  Seven organizations submitted applications and received support ranging from $4,000 - $10,000, based on their proposed scopes of work.  The grantees were: 2-1-1 San Diego, Donate Don’t Dump, Feeding America, Interfaith Community Services, Jewish Family Service of San Diego, North County Community Services, and San Diego Hunger Coalition. 

The Outcomes

Quantitative

At the project’s completion, grantees held a total of 79 screenings, engaging 5,252 participants.

While we are extremely pleased by these numbers, the hard work of our grantees resulted in a number of additional positive outcomes. One of the most significant was the progress of the CalFresh Act of 2011, which much of the discussion and calls to action was based. This piece of legislation removes barriers to CalFresh by simplifying the application process and implementing cost savings efforts. It passed through the California Assembly in May 2011.

The project also led to a unique collaborative effort on behalf of several of the grantees, which together hosted a legislative breakfast held in May. The event provided additional advocacy to the California Legislature regarding the CalFresh program. One organization stated that the project resulted in a new level of collaboration among the organizations, which would continue into the future.

Additionally, inspired by the creation of the film, Carlsbad High School students created a teen-run organization, Donate Don’t Dump.  The organization strives to raise consumer awareness about the hunger issue, which persists despite the fact that billions of tons of food are disposed of in landfills each year.  Donate Don’t Dump acknowledges those companies who donate their unused food as “Good Samaritans,” and thereby creates consumer support around those efforts.

Anecdotes

In addition to the quantitative outcomes resulting from the project, partner organizations also reported a wide variety of anecdotal stories about the impact created through the screenings of the film.

Several themes emerged from these stories, including:

• A number of participants self-identified as struggling with hunger themselves during the screenings, providing concrete, powerful examples of the true changing faces of hunger in San Diego.
• Several participants didn’t realize they themselves could qualify for the food stamps program, and made connections through the sessions to begin receiving benefits.
• Many participants were so inspired by the video and the subsequent discussion that they committed to get further involved -- including advocating, donating, volunteering or telling others about the food stamp issue.

In Retrospect: Lessons Learned

We always strive to learn valuable lessons from every project, and at the completion of the One-in-Seven Project asked our grantees to report back to us. They identified the following strengths of the project:

• The power of the One-in-Seven film itself
• The specific calls to action distributed at the sessions, which gave participants concrete, immediate steps they could take to make a difference in the hunger issue
• The connection to and endorsement of the project by the Leichtag Family Foundation,  which resulted in an increased willingness by community members to attend and host events

Through our own review of the project we identified a number of additional strengths. One was the incredible collaborative spirit of the grantee organizations who joined together in a variety of ways, both within and outside of the scope of work we funded. We also believe that working with an outside consultant to coordinate the many parts of the project proved to be helpful in moving the initiative forward while allowing us to act in the more appropriate role of funder.

As part of our learning process we also noted a few challenges that arose through the duration of the project, which we overcame by brainstorming solutions and course-correcting as the project period progressed.

Primary among these was the grantees’ difficulty in attracting participants to newly created video screening events. When this proved to be a barrier, many grantees decided to change their plans and integrate the screenings/discussions into existing events in the community. These strategies were met with considerable more success.

Another lesson learned relates to the relatively brief project period, which lasted five months. Our decision to conduct the One-in-Seven Project  from January through May was due to concerns that the information in the video would become dated fairly quickly. Now that we have conducted this kind of project we will be able to execute similar initiatives more quickly, allowing for a longer project period and, thus, more screenings and participants as a result.

All in All…

Looking back, the One-in-Seven Project was an incredible six months, filled with positive outcomes and lessons learned. It is exciting to know that thousands of people learned about the issue of food insecurity by watching such a powerful video. It is also an important and concrete reminder of how media can play a role in helping to support critical legislation.