Staten Island Hunger Task Force Recent Meetings: Addressing Urgent Needs Of Local Community

Staten Island Hunger Task Force Recent Meetings: Addressing Urgent Needs Of Local Community

Editor’s note: To see the meeting minutes from June through December, you can see our previous article from SIHTF. Staten Islander also reported on the CLIP program involving local barber shops providing screenings for heart health. 

Low income individuals may be able to benefit from Too Good To Go, an app that offers steep discounts on end-of-day food at local restaurants.  Bagel stores, pizzerias, and restaurants participate, and pickup time windows are narrow and at different times depending on the place. As an example, one can get 15 bagels for $6. And charitable individuals with the time and money to pick up these items can also always bring them to Project Hospitality or a local church that accepts such donations (always call first).

Staten Island Hunger Task Force Meeting Minutes February 3rd 2025

Attendance: Chris Dowling, Heather Butts, Ginny Mantello, Terry Troia, Tim McIntyre, Diana Malone, Delila Nadal, Donna Scimeca, Hank Teull, Susan Fowler, Cathy Carlson, Zeyna Flutie, Veronica Gambon, Alex Hughes, Elser Llamos, Jack Martz, Paloma Wasserstein, Priscilla Marco, Yamina Ramirez, Lisa V, Danielle Parks, Aleyah Llovet, Lynell Bruno, Avenella, Joe Tornello, Teddy Otobo-Sheriff, Joe Magliocco, Tommy Bond, Alex Korkhov, Rosanna Robbins, Chris Rathjen

Chris Dowling – Opened the meeting and began to discuss his new position working on the Medicaid 1115 Waiver with SIPPS. Through this program, there are a host of resources and services available to Medicaid recipients, and providers who have a client base of Medicaid recipients are encouraged to reach out to Chris and SIPPS to partner on many of these great programs and resources and make them available to as many Medicaid recipients as possible.

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Gave a breakdown of how elections are typically conducted within the Staten Island Hunger Task Force (Once a year elections are held and traditionally the Secretary moves to Vice-Chair, Vice-Chair Moves to Chair, and a New Secretary is nominated and elected.) This year, Delila Nadal has stepped down from her role as Secretary and will not be continuing to the Vice-Chair position. This has our slate adjusted to Heather Butts for Chair, Antionette Donegan for Vice-Chair, and Priscilla Marco for Secretary.

Heather Butts – Introduced herself and spoke briefly and gave thanks to several members of our Hunger Task Force team

Elections – Our proposed slate was approved without objection or abstention

Committee Reports

Food For All – Terry Troia

Heather Butts has secured several of our local elected officials to have representatives present at our Legislative forum either in person or via Zoom. We have confirmed City Harvest, Food Bank, and Met Council to speak at our Legislative Forum; we are hoping to also secure a speaker from United Way. There are 3 main areas of concern for groups who deal in food insecurity that they would like to see reflected at all local levels, and will help shape our Legislative Forum. This is the first time that housing and child care concerns have been proposed as solutions to ending food insecurity in New York. We are hoping that our speakers at the forum will speak to this trifecta of root causes of food insecurity. We have confirmed in person attendance from Assembly Member Sam Pirozzolo. Heather is working on securing representatives from each elected official’s office. We have confirmed that someone from the Mayor’s office on Food policy will be present at the forum to speak, either Kate McKenzie herself or her assistant, and we have asked that someone from the State Office of Food Policy be present. This is about more than just speaking our mind, but also giving us a deeper look at the challenges facing needy families on Staten Island. Please get the word out to all of your contacts to join us at our legislative forum.

With the ICE raids on Staten Island and the number of undocumented persons we serve at our food pantries, it is important to strategize how we can provide these families with food without having them line up on the street and become potential targets. We are shifting strategy at the El Centro food pantry to attempt to mitigate the risk. The goal of Food For All is to ensure that each family in need can access food, and this is one concern we have in order to meet that goal.

Data Committee – Tommy Bond

We are attempting to finalize pantry data from 2023 and 2024 in order to provide our community and elected officials with a broad picture of meals served by the collective of the Hunger Task Force as a whole.

Dr. Ginny Mantello introduced our first guest speaker

Zeyna Flutie – American Heart Association

Zeyna has assumed the role previously held by Trevor Martindale. The AHA is one of the largest nonprofits dedicated to cardiovascular health. AHA takes a broad scope on their work, driving equitable impact for the communities they serve. The AHA has an abundance of resources that they intend on using to improve overall health and make an impact on the local communities they serve. Working to meet people where they are is key in improving overall health.

The AHA spans nationally and even internationally in the work they do. There is evidence that 2500 people die from cardiovascular issues in the US daily, totaling over 900,000 people per year. Even with the advances in medicine, there is still much work to be done.

