Date of Award

Winter 3-1-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Food Science

First Advisor

Simone Camel

Abstract

Many individuals are struggling with food insecurity in Louisiana; according to the Louisiana Food Bank Association's website, Feeding Louisiana’s 2023 impact report, an estimated 683,100 people in Louisiana experience food insecurity. In northwest Louisiana, 30% of the population lives below the poverty line, with an average income of $34,485 per household. Common Ground is a nonprofit community outreach program in Northwest Louisiana, specifically Shreveport. The program has been in operation for over 20 years and strives to provide a place free of judgment and a place of common ground for those in the Cedar Grove community. Each week, they have a variety of programs for both children and adults, in addition to a community meal and the opportunity to access their food pantry (Common Ground, n.d.). All service organizations were strained during the COVID-19 pandemic as they are in other crises such as natural disasters. This research project sought to reflect on the experiences of this organization, the challenges encountered and the strategies it employed to provide supplemental foods to the community during the COVID-19 pandemic periods. It is not unusual in the best of times for these organizations to report financial constraints, limited storage for food, limited volunteer labor and needed connectedness with the clients (Cahill et al., 2017; Vaterlaus et al., 2018). The challenges, process changes, delivery of services, and organizational resilience were explored. Many food system changes, including food access and delivery during the pandemic, resulted in many strategic changes for service organizations, particularly feeding the food insecure in the community. Organizations needed to make quick adjustments to operational process, some were temporary others were retained after the pandemic. Case studies such as this one may assist organizations in reflecting on the actions taken during times of stress, such as natural disasters and pandemics in order to prepare for future stressors and by building successful strategies and resilience. The specific objectives of this retrospective case study included 1) determining the changes in the community meals served and the pounds of food distributed via the food pantry before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic using retrospective organizational data, 2) conducting an analysis of the management strategies for serving meals and operating the food pantry using in-depth interviews with key management personnel. This organization's quantitative data was used to support key informant interview responses. Data collection commenced following approval from the Common Ground organization and the Louisiana Tech Institutional Review Board (IRB 25-025). The quantitative data chosen for this study was documented during June, July, and August during the years 2019, 2021, and 2023. The year 2019 represented the pre-pandemic period, 2021 represented the occurrence of the pandemic, and 2023 represented the post-pandemic period. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the organization's Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the grant writer, and five long-term volunteers. Data indicated an increased need in the community, as the pounds of food distributed were significantly higher during COVID-19 compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. This may be related to job loss, not being eligible for SNAP initially and the period of time it took to receive approval for support, or having reached the maximum amount of benefits that did not fully meet the needs of the household (Pandemic Unemployment Insurance Provisions; n.d.). The pounds of food distributed post-COVID remained higher than the pre-COVID number. This could be related to the extended time it took for community members to recover financially when returning to work, those taking part-time jobs, having only one worker in the household when previously there were two, and returning to work at lower paying jobs. The number of households served at the food pantry also experienced interesting trends. The number of households served at the food pantry was the highest during the pandemic and the lowest during the post-pandemic period. One explanation for this could be that the Common Ground food pantry was distributing an increased amount of food to a smaller amount of households. The number of community meals served post-pandemic was slightly higher than those served during the pandemic and was substantially higher than the pre-pandemic months. The pandemic introduced new households to the services provided by Common Ground and more may have been accessing the community meal in addition to the food pantry services. The financial recovery time may also have impacted the use of the meal service. An additional explanation for the increase in the community meal attendees could be the community's excitement and need to engage with their community post-pandemic. The interviewees confirmed that new community members who engaged with Common Ground during COVID-19, stayed engaged with Common Ground after COVID-19. The consistency of the program and its volunteers may have contributed to developing the relationships with the clients, which extended client engagement. Additionally, the ability to engage in relationships with others in similar circumstances and feel welcomed by the volunteers might have aided the community members in not feeling embarrassed or shame when accessing these types of services for the first time in their lives. When interviewees were asked what they would recommend to other organizations going through crisis situations, the majority stated they would advise them to simply be flexible and lead with consistency and compassion. They also reported that listening to their community was an essential part of their management strategy so they could quickly adjust processes to meet their needs. The immediate issue was to adjust their process for receiving the large amounts of food needed from a large food bank organization. This meant there was a need to address the food storage issue. One way to prepare for this problem is to consider purchasing or leasing temporary storage for dry or perishable goods and to identify alternate storage sites within the organization. Perhaps some rooms used for congregating could be temporarily used for storage. A plan in place prior to a crisis for food storage can be essential. It was also noted that the volunteers did not receive formal training regarding food safety or creating food boxes or in this case infection control measures. Offering formal training to volunteers would increase efficiency and aid in any confusion that could occur during a crisis. Having the organization develop a written plan for crises and training multiple people on this plan is essential. As with COVID-19, in organizations with very few paid staff, all need to be cross-trained, as key employees or volunteers may have become unable to perform duties due to illness. All organizations could also benefit from communicating with other organizations to create a collaborative plan for emergencies to reduce redundancy of effort. As this organization had an extended reach into the community, it was able to draw upon new volunteer labor. This should be modeled in a collaborative, community plan for future crises. In volunteer-based organizations, the toll on the volunteers can be great if the workload and duties are greatly increased. This was seen in this organization. For example, original efforts at meeting community needs extended past what volunteers could provide and had to be reduced to a manageable level, although still higher than the pre-pandemic period. This organization was nimble enough with adequate resources to move their pantry and community meal services outdoors. Because they owned property near the building, they were able to open two car lines to distribute food. Common Ground had an increased presence on social media, which continued after this experience. The car lines to pick up food boxes also served as marketing for the programs. Volunteers noted that this might have given them some of the new clients, as well as new clients spreading news of the services by word-of-mouth. Future work with volunteer organizations could focus on assisting with development of emergency procedures and strategies for management during crises. Assisting these organizations with finding resources for policies and best practices is essential. It may benefit these organizations to seek like organizations to reflect on their experiences and their management strategies to inform them of the development of crisis plans specific to them. Future research could investigate and document the reasons for continued high levels of access to needed services. This would enable researchers to study the factors that most effected food needs during the pandemic in order to plan for mitigation.

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