Lets Add to the Insanity of the 2KL4SKL Bus Project: The SNAP Challenge

So, we bought a school bus.

I'm hoping its not the worst decision we have ever made.

Adam has slowly, much too slowly been morphing it into, what hopefully will be a living space. 

 And I have been trying to pack up our house, sew a million curtains, and keep life normal.  We have successfully (what is success anymore??) been navigation the line somewhere between a mess and a disaster.

Some days I drop both of the kids off at the bus stop, other days I drop off one at the bus stop while the other would rather hold my hand the whole way, since I walk past the school on my way to work anyway. We always arrive just at the front just as the buses pull up to the back.

I spend more than I ever imagined staring at a computer screen, navigating an entirely new and foreign world of a federally funded affordable housing project. Damn, that shit is complicated.

Late August, I received an email about participating in the Community Food and Agriculture Coalition's SNAP Challenge to raise funds for the Double SNAP Dollars program that, true to it's name, doubles the value of SNAP benefits spent on fresh fruits and vegetables at participating locations. So, SNAP is the snazzy acronym for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formally known as Food Stamps), and the challenge is to have folks to pledge to live on a limited food budget for a week. The guidelines are to spend $5 per person per day. For my family of four my budget is that is $20 per day. Which now, as I'm putting it in writing sounds a little wrong - pledge a week to eat like a poor person – a strange kind of class appropriation, except for years I didn't eat like a poor person, I was a poor person.

I started this blog, in part, to indirectly talk about poverty in America.

So of course, I'm in.

First thing first:

SNAP. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The program is miss-named. For many, including my family, this SNAP wasn't a supplement to an existing food budget. It is the food budget.

Second thing second:

SNAP can be spent on FOOD PLANTS! This is a less widely promoted benefit of the SNAP. I was unaware for the first year or two, but as soon as I figured it out, I planted entire gardens using SNAP benefits to purchase seeds and starts.

Third and best of all:

Participating locations in Missoula (farmers markets, a few CSAs, and the Food Coop) will DOUBLE SNAP benefits.
 Wow.
 What?
 So cool.
 Every summer, I would turn my SNAP benefits into wooden tokens, spend those devoted to fruits and vegetables, and hoard a few tokens into a small stockpile (and an accounting nightmare for those who track the tokens) until I had set aside to buy a bulk purchase of pork from the Farm to Market Pork vendor.
Why?
Because it was a way to budget and bulk purchases are cheaper.  When you buy more than 20 lbs of meat there is a discount. Buying in bulk is not always an option when the daily budget is $5 per person per day. But, when SNAP benefits spent on Fruits and Vegetables, go twice as far it opens the remainder of the supplement up to so many creative possibilities. In addition to bulk pork purchases, there are the cases seconds tomatoes and peaches that I canned and lined my kitchen with and lasted far beyond the summer season.  

These days, I work one just over half time job, hold an elected office that has a stipend and provides health insurance for Adam and I, sell my pottery, and Adam works full time. We no longer receive SNAP, but our food budget and habits haven't changed much since those days, and I am still regularly drowning in the anxiety of my day to day.

Our SNAP challenge starts, the 20^th and ends the 27^th.

I will try to post along the way.... you can follow along... 

And you can have a positive impact on people's lives by increasing access to healthy food choices.. 

It can be found here:

My Double SNAP Dollars Fundraiser

My goal is to raise $1000. (My secret goal is to raise twice that.. but shhh... )
The overall goal is to raise $16,000, which results in a purchasing power worth $32,000 to be spent on fresh fruits and vegetables.  

Lets talk about food, food access, and poverty.    

Oh, and lets also talk about how cool are vanity plates are that arrived for the school bus today: 2KL4SKL!