‘Food aid’

Natalie Jensen usually can spot someone walking into the Hungry Wildcat Food Pantry for the first time. The student will stroll slowly and “look around a little confused,” she said. “By the second or third time they come in, they’re super comfortable.”

There’s no shame, or shaming, involved. Chico State’s student pantry distributed more than 35 tons of food to 4,000 students last year. According to a 2018 CSU survey, half of Chico State’s students have low or very low food security.

Jensen sees the people behind the statistic. A senior, she works for the university’s Center for Healthy Communities, where she previously interned. CHC initiatives—primarily geared toward nutrition and physical activity—include outreach for CalFresh, the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (also known as “food stamps”). At contact points such as the pantry, Jensen and others let students know that they may qualify, then facilitate the application process.

Both Jensen and Spencer Malugani, a 2018 graduate who interned last spring and now works at CHC, said they’ve enrolled friends in CalFresh.

“My friends were very willing,” Jensen said. “When you explain it as food aid, like how financial aid is money for school, they’re really drawn to that.”

That message—CalFresh as financial aid for food—has proved fruitful for CHC. The California Department of Social Services, which contracts with the center for CalFresh outreach in the North State, just signed a three-year, $33.7 million contract with CHC to replicate this model on 42 additional campuses.

“The demographics of our campuses are changing,” CHC Program Director Jenny Fales said. “More low-income college students are accessing higher-ed, which is fabulous. Now we have to provide those wraparound services.”

The contract calls for CHC to train and support CalFresh campus outreach staffs at 19 other CSUs; 15 community colleges, including Butte and Yuba; four UCs, including Davis; one private university, Mount Saint Mary’s; and two other schools to be added. CHC will continue its work with five North State organizations, including Community Action Agency of Butte County, on boosting CalFresh enrollment.

Chancellors’ offices of the CSU and community colleges will receive funds to support implementation across their state-level systems.

Chico State specifically will reap $6.5 million of the $14.7 million in federal reimbursements associated with the contract. The remainder comes through the state as an allocation of federal SNAP funding. The three-year goal is to add 72,000 enrollees to CalFresh, which would translate into nearly $222 million in food money and $377 million in economic activity.

This expansion might not have occurred if not for, ironically, a contraction. Seven years ago, Fales “ran out of mileage money” in her CalFresh program budget; thus, she told interns and students, they’d have to do their outreach “within walking distance” of the center.

“So they started going to campus,” Fales continued, “and they started finding a lot of college students who looked to be eligible for the CalFresh program. Fast-forward two years: We actually got pretty good at helping college students.”

CHC and partner groups discovered messaging that made an impact “related to financial aid and food aid, which we call CalFresh.” By linking the two, students make a connection.

“A student actually is the one who told me that,” Fales added. “‘Oh, that’s like food aid—that will complement my financial aid.’”

Malugani concurred with Jensen when she said that “sometimes the myth of CalFresh is that the people who receive it are lazy and they don’t really work for it. But we help students who are so busy with just being students—and that’s a full-time job in itself.”