Staten Island Hunger Task Force Highlights Increasing Food Insecurity, Struggles Related To Major Funding Cuts

Staten Island Hunger Task Force Highlights Increasing Food Insecurity, Struggles Related To Major Funding Cuts

Editor’s note: Below are the meeting minutes from the last two meetings of the Staten Island Hunger Task Force.  As mentioned in our article from National Volunteer Week, the rubber has met the road in terms of the USDA’s funding for some critical nutrition programs, including providing fresh fruits and vegetables to SNAP recipients in various ways.  So far, $1 Billion has been cut from food and nutrition programs for the most vulnerable populations, including low-income elderly residents and children whose parents lack sufficient income to provide food for them without government assistance.  The last meeting minutes that were available prior to the below were published in the beginning of March, and contained the minutes from February and January of this year.  The situation has evolved since that time.  

Staten Island Hunger Task Force Meeting Minutes April 7th 2025

Attendance: Chris Dowling, Heather Butts, Ginny Mantello, Terry Troia, Delila Nadal, Susan Fowler, Cathy Carlson, Zeyna Flutie, Priscilla Marco, Tommy Bond, Alemayhu Ayele, Lynell Buno, James, Dawn Bridgeford, Paloma Wassesstein, Alex Hughes, Fr. Hank, Will Dougherty, Steven Kaufman, Diana Malone, Amelia Winter, Tim McIntyre, Jack Martz, Giomelly Barton, Alex Korkhov, Antionette Donegan, Veronica Gambon, Michael Avanites, Holly Bonner, Neil Berry

Heather Butts –

Kicked off the meeting with a welcome and an announcement that the Hunger Task Force has finished preliminary paperwork with the Lawyer’s Alliance to explore the possibility of forming a 501(c)3 or other possibilities for the future of the Hunger Task Force, allowing critical thinking and strategic planning for the future. There is a food drive being held by Monsignor Farrell High School that will be passing out food to many local food pantries. Our upcoming candidate forum will be held on May 30th, details to follow

Food For All – Terry Troia

Guest Speaker Alex Hughes –

Rally to oppose cuts to the CFC program at City Hall. This past year the budget was $59 Million. The proposed budget would cut that number to $21 Million. Our major allies in food insecurity gathered to ask for a reversal of the cut and to expand CFC to $100 Million in order to help offset cuts for pantry programs from federal programs. We have already seen a tremendous $1 Billion cut to the federal LFPA program. This money was earmarked to be spent at local markets to feed local pantry recipients and school children. The impact here goes beyond food, taking money out of local economies and weakening local supply chains. TEFAP is also in jeopardy, seeing shipments stopped, with an impact feeding programs are already feeling.

We are also advocating for a $100 SNAP minimum in New York. [For] each $1 spent in SNAP, $1.50 is generated in economic activity, totalling $500 Million in economic activity just from SNAP dollars annually on Staten Island.

Paloma Wasserstein – JCC Digital Choice Pantry

Steven Kaufman – new pantry manager at JCC

Gave a brief overview of the Digital Choice (Market by Met Council) pantry and demonstrated the website and ordering interface, as well as an explanation of how points are allocated and how they can be spent.

Will Dougherty – Council Member Holden’s Office

Pilot program for pet food pantries. This would start with a 12 month trial period where we collect data and use that data to hopefully argue for a permanent and comprehensive citywide pet food pantry program. This is incredibly important, especially for disabled individuals with service animals. The service animals are typically provided for free, but the food is not, and without a proper diet, a service animal cannot be as effective.

Zeyna Flutie – American Heart Association

Community impact and collective goals for sustainable change are among the things we are most interested in pursuing. The Heart Association works with CBOs in a few ways. Health screenings, capacity building for food storage, and policy insistence change are among the ways AHA works to support the work of CBOs who work in food insecurity. AHA is funding training for CBO staff in CPR as well. Any CBO looking to engage with the AHA in these ways can reach out to Zeyna.

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Meeting Adjourned

Staten Island Hunger Task Force Meeting Minutes March 3rd 2025

Attendance: Chris Dowling, Heather Butts, Ginny Mantello, Terry Troia, Delila Nadal, Susan Fowler, Cathy Carlson, Zeyna Flutie, Veronica Gambon, Priscilla Marco, Tommy Bond, Carol Cocitto,

Rev Faith Togba, Zulma Cruz, Flynn Ferguson, Neil Berry

Rev Faith Togba –

Gave a brief overview of the pantry work at Harvest Intercontinental Church and his own experience and struggles regarding food insecurity. Highlighted the community need along the Bay Street corridor

Zulma Cruz –

Project Hospitality is in great need of volunteers with legal status in order to supplement the volunteer effort that is suffering. These pantries used some undocumented volunteers; which is no longer an option with the state of affairs recently. They are pivoting strategy and logistics to minimize risk to the clients, volunteers, and pantry as a whole.

Flynn Ferguson –

The Ferryhawks are setting up a food collection at the front gate to exchange non-perishable foods for game tickets in support of and to bring awareness to food insecurity in our community and donate the foods collected to local food banks or pantries. This will occur at one game per month, and they hope to partner with at least 10 local food pantries for this initiative this season. A flyer and further details will follow.

Food-For-All

Terry Troia –

Gave a brief description of our Legislative Brunch, and praised our successes as well as discussing goals for future events. Our forum was great and we had amazing panelists and our keynote speaker was amazing. We lacked time for Q&A and lacked press at the event, but we hope to rectify this in the future.

Zeyna Flutie – American Heart Association

Current local opportunity in order to train local CBO staff is CPR with the goal being a multilingual network of trained staff across the area and increase the community’s capacity to deal with a cardiac emergency.

Meeting Adjourned

Banner Image: Food pantry. Image Credit – Aaron Doucett