Our story starts in 2007 in a basement of an old school, where a community initiative, called Support Circles, met weekly. Support Circles aims to inspire and equip families and communities to end poverty. As months went by, individuals made progress. Each week, Circle leaders shared progress and obstacles. One participant, a single mom with 2 kids, was making fast progress – from a waitress making $10 an hour to a bank teller, making $16. One evening she said, “I am proud that I no longer receive SNAP benefits, but all we now eat is cereal.” At over $15 an hour, she lost all SNAP benefits, and won’t break even again until $20 an hour. (Click here to learn more about this gap and her story)

As she shared her story, a systemic issue was revealed. There is a huge gap between when benefits drop off and self-sufficiency. Her story is not unique. 35% of our county lives in this gap. How does this connect to food? When all expenses are fixed such as housing, childcare, and transportation, food becomes the one thing that is a flexible expense and therefore people rely on the cheapest or free food. Circles participants and leaders started to share their stories around town, and people began to listen. The council listened, and we began our journey of addressing food insecurity.

In addition to food access, we started to think about other goals that our council wanted to address. We began to touch base with other food initiatives that were already in progress in the county- Support Circles, Food Recovery (such as Gleaning and the Campus Kitchen Project), a new market (Adams County Farmers Market Association), CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), Community Gardens, and Local Foods Network.

The all-volunteer council’s core membership includes local health and social service agencies, organizations such as the farmers market association, higher education, local government, and community members, with a wide extended network of governmental officials, institutions, growers, and retailers. One of the very first projects we created was a local foods guide, which really helped to bring all of these groups together to work on something tangible that was mutually beneficial for all members.

We have identified the primary elements that have contributed to sustaining our work.  These include having a common agenda, collaboration, maintaining independent, but mutually supporting, member organizational goals, and valuing those who are most impacted, and continuous communication. Some of you may be familiar with the collective impact model and this looks similar. We have adapted that model to more intentionally focus on valuing those who are most impacted and highlighting the independent but mutually reinforcing goals of member organizations.  Our common agenda has largely focused on access to healthy food for low-income families while supporting our local growers, but we continue to discuss ways to broaden the food-related policy work we would like to accomplish and you’ll hear about some of those efforts. For this council, policy change has largely meant influencing organizational-level shifts but also allows for collaborative work that influences community outcomes, and to some extent system-level changes.

After Gettysburg College Center for Public Service invited residents and organizations to attend a food forum and listen to author and food policy council expert Mark Winne, a smaller group organized to decide how the council would form and what it would begin to address with the guidance of Mark Winne. Our Council officially began in May of 2009 when our Board of County Commissioners recognized our newly formed Adams County Food Policy Council.