Episode Transcript
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Hello listeners and welcome back to Just A Bite. I'm Sarah Coons, the Advocacy and Engagement Manager at the Ohio association of Food Banks and your host for this episode. This November, we wanted to highlight what is usually seen as an invisible military hunger and poverty. Our service members and their families protect us in our country, all while dealing disproportionate rates of food insecurity, economic instability and poverty.
Feeding America reports that one in nine working age veterans are food insecure, while nearly one in four active duty service members are food insecure.
A lot of this is caused by the nature of service. Many active military families are transient, active military spouses have higher rates of unemployment and active military members and veterans have extraordinarily high rates of mental health issues like PTSD and depression.
More needs to be done for those fearlessly protecting our country.
Here to talk about this complex problem, share her story, and discuss potential solutions is Kimberly Hazel Grove. Kimberly is a dear friend of the Ohio association of Food Banks team as she works as the Advocacy Coordinator at the Second Harvest Food bank of North Central Ohio. In her day job, she supports the food bank in their advocacy and education efforts, but in her free time she advocates on behalf of families like hers who have bravely served our nation to receive the benefits they are owed.
She is truly the perfect person to talk about this layered, critical issue. Take a listen.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Well, hi Kimberly, I'm thrilled to be talking with you today. Thanks for joining us.
I know that this issue is near and dear to your heart, so I really appreciate you being vulnerable with us. Do you mind sharing a little bit about yourself for the listeners?
[00:02:52] Speaker C: Yes, Good morning and thank you so much for having me.
I am so appreciative of the opportunity to share my story and a little of what I've learned through my experiences. I am the Advocacy Coordinator for Second Harvest Food bank of North Central Ohio.
I lean pretty heavily into the personal and professional experiences that I've brought with me along my journey and then where I find myself today. I served in the army for nine and a half years as an Enlisted service member.
More than half of that time my husband and I were a dual military couple raising a young family.
And then in January 2004, while deployed to Iraq, my husband Brian was killed while flying a mission. He was a Kiowa helicopter pilot and we had a blended family with four children and we were also raising my nephew who at the time we originally got him was three turned four while he was living with us. Because my sister was also deployed to Iraq for the year preceding Brian Leaving in an instant. I went from being married, stable in a career, to a single mother, a widow, and raising very young children.
It really shakes you to the core to find your whole existence in jeopardy financially, emotionally, and physically. And so many factors were out of my control, but I found there were elements of policy that negatively affected our experiences.
And I use a lot of what's happened to me to guide me in my work here at Second Harvest and helping the military and veteran and families, surviving family populations access food.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Thanks so much for that. I know it's really not easy to talk about these things.
I want to go a little bit deeper here. I'm curious why you decided to serve our country in that way, not just as a service member yourself, but all the work that you have done leading up to that. And after that, how did you feel while you were deciding to make that choice to serve our country?
It's an incredibly brave commitment for someone to make, especially not knowing the outcome.
You know, hindsight's always 20 20, but yeah, you made that decision not knowing what would come, right?
[00:05:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I would say that it wasn't a real difficult choice for me to make. My family, my parents were blue collar workers. My mom worked in a factory, and my dad was a construction worker. So we didn't have a lot of money. My parents were divorced, which added an extra element into our upbringing. You know, split households. And my mom actually moved us out to Massachusetts, which was a more incredibly expensive environment to live in than Ohio at that time and even today, which gave us even less resources to work with. So when I graduated high school, I didn't immediately go in the military.
I tried to go out and work. Right. Even though the military has always been an option, many members of my family have served. I come from a long line of service, both men and women, so it was always an option. But I couldn't afford to go to college.
My parents weren't able to afford it, and so I went to work and I would try to take a semester when I had money at a community college, and then I would go back to work for six months to a year and try to get more money. And after doing that for a couple of years, you know, it was really grueling, and it wasn't getting me anywhere, and I just figured it was time to enlist. And I was about 20 years old when I went in, and my recruiter, I remember, very specifically asked me what I wanted to do. And at 20, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Of course not. But After I took the test, he put some jobs in front of me, and I said, I just want a field where there weren't a lot of females, because I was very competitive, and I was very physical at the time. And I knew that I enjoyed being physical, and I wanted to make money quickly, like, I wanted to rise up quickly and get promotions and make more money. And he said, you want to go into intelligence?
And so that's what I did, not knowing anything about the field.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Wow, that's so interesting.
And it's great that they're able to kind of move you in the right direction. It seems like that was a good choice. I'm curious, how was life like as an active service member? We know that military families are more likely to be transient, tend to have higher rates of spousal unemployment, have struggles with mental health, and have lower educational attainment. A lot of this is due to the nature of the job. Honestly, I'm curious if you and your family experience this. I'm sure some of these issues can be even more heightened with both spouses being in the military.
