When the Going Gets Tough: Alaskans Come Together to Tackle Food Insecurity in Sitka

A USDA Summer Food Service program in Sitka was hosted by Kids Kupboard and Sitka Conservation Society, with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and Youth Advocates of Sitka offering additional support. Sitka Conservation Society (SCS), a partner in the Sustainable Southeast Partnership, served as a catalyst by pulling partners together and handling on-the-ground program administration.

“How can we thrive as a community if people are going hungry? We need to push for systemic solutions to this challenge, while also responding to the immediate needs of our neighbors,” adds O’Connell.

Food security is an ongoing issue for youth and families, and in the summer students lose access to free or reduced-price meals when school ends. Since the summer of 2020, with COVID-19 affecting communities all over the world, food security concerns have only become greater. In August 2020, almost 20% of Americans with children at home couldn’t afford to provide enough food, up from almost 17% in early June. As a result of the pandemic, Feeding America estimates 1 in 6 Americans could face hunger. More Americans than ever before are visiting food banks and many of them are getting help for the first time. These trends are continuing this winter, as COVID-19 transmission rates have spiked, leading to more lockdowns, with school and business closures spreading across the United States.

This year’s USDA Summer Food Service program is not the first local food program SCS has been involved with. Spearheaded by Youth Services Librarian Maite Lorente Rial, the Sitka Public Library integrated a summer breakfast service into their 2019 summer reading program that SCS supported.

“Two years ago, a session at an annual meeting focused on a very simple fact: Hungry kids do not read. Their physical, social, and emotional well-being suffers; and they do not participate successfully in library activities,” says Rial. As she started thinking about how the library could integrate a meal service into their summer program, she turned to the Sitka Conservation Society as a sponsor because of their interest in food security. “Any possible state or federal grant to implement the program required some partnership with local agencies, and SCS, through their local initiatives, was a perfect one to collaborate with,” explains Rial. 

Sitka Public Library’s summer breakfast service returned in summer 2020, sponsored again by the Sitka Conservation Society. As planning for the program began, however, SCS realized that with more parents and families working less and isolating at home, there would likely be a larger need for meal services. This fear was confirmed by the Sitka School District, who saw a dramatic increase in demand for school lunches once COVID-19 hit. The district took advantage of special USDA waivers to provide remote meal service during the school year and the first month of summer, but they anticipated there would be a gap in coverage through July and August. This led the team at SCS to the USDA Summer Food Service program, an underutilized federal program that seeks to ensure that youth from low income families or low income areas have continued access to nutritious meals and snacks while school is not in session. 

One of the first steps to implementing the USDA Summer Food Service program was getting a state-approved sponsor, and SCS found Kids Kupboard. Based in the Mat-Su Valley, Kids Kupboard is a non-profit dedicated to the mission of ensuring that no child goes hungry. The organization is the largest sponsor for youth meal programs in Alaska, providing over 100,000 healthy meals through afterschool and summer programs.

As Executive Director of Kids Kupboard, Lynette Ortolano, highlights, “The start of summer should be a time for fun, but for many families it also means the loss of essential resources that provide food.

This was Kids Kupboard’s first time sponsoring a meal program in Southeast Alaska and for an island community. Usually, Kids Kupboard supports sites within drivable distance, like in Fairbanks and Anchorage. “Sitka was a really exciting opportunity,” says Ortolano. “When the Sitka Conservation Society reached out to us, I was thrilled. After our first call, I immediately reached out to my board to have a discussion about Kids Kupboard in Sitka, and they were totally in favor of helping out kids wherever they lived.”

Without Kids Kupboard, getting this program to happen in Sitka would have been difficult given the barriers for a new organization to become a sponsor. As O’Connell reflects, ”Connecting with Lynette was the watershed moment. She went above and beyond to establish a Kids Kupboard-sponsored Summer Food Service program in Sitka, providing expertise and assistance every step of the way.” 

After fulfilling state application requirements, the focus turned to program design and partnerships. Being a nonprofit organization that was new to hosting a USDA nutrition program, SCS sought out intentional partnerships, recognizing that collaboration would be essential for the program to be as successful as possible. 

Program partner Sitka Tribe of Alaska was vital to administering this program on the ground. “STA was fully committed to the vision of improving food security for youth, and provided a pick up site at the STA parking lot as well as an enthusiastic team to help serve families every week,” explains O’Connell. Sitka is a Tlingit community and food security is also an issue of particular importance to the Alaska Native and Native American community due to persisting economic disparities resulting from colonization and ongoing systemic racism. The 2018 Census reported that the national poverty rate for Native Americans was 25.4%, more than four times the rate among white Americans.

The Sitka School District went out of their way to ensure that the initiative would be a success. Leslie Young, the Food Service/Grants Accountant, shared information and resources with the USDA Summer Food Service program, allowing replication of their model, which helped students and families have a smooth transition to the new location. 

