Food for Thought Spring 2023

EVENT RECAPS

Indiana team. It felt comforting to recognize familiar faces far away from home. Everyone was excited and looking forward to the conference. The opening session clearly set the tone of what was at stake. After almost 3 years of the pandemic, ongoing acute supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and inflation pressures, our job has become more difficult than ever before. School meal programs have always operated on extremely tight financial and human resources. Overly complex federal regulations divert those resources from the one mission above all, to serve students. SNA’s 2023 Position Paper summarized the challenges we were presenting to Congress. I and 800 more people at the conference felt immense urgency as critical pieces of legislation were about to expire or be placed in effect in the very near future, neither instance benefiting our nation’s kids. After two days of awesome speakers, inspiring stories, and a lot of preparation, the time had come to “Charge the Hill.” I had heard that line several times before; now I was about to join. Led by our fearless captain Ben Driscoll, our Indiana team did just that. Our passionate and dedicated group met with our elected officials or in most cases,

their staff. We shared our stories, challenges, and burdens. We kindly asked for their support. Being realistic, we emphasized what we thought was most reasonable to ask for… We are yet to see what is to come. Hill visits with our Indiana legislators did not feel very encouraging. It was very eye-opening. As a first-generation immigrant, I tend to observe and compare what I saw growing up to what we do in the States. One would think, school meals are just a great thing all around the world and no one would have any issue supporting them. Surely not in a country as big, powerful, and resourceful as the USA. In reality, support for school meal programs has become a partisan and polarizing topic. The recent success of passing universal free meals in California and Colorado gives us hope for the future. A handful of other states are in the process of getting there. Our Indiana team returned home full of ideas on where to go from here. Ultimately, we will keep fighting for our children. All we want is to feed our kids. Just let us do it. We won’t stop till we get what we want!