Beyond The Bottom Line: Exploring The Multifaceted Impacts And Adaptive Management Of An Emergency Food Assistance Program

Paper 1: The multiplier effect in action: perceived indirect impacts of innovative emergency feeding programming on communities The COVID-19 pandemic amplified or magnified several interconnected slow-crises, including hunger, housing, vulnerable food supply chain, and job insecurity. Closely interconnected with this surge in food insecurity were other social issues worsened by the pandemic, such as unemployment, poverty, and health disparities. These challenges were disproportionately experienced by low-income households and communities of color (Head & Alford, 2015; Christensen & Lægreid, 2020). Many interventions were made across the globe to mitigate the direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic, including food and hunger intervention programs like the Vermont Everyone Eats (VEE) emergency feeding program. There is evidence that the VEE funds were amplified through a "three-legged stool" approach; supporting local restaurants, and food producers, and addressing food insecurity simultaneously (Vermont Everyone Eats, 2023). This paper argued that the relief money from the VEE program was multiplied in ways that cannot be fully accounted for within a capitalistic model. Drawing on an analysis of 44 interviews with VEE leadership, the program multiplied relief money to develop a statewide identity, new norms, and new networks that are difficult to quantify financially. I asked, beyond the direct impacts, what indirect impacts did VEE leadership perceive the VEE feeding program as having on Vermont communities? VEE was perceived by program administrators to have contributed to Vermont communities’ resilience by (1) improving service delivery of food aid programs, (2) building and empowering communities, and (3) breaking silos and forming unlikely partnerships, all indirect impacts of the program far extending beyond its measurable and intended or direct economic and other benefits. Paper 2: Navigating the certainties and uncertainties: emergency feeding program management and federal disaster relief funding. Communities must navigate both certainties and uncertainties as they experience and respond to crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, a chaotic situation which brought with it many underlying societal issues, including food insecurity. I sought to understand what impacts VEE Leadership perceived federal disaster response funding structure as having on the design and delivery of the VEE emergency feeding program. I looked at how organizations involved in the design processes navigated and responded to those certainties and uncertainties in their decision-making processes and the implementation of the program. Findings show that how the emergency response funding program was structured created both certainty and uncertainty during times of crisis. Federal disaster response funding, with its short-term cycles and uncertainty around renewal, created significant challenges for stakeholders in planning, adapting, communicating with partners, and ensuring continuity of services during the crisis even though it enabled the rapid launch of VEE at the onset. Through the experiences of the organizers of VEE, we see the complex interplay between certainty and uncertainty that surround the management of an emergency feeding program. It shows that funding though positive, could present initial certainties by providing initial financial resources to roll out the program effectively. Despite these challenges, Vermont Everyone Eats demonstrated remarkable adaptability and resilience.