Food On The Move Aims To Raise Awareness During Hunger Action Month

September is Hunger Action Month, and it's a nationwide effort to raise awareness about hunger and inspire action.

Food on the Move founder Taylor Hanson spoke with Tess Maune about the effort.

Tess: Hunger is a big deal. We have prices in grocery stores that are skyrocketing, and that has a lot of people needing help to put food on the table. So, what are the needs you're seeing in our community?

Taylor: Well, like you said, unfortunately, the cost of food is rising. You know, Food on the Move was founded 10 years ago this month. So, we feel that impact, and we're grateful that we have seen an impact that we were able to make, and we've taken a different approach than many, which is we go into the communities that we know are struggling, that don't have grocery stores, are food insecure, and are in food deserts. The term food deserts gets used a lot, but I think people don't necessarily know what it means; it mostly means there's not a grocery store. What it also means is just the general resources around fresh produce, healthy food, and affordable food, it's really difficult, and so we know that many people who are particularly on that list of struggling with hunger live in those neighborhoods.

Food on the Move does multiple events throughout the month where we go. We call them food and resource festivals. So we want to encourage people to come to those, and there you get a bag of fresh produce. We try and put the good stuff in people's hands. And throughout the month, we're working with community partners. We have gardens that we have within the community, so we're growing food, and we work with the neighborhoods to say, hey, this isn't just what can you get in the store, and getting resources in your hand that you can take somewhere else. But we want to have food as close to you as possible.

We've served over 5000 families during this year, over 60,000 pounds of produce. We've given out over 8000 food truck meals, because, we like to bring for-profit, nonprofit, and government agencies together because everybody has something to give. I think getting our small businesses, like we worked through COVID, we found that we had all these incredible small businesses like food trucks that had been there for us, had given meals. And then when the terrible thing that we all suffered through with COVID, we saw that small businesses like food trucks needed help. And so we found ways to support them, get their meals into the hands of people that needed it and see that community impact.

So if you're with Food on the Move, you'll see partnership. You'll see collaboration. Also, throughout anything we're doing, something that's important to us is just the dignity of food and treating people with respect no matter who shows up at our event. We don't want somebody to come and feel embarrassed that they have a need or maybe that they can't expose what they're struggling through, because everybody at an event at Food on the Move has something that they're working through. And so you might be there to volunteer and help. You might be there because you're down to your last few dollars and you need to feed your family, but everybody is there just celebrating community and making sure people are taken care of.

Tess: Yeah, you guys go out of your way to make people feel welcome there. That's so important. And I know you do that a lot of times. You have the end-of-the-month resource, which you were talking about. You've got more coming up this month, Sept. 17 at Chamberlain Park, September 19 at TCC Northeast TCC Northeast Campus and the Northwest Tulsa Hub on September 24. Now, in addition to this, are you doing more with September's Hunger Action Month?

Taylor: We're working with a variety of different partners throughout the month. Work super closely with Catholic Charities. We grow fresh produce, and they have a great facility there at their campus where fresh produce will come, oftentimes directly from our farm to families. We work closely with the food bank. We love what they do. Have since the very, very beginning. One of the things that we want to encourage people to do is to actually get invested in what we're doing that impacts not just this month. We encourage people to get involved as volunteers so they can help us grow. In each of those places where you're talking about those events, we have these gardens, and those gardens are cultivated by volunteers, partners, and community members. Every month, people are struggling. Like you said, the cost of food is going up, partly because it's traveling too far. And we want to bring food closer to people, which is what we're working on in a big way, and get people growing things again.

Tess: And you're teaching people how to grow their own produce. And there is great value in that.

Taylor: It's huge. Yeah, and it's the future farmer. We want to see more farmers choosing to build a business in Oklahoma so that food can be grown and get directly to families because that's one of the best ways we can lower the cost of food.

Tess: So if someone's watching this and they say, 'Hey, I want to volunteer,' or hey, I could use some help, and I want to be part of this organization,' what do they need to do?

Taylor: FoodontheMoveok.com or Food on the Move OK on other social media outlets, you can easily sign up to volunteer. You can easily sign up to show up and go to an event and receive support, receive help, and also many, many other community partners that we work with. If you come to a food and resource festival, it's food and resources. So you may end up with job opportunities that you connect with. You may find other resources for health care. We get people together and make sure that you have a connection point to make a difference for your family.