[00:08:10] Speaker C: Yes, those are all really good points. And I would say that primarily we experienced all of them at some level and phase of our journey.
I started at the lowest level, essentially. I was an E2, you know, and that was only because I had some college when I went in. So I started at the bottom and had to work my way up.
We moved essentially every three years because that's the nature of the military. You get new assignments, and we've served what we call conus, which is within the continental United States, and we also served overseas, both my husband and I, we started off in the barracks. So housing and food was not necessarily an issue when we were younger soldiers because we were both in the army. They take care of a lot of your basic needs, medical, housing, and food. But as you get promoted, get married, as my husband and I did when we were leaving our tour in South Korea, those are when those real challenges come forward, especially for me and my husband. Unemployment wasn't an issue. We were both employed. It wasn't an issue until, obviously, I was widowed because that compromised my ability. We were a dual military couple, so at that time, we actually made pretty good money for the time as we were rising through the ranks. But as we started our younger family, our younger kids, it became apparent that both of us was not going to be able to continue our employment for much longer because our kids were getting older. The times had changed post 9, 11. Most of our career up till then was Peace time. So it was easy to be a dual military couple with children. That quickly changed the nature of the military, changed of what our lives were like every single day. And so we were already facing that decision of, one of us is going to have to give up our career to care for the kids and stabilize our family, because deployments were coming consistently. I had just returned from my deployment and moved up to Fort Drum, where my husband was being stationed as well. And it was the first time that him and I were in the same household with our young son, who was just two years old. So from the age of six months to two years old, he had not lived in the house with both Brian and I at the same time. And that was very eye opening. And that's when those difficult conversations started to happen. And I would have to say that it's really sad because primarily this is a woman issue. A lot of times women are the ones who give up their career to take care of their children. Generally, their husbands are making more income, which was the exact case for me and my family. My husband had another year and a half over me in service. He was at that time a chief warrant officer, where I was still enlisted as an E6. And so those were the same factors that I was faced with. And it's unfortunate because women, you know, they lose a lot of their lifetime earning potential because of those difficult decisions. But for us, it was going to be the right decision. Unfortunately, he didn't come home being killed overseas. So that decision was made for me. Education wise.
As I said earlier, I did join the military to improve my life, and education was one of those factors.
Enlisted service members overall have a lower ability for educational attainment while they're serving. It's very difficult to get educational credit, particularly in the army, because of the nature of the army and our missions. I did use a little bit of education benefit while I was in as a reenlistment bonus, but that was for a very limited time, and I was able to take some classes. But then as missions geared up and the need was there, I had to stop taking classes to do my work. And unfortunately, when I did go back to finish my degree after I had already separated from the service, I had to retake a lot of those classes over again, which cost money, a lot of time to do that. And so it was almost, you know, you think to yourself, why did I take those classes in if I was just going to have to take them again? So whereas officer corps, they have a lot more ability to do higher education and get paid while they're going because it's expected of them to consistently be proficient in their positions, but not necessarily as much for enlisted service members. So they really have to finish those goals when they separate from the military. And I would say that also kind of leads them into factors when they transition or separate of lower income environments. Because if they're having to go to school to finish their degrees in order to make more money or even to make the same amount of money they had while they were in the military, that puts them at a disadvantage. So it can definitely lead to lower educational attainment. Absolutely.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: That all makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, when you and your husband were in the military together, before you all made the decision for you to take a step back in your career was family, you know, caring for your young kids or how did that work for you guys?
[00:13:47] Speaker C: Sure. Well, I would say that originally we lived. When my son was born, we lived off base in our own housing. We had bought a house. So when it came, you know, that post 911 environment, and at six months when I had deployed, my husband was already in training and he was already gone from the family. I think he left when our son Brandon was only four months old. He went to do some training. And when I came down on deployment orders, my son had to go live with our parents, my father particularly.
Certain circumstances, they're not able to be with you on a normal assignment where you're just being permanently stationed somewhere.
You can keep your family for the most part, unless it's a overseas environment that it's not. You're not able to bring your kids, but those aren't too often.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: And kind of talking about military bases, they tend to be intentionally isolated and remote. You had many assignments. But I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about where you were stationed, how that impacts access to social services, food pantries and grocery stores.
