Description
The Emergency Food Action Center The Coalition Against Hunger's groundbreaking Emergency Food Action Center (EFAC) provides comprehensive technical assistance through workshops and one-on-one training to soup kitchens and food pantries - helping these agencies build capacity, expand and diversify their services, and achieve long-term efficiency.
Interfaith Voices Against Hunger NYCCAH's Interfaith Voices Against Hunger (IVAH) program engages religious and civic leaders and people of varied faiths to address hunger and advocate for intensified government action to alleviate poverty. IVAH works to: expand and simplify access to food stamps and other government nutrition assistance programs, support the passage of living-wage legislation, increase government support for food pantries and soup kitchens, and help people with low-incomes develop assets and move toward financial independence.
Policy Research and Development Project The Policy Research and Development Project determines the extent and causes of hunger in New York City and the U.S. and proposes innovative ways to tackle the problem. NYCCAH conducts extensive field research for its annual hunger survey, which is the city's most comprehensive annual study of hunger. The study assesses changes in demand, resources, and demographics at soup kitchens and food pantries. Needs assessments are also conducted on a semi-annual basis.
Communications Initiative The Communications Initiative uses the mass media, the Internet, newsletters, and other creative ways of message delivery to inform New Yorkers about hunger and poverty and concrete ways they can help address it.
Benefits Outreach The Benefits Outreach Program connects pantries and kitchens with key anti-hunger and anti-poverty programs, including: Food Stamps; Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); Child and Family Health Plus; School Meals; After-School Snacks; Summer Meals; and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
AmeriCorps*VISTA Leadership Development The AmeriCorps*VISTA Project places developing leaders at pantries and kitchens in all five boroughs of New York City. This project provides daily assistance to agency staff in order to improve professionalism, organize cooperative neighborhood networks to diversify services and reduce service duplication, and effectively tackle social problems in the community. VISTA participants also develop the professional skills needed to take on future management roles in nonprofit groups and neighborhood initiatives.
Technology Project The Technology Project helps kitchens and pantries utilize computer hardware and software to feed more people, track clients, plan budgets and keep financial records, conduct benefits outreach, link clients to jobs, and perform other vital functions. To date, NYCCAH has provided two dozen agencies with donated hardware, software, and relevant training.
Volunteer Matching Center The Volunteer Matching Center places hundreds of volunteers at kitchens and pantries to help meet basic needs such as stocking shelves and serving food. The Coalition Against Hunger also recruits long-term, professionally skilled volunteers to help kitchens and pantries perform tasks essential to their program development, like fundraising, computer skills training, graphic design, and accounting.
