Kim Guardado of the nonprofit Hawkeye Area Community Action Plan, or HACAP, presented at the Lester Buresh Family Community Wellness Center Thursday,
Oct. 3, as part of the adult speaker series. More than 30 members of the community were in attendance.
The four pillars of the HACAP Food Reservoir strive to meet are to feed, nourish, empower and unite. Guardado has lived in Mount Vernon for more than 27 years. She became director of the Food Reservoir in 2018.
“I just got my feet wet in what we were doing there to distribute food before the pandemic hit, and we had to shift what we were doing,” Guardado said.
Guardado said the need has drastically increased for HACAP Food Reservoir and their services since the pandemic.
One of the areas they are working on is finding ways to make access to food more equitable, by focusing on the types of foods that are offered that people would use in their diets.
Guardado said when discussing food insecurity, they are always using the term “neighbors impacted” instead of “individuals” or “person” to keep the focus on the fact that the person who needs help could be someone in the same community as you and keep the dignity for those who need to utilize the resource.
HACAP works with multiple partner agencies in the area, more than 300 in the seven-county area they serve.
The majority of the food they receive comes from direct donations, with 60 percent of all food received being donated. Some of that comes from partners like large grocers of Target, Wal-Mart, Hy-Vee and even Quaker Mills.
HACAP has a 19,000 square foot warehouse in Hiawatha which is able to store 1.2 million pounds of food.
A total of 25 percent comes from the USDA, which amounts to a lot of the staple food items. “The USDA has done a lot to make sure what we’re receiving from them is more nutritious in value,” Guardado said. “We get a lot more fresh produce, whole meat and even canned goods with reduced sodium.”
The remaining 15 to 20 percent of food for the reservoir comes from direct purchases. Guardado said that mount has increased in recent years due to the increased use of the facility.
A quarter of HACAPs mobile food pantries are set up in Jones County, as a portion of that county operates in a food desert with no direct access to food in their community without the pantries.
Other mobile pantries rotate through the seven-county radius, with different days of the week they may be set up in these towns.
One of the commitments they strive to meet is not to purchase more than 20 percent of foods people should eat sparingly.
“Palm oil is one of those foods that is a ‘use sparingly’ produce that is used in a lot of cooking for some of our international clientele they can’t always find locally,” Guardado said.
For the nourish goal post, Guardado said the goal is to help make the healthy choice easier for people they serve.
That’s come through with partnerships with the Department of Health and Human Services and local clinics and hospitals to screen for people who need access to food.
Empowering is working with other individuals to spread the word about the need for hunger in the community.
“There’s a good chance that even if we have all the food we think we’re going to need, we’re never going to be able to solve the problem of hunger,” Guardado said.
“Feeding people is important, as is access to healthy food, but there are things we need to tackle through policy changes.” Guardado said they work with partner agencies to get food to as many people as possible, and they can’t let “perfection get in the way of progress.”
One of the areas the organization will be working on in the future is the Wellington Heights neighborhood in Cedar Rapids, which just lost a Hy-Vee grocery store.
“We’re working to make sure whatever we implement at Wellington Heights meets the needs of the people who live there,” Guardado said.
She said the unite pillar works to make sure people see neighbors who are hungry as something people can not ignore.
During the past legislative session, the organization received an additional $350,000 to help with the Choose Iowa program. That was from a $5 million request, but that will still help people in the state.
During audience comments and questions, one attendee pointed out that up to a third of Mount Vernon and Lisbon may be dealing with food insecurity, and many of them work at some of the larger donors for food to the food reservoir. The same commenter also noted that in some ways those who provide assistance to those suffering food insecurity become an industry themselves.
Guardado said she agreed with the first point, but on the second that no matter what is done to tackle food insecurity, there will need to be people working to keep the equitable distribution.
“I’d love to work myself out of my own job, because that means we’ve tackled a lot of grounds to make hunger a thing of the past,” Guardado said.
HACAP is also one of the only food reservoirs that has a designated social worker.
In Linn County, 10 percent of the population is food insecure, including 15 percent of the child population.
The average person pays $342 for meals per month, while the average SNAP benefit is $127 per individual, leaving a $215 deficit.
Another questioner asked if they grow large amounts of produce like peppers, what is the best option to get those to people — providing to the local food pantry at Southeast Linn Community Center or to the HACAP food reservoir. Guardado said checking with the local food pantry first is advised, and if they have too many then check with HACAP.
“There are times when SELCC is asking people to take produce off their hands, that is meant for everyone who sees it,” Guardado said.
“They want the produce to go to people, not just rot. Guardado also said that resources like dietitians help by teaching people how to use