[00:14:58] Speaker C: So I was in the army, so most of my military bases were in very isolated rural environments. But you know, that is an absolute need to enable the training that is needed to maintain our world class fighting force. And so the installations that I was on did tend to be a little bit more remote and they end up being their own mini city. Right. So you have a lot of the same things replicated on military installations that you would find in a regular community. Sometimes there's just not the quantity of availability of those resources that you would find in a community. And especially depending on the geographic location and their proximity to larger urban areas. So I did a lot of my training at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, which is in a more southern part of Arizona, close to the Mexico border. It's in a very rural environment and you have to drive quite a ways to get to a larger urban area that would have access to more shopping, more social services and stuff. But I would say around that military base, even back in the 90s, there was a pretty good community. Communities pop up around the military installations to provide and fill in those gaps. But I will say that Fort Campbell, Kentucky, when I lived there, it's a lot more populated now outside of the military base. You know, we had to go a lot further to have access to resources and things. Grocery stores are generally on the solid installations except for the more outer post military environments. They're pretty well stocked that you can get almost everything that you need. I would say some of the main issues that we had as a family, and what I know is a consistent issue with four families, is that childcare was always an issue. It's always an issue back then. It's still an issue now, especially after the pandemic. You know, childcare is a very expensive cost for these families. Military families are no exception.
Department of Defense does try to have good childcare facilities that can be affordable and allow families to have childcare so that they can improve their economic circumstances. But you know, you're still going to wait for a while to get a spot. And so a lot of times they'll have to use childcare options that are off of the installations and that can be really expensive. And again, having families make those difficult decisions of one spouse staying home while the other spouse is in the military, which is generally again primarily women and also because of the environment being so transient that they're only going to be there for three years or you know, five years in some cases that if you keep having to move your employment, you're not going to be making as much money as your service member generally. So that has always been a big issue in the military. The other thing I would say is while the military leadership does try to mitigate issues to meet service members basic needs, there are times that those needs go unmet and there's a lot of stigma in the military. So even if you are experiencing financial hardship or you might need to have access to food pantries because your dollar is not going as far in the grocery store, Especially nowadays, you know, they're less likely to try to access those resources because they feel that stigma of they don't want anybody to know that they're in need and so those needs will go unmet because of that. There's a lot of bravado. There's a lot of oversight. You know, they don't want to fail. You know, they've always been taught to succeed and be strong and move on. And so we need to work harder to make sure that these families know that those resources there are to help them as they are to help any other community member as well. I would also like to say that lower enlisted families are the most effective. No if, ands or buts. And they don't have a lot of autonomy over their schedules, and they have limited resources because of the things we talked about, like time and money. And those only go so far. They can't just leave their job and go take care of issues that they need to take care of.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: Right, exactly. I think that's a really great point. Talking about service members wanting to be strong, not wanting to ask for help. I feel like that is a through line in a lot of this as well, is seeing help as if that's, you know, a weak thing to do, when in a lot of ways, that can be one of the strongest things. And I know that's just difficult, but could be one of the strongest things they can do.
[00:19:47] Speaker C: I hear a lot from them and a lot from veterans who also will say to me, I don't want to take away from someone else. You know, military service members and veterans are really unique in the fact that they think about community and they think about, you know, their brothers and sisters, and they think about all the other families, and they feel fortunate for the support that they do have. Over and over and over, they will say to me, I don't want to take away from someone else.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: No, that's a great point. I got chills when you said that. You know, they're always thinking about community, because again, I think that is also another through line, is that's one of the reasons why a lot of people go into that, is they do feel a sense of community with the people around them. I think the thing that connects all of the little stories that make up your life, Kimberly, is courage. Because once your husband had passed, you turned to advocacy. In your grief, you shared your story and worked to ensure that families like yours were able to get the benefits they needed when their loved one dies while serving. Can you share a little bit more about why you felt the call to do that and how did you even start this whole thing?
[00:20:55] Speaker C: I was really lost and pretty much just grasping for control. So many things that happened to Me during that time were completely out of my control.
And I also found that I didn't have the knowledge necessarily that I needed to make it right. I found there were elements of policy that were negatively affecting my experience, my children's experience, my whole family's experience that didn't need to happen and could be improved and changed. And it just gave me a purpose, a reason to wake up the next day and to try to change what I could and to help other survivors and veterans to have a better outcome, that maybe their life would be a little bit better. I started almost immediately after learning of the death of my husband. And it just gave me focus to help my own grief. The casualty process back then, and this was 2004, we're not talking the 50s or the 70s, but believe it or not, it was just not where it is today. And there were numerous hiccups of mismanagement, from finding pre deployment paperwork, to the notification process, to getting my husband back home, to us getting my sister back home. She was just finishing up her tour in Iraq. They would not let her accompany Brian back to the United States as a family member, as a sister in law, as a sister in arms with that personal connection. They would not let her on the plane to bring him home. I found that completely unacceptable, inhumane, egregious.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:48] Speaker C: And it was for something so simple as she didn't have her class, a dress uniform out of a war zone. And I was so shocked by the person on the ground who made that decision. And so it really lit a fire inside of me. And if as a, at that time, an E6 staff sergeant, you know, it was my job to recognize deficiencies. I had a lot of knowledge of operations and administrative functions. And so I was able to recognize a lot of these things that were not right and didn't sound right. So I really just tried to catalog as much as I could, write down as much as I could. It really centered me in that moment. It gave me something else to focus on besides grief. You know, I was able to capture things that likely a civilian surviving spouse would not have been able to know or understand. And so that frustration and anger propelled me into advocacy. And so I, about a year out, wrote a three page, what we call after Action Review, short for aar, to Army Casualty Office, because that's what I knew. Right. You go through these trainings and exercises and different things that happen to you, and you always sit back and you assess what went right, what went wrong, what could we do better? And so that's what I knew, and that's what I did. I wrote a three page AAR to Army Casualty Services and with all the findings and experiences, requested immediate action to improve services. These services, while they're still not perfect and you can never properly train for every single instance or unique situation, they're much more improved now today than they were then. And it wasn't just my voice. It was echoes of voices from a lot of different people who were going through the casualty process that wanted things to change, to be better for other people.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: And was that like an organization or did you, you know, really just do this on your own and know of some other folks who are experiencing the same thing and kind of work in conjunction with one another? Or was there an organization at that time that you could turn to?