The Sitka Fine Arts Camp (SFAC) provided a home for the program in their kitchen and dining room at Sweetland Hall. During a normal summer, the SFAC campus is bustling, but the camp was shut down due to COVID-19. “Many of SFAC’s staff had been furloughed, so we were excited to rent the space and put a little money back locally there,” adds O’Connell.

Local funding from the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and the Sitka Legacy Foundation helped give SCS the opportunity to use funds in multiple ways to invest back into the community. Much of Sitka’s economy thrives on a booming summer season, which had been stopped in its tracks by the pandemic. The program employed Tribal Tours, a local tourism company set back by a postponed season, as well as continuing a contract through the summer with the Prewitt Bus Company, the regular bus providers for the Sitka School District. The school bus crew made the program even more accessible, by providing meal delivery at multiple locations. This insured that youth with transportation or other barriers were still able to get breakfast and lunch.

Other organizations joined in to support the program. The Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) and local processors and fishermen donated hundreds of pounds of seafood that Food Service Manager Shawn Hutchinson incorporated into meals, making delicious salmon burgers, rockfish fingers, and seafood chowder. “Even with this pandemic, it’s good to see we have such a good and responsive community that helps each other out with this program,” says Hutchinson.

This was not Hutchinson’s only summer job; he also worked as the executive chef at the local Sitka Hotel restaurant, which experienced reduced clientele with the downturn in tourism. He dedicated many early mornings in the kitchen preparing and organizing the meals. “I’m not used to the morning, but I’m happy to get up and make 400 meals to feed the kids,” says Hutchinson.  

Along with investing in local employment, the program served as an opportunity for workforce development. Youth Advocates of Sitka offered employment opportunities for the at-risk youth that they serve, who came in to help pack bags, prepare meals for the next day, break down the inevitable mountain of cardboard after deliveries, and help at the distribution site. YAS Coordinator Sydney Carter shared “When YAS started involving some youth in this project, it was amazing to watch how invested they became, their attention to detail, and offering a helpful hand– especially in the wee hours of the morning. You could tell that it was not only a meaningful collaboration across the community, but a welcome relief in a tumultuous and uncertain time.” For recent Sitka High School graduate Alex Bayne, his job as a Program Kitchen Assistant also served as a stepping stone. “This has been valuable work experience for me to hopefully help get a scholarship for culinary school,” says Bayne.

O’Connell describes building partnerships as a natural step:

The USDA Summer Food Service program ran in Sitka from July 3rd through August 25th, offering on-site pickup and deliveries every Tuesday and Friday. Over 400 families were served each week, with 39,000 meals served throughout the summer. This program offered important benefits to Sitka’s youth and has the potential to do the same for other communities throughout Alaska where children are experiencing food insecurity. 

Despite the Summer Food Service program’s success in Sitka, utilization of this program falls short in comparison with other federal nutrition programs offered during the school year. In Alaska, over 52,000 children participated in the National School Lunch program (free and reduced-cost lunch), almost 26,000 participated in the School Breakfast program, and 35,000 children came from homes who received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program (SNAP) benefits. However, only 4,688 children participated in the Summer Food Service program. This means that tens of thousands of Alaskan children who are participating in nutrition programs during the school year do not have access to meals during the summer. 

These numbers starkly demonstrate a significant access issue with the USDA Summer Food Service program, a conclusion supported by our own challenges getting a new site up and running. Regulatory and financial barriers hinder the ability of small-scale nonprofits and community organizations to take advantage of this program. Specific factors include strict reporting and auditing requirements, location criteria for sites to be eligible, high administrative burden paired with low administrative reimbursement rates, and the requirement that organizations must be able to front the food costs. Potential providers in Southeast Alaska also face unique challenges, including high costs of food and shipping and limited numbers of local agricultural operations that might otherwise be able to provide donations. 

Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski has recognized the importance of the Summer Food Service Program, as well as the challenges it faces. Senator Murkowski co-sponsored the Summer Meals Act of 2019 during the 116th Congress to address some of the problems, stating: “For far too many children in Alaska and across the country, the meals served at school and in afterschool and summer programs are the only meals they can rely on, and when those meals are not available, those children go hungry. Federal policies that make it harder for schools and non-profit agencies to feed hungry children after school, during school vacation, and when schools are closed after a disaster, can and must be fixed.” SCS is hopeful that the Senator will reintroduce this bill in the new session of Congress in 2021.

In spite of the challenges, the USDA Summer Food Service program was implemented successfully in Sitka. Through the generous collaboration of Sitka Conservation Society staff, partners at the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, and Youth Advocates of Sitka, in combination with the leadership of Lynnette Ortolano from Kids Kupboard, a large impact was made for Sitkans battling food insecurity. These partners have set a precedent with Sitka’s program success, but the work is not done. Food insecurity will continue to challenge Sitkans and Alaskans, especially as the economic impacts exacerbated by COVID-19 continue.

“A strong community requires healthy citizens, and without access to nutritious meals, our citizens, in this case our youth, will not grow as strong as they could,” adds Rial. “After this summer’s success, our community cannot go back to a pause on facilitating meals and basic resources to families with youth during the summer months.”