The CLIP program initially involved doing blood pressure screenings at black owned barber shops because the black community is disproportionately affected by comorbidities that negatively impact cardiovascular health. This effort is true to the sentiment of meeting people where they are, and the program has a goal to expand and has an overall goal of decreasing hypertension and assisting people in achieving positive health outcomes.

We have a goal of screening 5000 individuals on Staten Island by March of 2026 and connect those who need it to appropriate medical resources. The AHA can use their resources to assist in many ways to build capacity for food pantries to provide fresh and healthy foods to the community in the interest of benefiting overall community health.

Diana Malone – City Harvest

Introduced Vice President of Programs: Rosanna Robbins

City Harvest recognized that Staten Island is in need of greater food support. City Harvest is vetting and screening potential partners who would fit into the network well. City Harvest deals in large quantities of 1 pallet or more at a time, which is beyond capacity for many smaller pantries, but there are assessments being done in order to adjust and take the correct approach to meet the unmet needs of the community on Staten Island and beyond.

Data is being collected and mapped in an effort to see where City Harvest can direct food in order to serve communities where there is a service gap. This is a long term project and we are still in the early stages, but we are looking forward to expanding our network and meeting the need. This is a process that takes time, but we are doing the work necessary to meet the need in the most effective way possible.

Chris Dowling – Gave a heartfelt thank you to everyone for working with him during his time as Chair of the Hunger Task Force and adjourned the meeting

Meeting Adjourned

Staten Island Hunger Task Force Meeting Minutes January 6th 2025

Attendance: Tommy Bond, Chris Dowling, Heather Butts, Ginny Mantello, Antionette Donegan, Terry Troia, Tim McIntyre, Diana Malone, Delila Nadal, Donna Scimeca, Alemayhu Ayele, Hank Teull, Susan Fowler, Giomelly Barton, Kevin Murphy, Cathay Carlson

Apologies once again. An error in Zoom invalidated the meeting ID and a new one had to be made. Our capacity to send the new meeting link En Masse was lacking, and this led to a very small meeting.

We held a brief discussion on future fundraising opportunities and solidified the date of our legislative forum for February 21st.

Diana Malone – City Harvest – City harvest is talking to at least 64 different organizations and working on solidifying a plan to move City Harvest’s work on Staten Island forward. City Harvest has contacted 35 orgs currently doing food distribution work on Staten Island. The goal is to learn more about each food distribution program and gather information in order to better serve food distribution programs. City Harvest is working on assessing the best way to serve the existing agencies in the network.

City Harvest understands the need on Staten Island and is taking steps to better serve our community. City Harvest has a goal of serving an additional 300,000 pounds of food this year over last year, as well as providing capacity support for pantries in need. We are mapping Staten Island in order to get a better picture of food insecurity on Staten Island and taking appropriate steps in order to meet demand and fill the gaps in service on Staten Island.

Ginny Mantello – RUMC Clinic Food Pantry conversation –

Thousands of families that could benefit from City Harvest’s support. There was an existing pantry in collaboration and located at St. Mary’s across the street. Looking to rekindle this partnership and serve families in need.

Diana Malone – One reason for the ending of pickups from City Harvest’s mobile market was that there are reports that people had been selling/ bartering City Harvest donations with local stores. City harvest may continue the mobile Market program, but it will require a great deal of research and work to make that a possibility.

Terry Troia – The Community distribution at Everyone Eats supported quite a few pantry programs and served a large population mid island. Is it possible to return to this model somehow?

Diana Malone – We want to make sure we provide the right resources and check capacity for any agency who may be able to return this model to Staten Island

Fr Hank – We need help with this situation soon. Food distribution has been closed for about a year and our pantry has been directly impacted by the shutdown, and many small pantries and their clients are suffering as a result. We need food distribution to return to previous levels quickly, and reaching out to City Harvest has proven to be ineffective.

Heather Butts – Perhaps the SIHTF and City Harvest can have a long term strategic planning meeting in order to build a solid plan of action for Staten Island.

Terry Troia – Christian Pentecostal Church has served in the past as a large hub for distribution. Is it possible that their organization would be able to take over and return to that model to fill the gap left by the closing of Everyone Eats?

Diana Malone – Resources are tight and planning needs to happen, but we have not categorically ruled out any potential solution to these issues. Direct pickup by agencies is much more within our capacity at the moment, but we are working on a strategic solution that fits within our capacity and the organizational capacity of our partners

Chris Dowling – We will be reaching out regarding the legislative Forum and an additional strategic planning meeting.

Meeting Adjourned

Banner Image: Asm. Pirozzolo, Rev. Troia, and other guest at Legislative Meeting. Image Credit – SIHTF

SI Hunger Task Force

The SI Hunger Task Force is not a pantry. Instead, we connect community members to pantries and pantries to community and government resources.