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Initially, I was not connected with any immediate organizations because I was just trying to get through each and every day. So my voice was just a compilation of other voices that were being lifted to those who needed to hear it. And at that time it was Army Casualty Services. And I will say that the people in place were listening. I mean, they've done an amazing job to transform the casualty process and to change policies where policies needed to be changed to make surviving families lives better. And also, I will say, included into the Department of Defense family as well as the Department of Veterans affairs family for military surviving families. So they deserve a lot of credit for the work that they've done to make it better. But we're never done, you know, there's always things that need to stop and be improved. So I did find my way to different organizations. I've really tied myself to veterans organizations because through the advocacy experiences that I learned military and veterans have a very big voice with any governing body, from a local to the state to the federal level. And so it was a natural relationship to gain and to be a part of and become active in. So I leveraged that as much as possible. It's a little different being a military surviving family member because my veteran is deceased and he's not here to advocate for himself. So we have to be a little louder and we have to be a little more tenacious with our advocacy efforts to make sure that we don't get drowned out with the needs of our military and our veteran members, which rightly so, they have a focus, but we have a focus too. And the country actually has an obligation to take care of military surviving families of the fallen service members that have served this nation well and died to protect it.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. I wanted to talk a little bit about kind of your economic situation, you know, after your husband's passing, in addition to overwhelming grief and caring for grieving kids, which I feel like is an undertaking in and of itself. I'm sure you felt like the rug was pulled out from under you when it came to your economic stuff after your husband's death. I know you have shared instances when you have lived paycheck to paycheck and struggling to make ends meet for your family after this incredibly destabilizing life event. Could you share more about some of the struggles that you experience as a surviving spouse? What are other military families in similar situations experiencing?
[00:27:55] Speaker C: Yeah, economic instability is the hallmark of my journey.
And I can tell you very rightfully I was underprepared for this tragic life event at the time my husband was killed. Military surviving spouses like myself who were active duty had very limited ability to stay in their active duty capacity. You need a family care plan. You need a real solid place for your kids to go in the event you have to deploy. Just losing my husband in a combat zone, it was not feasible for me to be deployed to any combat zones and risk my children being truly orphaned, not just not having their father here to help support them the rest of their lives. And the only viable option at the time offered to me was to be assigned to a recruiting position, which most military recruiters will tell you is a 24, 7 job. And it's odd hours and it's long hours, and it wasn't the right situation for a young widowed mother. I was only 30 at the time with an infant and a toddler and another toddler and, you know, a dog and two cats. Interesting though, if I was a surviving sibling at the time and it was my brother who was killed versus my husband, I would have been put into a non deployable staff position position that would have allowed me to continue my military career without interruption. Going back to that whole frustration and anger that I was feeling, you know, that inequitable treatment. And again, I will remind our listeners, this was 2004. This was not back when women were just a small element of the military environment. And so that became one of my first policy challenges and changes that needed to be made to ensure that military surviving spouses were given the same equitable treatment as a surviving sibling to be able to stay in. So not only did I lose my husband's income to help take care of our family, but my own personal income and career was jeopardized. I moved out of the military and went to work for an organization in the Washington, D.C. area doing similar work to what I did in the military. And that was very helpful because it did allow me to get some time to get my feet underneath me and to bring some normalcy back to our lives.
But within a few years, I was experiencing, not just trying to work through my own grief and single parenthood, but my children were getting older, they were needing more things at school, activities. I was trying to work and I was just being pulled in two different directions. And my mental health was taking a hit. And also I was exhausted. Can you imagine living two separate lives?
