Navigating Hunger & Its Causes

Navigation Services

As an organization, our mission is to alleviate hunger and its root causes. Hunger is often the symptom of a larger issue, much like a cough is a symptom of a cold. While you want to treat the cough, you ultimately want to eliminate the cold. Alleviating the causes of hunger – namely poverty, eliminates the cold. Much of the work we do is dedicated to providing nourishing food to anyone who needs it, and sometimes that is all they need. However, we also want to assist our clients in other areas of their lives by providing resources that fight the causes of hunger.

This is where our Navigation Services come in. Our Navigation Services staff serve as a liaison between clients and community resources. Often the resource is new to the client, and these individuals may have been unaware of its availability or even knew of its existence. Our Program staff are on the frontlines of hunger every day and are the caring individuals that work directly with food insecure individuals to guide them on a path to increased self-sufficiency. All Program staff are working to earn their Community Health Worker designation, giving them the skills to provide better social service navigation services to our community. Often, our staff reside in northeast Houston, so they have a close understanding of the community being served. Using a people-centered approach, they build trusting relationships.

What Does this Mean for our Clients?

Providing information and assistance with other services allows us to provide a wholistic, individualized approach to aiding our clients. When we can help a family enroll a child in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, for example, we can help parents reduce the cost of medical bills, freeing up funds for other necessities including food. Suddenly, that family can build an emergency fund or save for a first and last month’s deposit on an apartment so they can move out of a relative’s home. The more clients we can connect with through Navigation Services, the more we can do to stabilize their health, finances, and lives. This is what it means to treat the root causes of hunger. Food is a steppingstone for making a tremendous difference in someone’s life, and you can help. You can make a donation to provide a box of nutritious food to someone enrolled in our pantry program, and give them the lift they need.

Ending Disaster Mode

Disaster Distributions Winding Down

A volunteer from East West Bank waiting to load food into cars as they drive through.

For the last 15 months, Target Hunger has operated in “Disaster Mode,” we have shown up in the northeast neighborhoods of Houston to give food to the people who needed it. COVID-19 had a massive effect on the communities we serve, beyond the dangers of the virus itself. The pandemic brought the loss of jobs, the danger of losing homes, and school days that were far different from the norm. It posed a greater threat to those who are immunocompromised and to the senior citizen population, imposing an even greater restriction on “normal life.” Some who had not previously struggled faced new challenges and others who’s day-to-day was already difficult struggled even more.

Though faced with family difficulties and loss of our own, Target Hunger’s staff has arrived at each distribution early in the morning ready to serve those in need. We set up a safe, drive-thru system that would allow staff and volunteers to load food into car trunks . Often as early as 5 am, the cars of families who needed food would begin lining up. When the distributions started at 9 am, there would be a line of cars wrapped around the block, waiting to get nutritious food for their families. At the beginning of these distributions, the line never seemed to stop, even as the distribution ended. As we neared the end of these distributions, we are happy to say the need seemed to become less, and the lines a bit shorter. A large part of this was due to efforts to get many of these families onto home delivery—eliminating wait times and the need for transportation.

HPD Volunteers ready to load up cars!

Opening the Door for Hope

Friday, June 25^th was our very last COVID-19 Drive-Thru Disaster Distribution. In total, we have hosted over 150 drive-thru distributions since the start of the pandemic. During the largest distribution, 1,220 individuals were provided much needed food assistance. As these distributions come to an end and we move back to more normal operations, we wanted to tell you about a client who attended these distributions. She asked to remain anonymous, but we’ll call her Jane in this story. Jane wanted to be sure supporters who make the work possible understood how her family was helped.

The second oldest in a family of seven, Jane was driving her family van through our drive-thru distribution.  This year has been incredibly difficult for her family, fortunately everyone close to her has remained healthy. Prior to the pandemic, Jane had been working a part-time job while attending college. As the second oldest, she had been working to support herself in school and the rest of her family. Jane said, “I lost my job because of the pandemic and still want to be able to pay for my tuition.”

With the loss of her job, finances were tight; because of Target Hunger, food became less of a concern. Jane said, “As we’ve struggled to make ends meet, this has been a huge help for our family. These distributions have helped my family a lot because we haven’t had to worry about where our food is coming from. There are seven of us, and all the kids want to go to college…my sister just graduated with her degree and I hope to do the same.”

Through the difficulty of the pandemic, Target Hunger has relieved some of the stress that came with it and has opened the door for a ray of hope. Jane’s story is just one of many that bring optimism after a challenging year and a half.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We are grateful for the support of partners, volunteers, and donors who make this work possible. Your support during this difficult time has provided not only food, but comfort and hope to so many. As another client, Hermann, put it “It’s people helping people.” The work is far from over. While many of us have been able to pick up where we left off, many are still struggling to return to normal or find a new normal. We hope that you will continue to support those in the community who need it most.

Partnering to End the Root Causes of Hunger

A look at some of our Root Cause Partnerships

Treating the root causes of food insecurity means offering services that go beyond food assistance. It often means helping clients overcome the impact of intergenerational poverty. While our focus is primarily on ending hunger in Houston, we know this is not possible without working to end intergenerational poverty. This is where our Root Cause Partnerships come in.

We at Target Hunger are grateful for the many community partnerships that allow us to better serve the neighborhoods where we work. Community partners offer two major benefits: 1. They allow us to offer services that our organization may not have the capacity to provide on our own, for example Job Trainings or Financial Education. 2. They expand our reach to ensure more people in the community who need food assistance and navigation services have access to these services. We have several community partners that help us not only treat hunger, but also treat the root causes of hunger – you can read more about those partnerships here.

Partnering with HISD Wraparound Services

This week we want to highlight one of those partnerships – Houston Independent School District’s (HISD) Wraparound Services. This

No child should be concerned about where or when their next meal will come. This partnership allows us to provide much needed food to students and their families. Beyond filling hungry tummies, it allows students to have the energy to learn, play, and grow.

amazing HISD department “connects students and their families with community resources that address the non-academic challenges that students face which ultimately impact their ability to learn.” You can read more about the program here. As an HISD Wraparound partner, we have donated food and other items to Scroggins Elementary School, Franklin Elementary School, J.P. Henderson Elementary School, and Raul C. Martinez Elementary School. These schools are located in two of the nine zip codes we serve in northeast Houston.

We could not support programs like HISD Wraparound Services without the assistance of donors. Food and monetary donations allow us to provide assistance to students and their families. These donations allow us to help generations of families work towards a more secure future. You can support us by donating here or by starting your own CANnecting Food Drive!