And childcare experiences were really, really difficult. So I made the decision to leave that job to dedicate myself to my kids full time at home. So once I transitioned to be a full time caregiver at home for my children and not working full time, that was a pretty big transition to go to living on limited income, survivor benefits and what little savings I had left. And we had to eventually lower our living standards and go without, you know, seeing our families long periods of time because we were a little bit isolated. We struggled to afford what, what we needed, whether it was school fees, school lunches, which was pretty expensive when I had multiple kids in elementary schools, and braces, which, you know, that's one thing that some insurance don't even cover it, and then the ones that do only cover half, which is leaves a couple thousand dollars for the family to absorb.
And that was really difficult to try to put braces on my kids. So it was always a struggle to make ends meet. Not just the basic living needs of rent, utilities and enough groceries, but also everything else that makes a full life. And I will say that we really ate a lot less meat with the limited income because I just couldn't afford.
Military families that are in transition out of the military to veteran status are especially vulnerable, particularly the lower income families. Again, not the autonomy to take time off to go find that next house or that next job before the move happens, but they're also experiencing multiple huge life events in a very short period of time. And when you're trying to find a new home and you're enrolling your kids in a new school and you're changing medical care, finding medical care, childcare, recertifications, or even just figuring out what your next employment option is going to be, it's really damaging to families and to their economic status and viability.
And so those are not factors that I say are really considered in transition services. And the lower enlisted are the ones who are sacrificing the most on that.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Spectrum, that is all really helpful. And I think a lot of it too is like, it's not that dissimilar to what families are experiencing, like civilian families. It's just like there's this added layer of complexity when it comes to military families. And the nuances there are just a little bit different. So that's really helpful. Tell me a little bit about veteran and military. Hunger Feeding America reports that 1 in 9 working age veterans are food insecure, while nearly 1 in 4 active duty service members are food insecure. 1.2 million low income veterans use SNAP. What are our service members facing in this realm?
[00:34:09] Speaker C: For the reasons that I mentioned, one huge life event is extremely hard. So death of a family member, you know, having to change jobs. But when you layer on multiple life events, big life events, it's extremely hard for these families. And that includes those who are going away for deployment for a year or more or even coming back home from deployment, which is, you know, it's disruptive when they leave on deployment. And then the family has to readjust to a single parent household. You know, they have to change their routines. You know, the spouse may have to stay home or may have to go to work to make ends meet. But it's also just as disruptive when service members come back home and they have to reshuffle responsibilities and stuff. It's really crippling. And it's so easy for our families to fall in the hole as it is for all families. Like, once that downward slide starts happening, it really comes really quick and it'll take years to crawl out of that hole. And unfortunately, the way our society is set up is that it makes people get to the very bottom, you know, serious crisis or distress, financial bankruptcy or foreclosures before the families are eligible to be helped. You know, and whether we're talking about military veteran families or we're talking about civilian families, it's all the same. Once a family is in financial crisis and all of the layered policies that are surrounding late fees and interest rates and credit scores, it's all working against them because they can't qualify for good terms, their late fees are piling on and it just gets people into a deeper hole. So what is intentionally supposed to be life lines? Actually they are lifelines instead of bridges to help families remain stable and financially secure. And unfortunately, we're reactive to situations instead of proactive to the situations. And so military and veteran families are especially vulnerable because in order to qualify for snap, they have to deliver their basic housing allowance into that Income calculation, which is not used for any other benefits to determine eligibility, but for military and veteran families, unfortunately, this income calculation with their BAH makes many of them ineligible for those benefits. That would allow them to keep their families healthy and to help them thrive and to help them get the groceries that they need to meet everybody's nutritional needs. And we also have to remember that geographically where they live, you know, it doesn't matter where they live, the private housing options, they know what their BAH is. So that's a net zero sum like that shouldn't even be included because it's gobbled up no matter where they live. And so we need to really ensure that these families are able to qualify for SNAP by removing that income eligibility. And the Department of Defense has made efforts to start identifying families that were food insecure and to be able to provide them an additional allowance to be able to access food. But Congress needs to also step up and make sure that these families are taken care of and remove that income eligibility for them from the SNAP calculations.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. That is one of the key solutions that a lot of folks are working on, including Feeding America and our network. I would love to go into more solutions, if you don't mind. What are some of the potential solutions you have worked on through your advocacy for military families? I know that you talked about process with surviving spouses and you were really, you know, moving the needle there. I'm curious if there's other parts that you've proved on through your advocacy and how does that also overlap with the work that you're doing at the food bank? I'm sure it's all very interconnected.
And what other support is out there for veterans and military families facing food insecurity and economic stability?
[00:38:25] Speaker C: Well, I had just started at the food bank as my first job back after staying at home with my children for a period of, I believe it was just shy of nine years. And I was definitely needing to go back to work. I was out of money, no retirement, no savings. My kids were aging out of the survivor benefits. And so I needed to go back to work. And lucky for me, I landed at Second Harvest Food bank of North Central Ohio. But unlucky for me, it was right prior to the pandemic. So October of 2019, and so, boy, did I get a education on food policy at a national, state, local level like no one has ever done before. Everybody was getting educated. So during the pandemic, when we had the National Guard members on our teams because we were essential workers, food banks stayed open to ensure people had food. You know, people can go without electricity, they can go without running water, but at the end of the day, they cannot go without food. And overnight we saw this implosion of families from all economic levels that were not sure where their next meal was coming from. Going without a paycheck or two paychecks or three paychecks. And when we lost our volunteers, we got the National Guard. A silver lining in that is that it gave us a lot of opportunity to learn as much as we could about what military and veteran hunger look like at the local level. What was really going on with these men and women who came to assist us at the food bank? Why did they come and assist us at the food bank? Why did they sign up for this unique historical deployment? And not everyone joins the military for purely patriotic reasons. I did not join the military for purely patriotic reasons, but because they needed the extra income, they needed the educational benefit that came along with it. They knew needed the employment because life is really difficult in north central Ohio. You know, our economy is tourist based. Retail restaurants and it's not an economy that thrives off of businesses are paying livable wages. Many people are working who need food assistance. They're just not making enough money to make ends meet. And that's what we were seeing with our National Guard members. A lot of our employers, we were hearing they were hiring the bigger employers that could pay great wages, but they were relying more on temporary workers and not paying full time wages or benefits, working with part time or seasonal workers. And many of these service members were, they were food insecure and their families were food insecure. And everyone had a unique story, but these were the themes that were prevailing. And so this deployment gave them an opportunity to make more money than what they were making in their civilian jobs. So they were very grateful to be there with us, working alongside us and learning about all of the good things that we were doing in the community on a daily basis. In our lines, we see veterans there each and every day. And we don't ever ask the question of have they served in the military, but they self identify through clothing or from our conversations that we're having in line or, you know, I can identify them using, you know, their license plates because a lot of them will have military, you know, insignia on them that starts the conversation. And I ask them, why are you here? What is bringing you to the food bank to get food assistance? And from what I hear, it's, you know, same themes as the National Guard. They're not making enough Money, they're being laid off for the younger ones, the older veterans and their family members, and of course those who served in the military but don't identify as veteran, you know, medication is really difficult. Seniors overall, not just our seniors who are veterans, but seniors Overall have Rosen 93% in North Central Ohio since 2019. And that is a staggering number that those who have served our country and even those who haven't, can't make ends meet in the economy. And it's not just high food prices, but it's overall inflation on every single basic need that is being that is needing to be met. Transportation, housing, medical costs are up and people can't absorb not just one of those instances, but they can't absorb all of it. And so to be able to help them further, even outside of food assistance. Right, because food gets them in the door. But we're hearing that there's all these other things that are going on with them. So I've been reaching out and our second Harvard Food bank has been reaching out to our local community to see what other resources are out there so we don't lose opportunities to help families and people where they are to get access to other resources. So we've been working to identify the people who are working in our county veterans service offices, developing really close relationships with them because those veterans who are entitled to benefits and resources, whether it be at a local level or federal level, you know, those offices can really help impact them economically, particularly if they're not getting benefits that they are eligible to receive. And so we want to make sure that, you know, yes, we're serving them with food, but we're also pointing them in that direction. And as far as our active duty or our National Guard and reserve service members, we have been developing relationships with the regional interstate family centers across Ohio. There's four regions, and so they all have a coordinator, and that's where those coordinators receive those referrals from the service members that are working here in Ohio. Mostly housing and food are the two biggest needs. And so by understanding what they do and the contact people there, we can also help each other by sharing the resources that are available. You know, if they get a someone who's in need for food assistance, and they may not even be in our county, they might just be working in our county. We're letting them know what the Ohio Food Bank Network is and then regarding of where they live, that there's always someone that they can reach out to to get food assistance that day or within the next 24 to 48 hours. So no families are going to go without food assistance.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: It's a very interesting point to talk about the National Guard being stationed at the food banks, you know, during the pandemic and seeing, like, military hunger right in front of, you know, I did not think of that in that way. And that's really an important thing to really think about and talk about. So I appreciate that there's a lot of solutions, and I'm sure you have a lot of things to talk about in terms of what our legislators and elected officials can do for these families. I'm curious what the legislative outlook on these solutions look like. Why hasn't there been the political will to support service members in this way?
[00:45:48] Speaker C: That is a great question. I challenge Congress to get to work, honestly. You know, for military hunger, we have the bill to be able to remove that income criteria of the BAH into being eligible for snap. So Congress pass it. The political will is there. It's bipartisan support. It's just the lack of action that's going on at the national level to get these bills passed in a timely manner. We can keep passing appropriations that are outdated and not current with the current fiscal environment, but that's not helping anyone. It's not helping these families. So these bills, we've been trying to do this for a couple of years. Everybody agrees it's the right thing to do. Everybody agrees it needs to be done. So let's get it done this year. Let's not wait anymore on that. And as far as military surviving families go, you know, spouses and children are the dependents of our fallen service members, and they are eligible for benefits. But sometimes these benefits are also not keeping up. And so there is a benefit that they receive from the Department of Veteran affairs that Congress can also fix. And it's called Dependency and indemnity compensation DIC for short. It has not been updated in 30 years. Oh, my gosh, 30 years. There has not been an increase to that benefit. What are we doing? And so I am affected by this. I am very passionate about it because again, you're talking about a very small cohort of people who are the most vulnerable financially, physically, economically, psychologically, that don't have a voice necessarily on the Hill outside of a couple of organizations like I'm the vice president for Gold Star Spouses of America. We know that there are other organizations like TAPS and a lot of our veterans service organization organizations on the Hill that has it as one of their top three priorities. But if we're looking to ensure that military, veteran and surviving families are taken care of. Again, take care of them. It shouldn't be 30 years for a benefit to be updated. And so let's do the work that needs to be done. The state of Ohio has actually been pretty good with military benefits. They have provided a one time benefit from Ohio veterans that have served. They just needed to apply. That benefit was coming to an end, but they didn't consider veterans who are Ohio born and bred and lived here, but because their DD214 didn't state Ohio from their point of entry in the service. And I will use myself as an example. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. I lived here and went to high school up until about my junior year. But I'm not eligible for that one time cash benefit because my DD214 where I moved with my divorced parent to Massachusetts, again out of my control and I moved there. So I went into the military in another state. However, I came back to Ohio. I'm raising my family in Ohio, I'm working in Ohio. I am an Ohio veteran. So we need to be thinking about some of these policies that restricted unintentionally. Right. Somebody just didn't think about it. But we need to go back and we need to look at this and where it makes sense. We need to be inclusive of all of our Ohio veterans that might have been from the state of Ohio. And then think about how are we attracting and retaining our military and veteran and family and surviving family communities into this great state of Ohio.
[00:49:39] Speaker B: Great answer. I'm appalled that the surviving family benefit hasn't been updated in 30 years. I think we would be shocked if it wasn't updated like from pre pandemic until now. You know, that has changed. The economic outlook has changed so much in just, you know, four or five years and to think about 30.
[00:50:03] Speaker C: That's just, that's only the tip of the iceberg. We could have a whole other podcast on Soviet family benefits.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: I am sure, I'm sure.
[00:50:10] Speaker C: But with that extra money that you would be providing families, that's money that they're going to be using to meet their basic needs, including food and feeding their families. So we really need to do what we can to make sure that these families are taken care of.
[00:50:24] Speaker B: Absolutely. You have been doing this work for a long time and I'm sure there are many times where you wanted to quit. How do you stay motivated through it all? I'm sure that comes back to that purpose that you have been talking about. How do you make sure that you're Taking care of yourself so that you can continue to make a difference.
[00:50:44] Speaker C: Nobody really asks me about myself sometimes, so thank you for considering that. It is hard work. And I'll tell you, the one times that I feel like quitting is when bills don't get passed or bills get delayed or bills go into committee and die. And these are good bills that need the attention and need the work. So those are the times I want to quit. But I also remember that sometimes policy takes a long time, and, you know, it's a process. We have to continue to talk to our legislators. We have to continue to inform and educate, and I take that really seriously. Like, I really love working at the grassroots effort and to bring people along and help people share their experiences of what's going on. Just like I said, you know, it affects me, but maybe they didn't know that it affected me. And it wasn't intentional. It was just an oversight. You know, nobody thought about it because they haven't experienced it. And so I have to keep that in the back of my mind when we're working on some of these efforts that, you know, the world is full of good people that want to do good things, and that includes our legislators at the local, the state, and the federal level. And even though I might have had a bad day or maybe our efforts seem like they weren't going anywhere, I always go back to our community, you know, those veterans, service organizations that we're working with at the local level and also the national level, and determine what the fight is going to be going forward. You know, what do we need to do? What voice is missing that we need to include?
And at the end of the day, somebody's going to be helped. Whether it might be at the food bank. I know. And that is one thing I can absolutely say for certain. If you need food, you are going to get food today. Right? We are going to make sure that you don't go to bed hungry. We're going to make sure that you and your family are taking care of, and that is very rewarding. And we're small enough to make that happen. Right. We're flexible. We look at the changing environments. We adapt to the changing environment. For the other policies within the military and veteran communities, those are a lot more complex issues that we have to engage in a different way and at a different level. But it can be done. It absolutely can be done. It just takes more time. So I just have to go back and remember that. Yeah, get some good night's sleep.
[00:53:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that's important.
[00:53:15] Speaker C: And Then move on.
[00:53:16] Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely. You gotta fill your cup up so that you can fill up others. So I appreciate that. And I know I didn't share this question with you before, but something that you said before we started recording kind of reminded me. And now I'm curious. You were talking a little bit about before how you never ask if someone's a veteran. You ask if they have served.
[00:53:39] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: And I didn't know that, just, you know, from my background. And so I'm curious, how can civilians, you know, help their service members? What is something that they should keep in mind, you know, if they want to be engaged in this effort?
[00:53:55] Speaker C: Lots of ways? First, I would say please don't assume that only men serve, especially if you come across a couple and maybe the gentleman is wearing identifying markers that they're a veteran, because I would say that's the number one thing I get most often asked is complete disregard of whether or not I serve. But did my husband serve? And where did my husband serve? And assuming that I did not serve. And so that's one thing I think that is a great, you know, educational pieces. When I come up to a couple that I'm engaging, I ask, did either of you serve in the military? So I think that's an important part of the recognition of female service members and veterans. But I also say, always ask if you ever served in the military, because, unfortunately, I mean, some members who have separated are not considered veteran by definition, and that's really unfortunate. And it's a lot of the population that we serve, because those who have dishonorable discharges are the ones that are going to be on that lower end of the economic spectrum, and we'll see them in those lines. And it could be due to a myriad of issues, whether it was mental health issues or, you know, past legislative policies that are no longer in existence. And I'll use the LGBTQ community is a perfect demographic that had received dishonorable discharges in earlier times. You know, and we need to go back and we need to rectify that. And, you know, if you're listening here today and you are part of that community and you were dishonorably discharged, I would highly encourage you to seek out your county veterans Service office and get that rectified. You know, and also, mental health is an issue sometimes in the military, and by military service would oftentimes exacerbate conditions that might have been missed during in processing or making sure that people are fit to serve. And military service can be very stressful, even in a training environment, in a boot camp environment. And if you were experiencing mental health issues before you go in, it's probably a good chance that that would be exacerbated. And that's not always combat related. So there's a lot of reasons why military members are dishonorably discharged, but they are no less needing assistance, compassion, and definitely food. And so we understand that there are different degrees of service and we want to make sure that if you served in the military at any time that you are welcome in our environment and we will do our best to make sure that you are taken care of.
And as a final thought I didn't mention this earlier, is if there's any elected officials or government representatives listening, I would highly encourage you to rethink the benefits system and the benefits cliffs. We have generations of poverty for a reason. Is because our benefits system is designed to be punitive and it's designed to be for people to just stay where they are. And using myself as an example, you know, I was on my husband's Social Security for a while after he died and it was getting us by. But when I tried to make a little bit of extra money to help my family and myself out, and it was very low amount of money at that time, I think it was like, I want to say 15,000, but I'm not sure. It was just unbelievably low to support a family of four. And when I tried to make a little bit of extra money, they cut my whole benefit off. And so what I heard loud and clear as a Social Security recipient, surviving spouse at the time is stay exactly where you're at, don't try to rise up, don't try to make any more money because I can't possibly make more money in that moment to get me to where I needed to be stable without the Social Security benefit for me and my children. And so if that system stays in place where we don't allow people to make more money and raise their economic status with a phase off benefit system that allows them to actually stabilize before they lose their benefits, we will always be having that conversation.
[00:58:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:21] Speaker C: So make our benefit system more compassionate, make it more workable and not punitive, and try to be proactive versus reactive. Families should not be in desperate crisis times for you to help them. That's already too late.
[00:58:40] Speaker B: Mic drop moment. Kimberly, that was amazing. Thank you so much for talking with me about this issue. And more importantly, I want to thank you for your service, not just while you were actively serving, but also the work you're doing to make the lives of families like yours a little bit better every day. I know we barely scratched the surface on this topic, but do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share with the listeners? Maybe a call to action? I know you touched on that a little bit. How can the listeners find the work that you and the Second Harvest Food bank of North Central Ohio that you all are doing in your service territory?
[00:59:19] Speaker C: Well, you can always go to our website. It's www.secondharvestfoodbank.org. you can call us on our main line, which is 440-960-2265. And I will say that military and veteran families and surviving families are one of our demographics that we're learning more about. We're having community conversations in military posts in the areas that we serve, which is Lorain, Erie, Huron and Crawford County. Our next one coming up is at the VFW in Norwalk, Ohio, and that'll be on October 15th from 5 to 7. We provide dinner and we would ask for you to come out and share your story with us and help us learn more about what's going on in the local area because we want to do everything we can to support you. Thanks.
[01:00:06] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Kimberly.
I want to thank Kimberly for being.
[01:00:19] Speaker A: Vulnerable with us and sharing her expertise with us. I also want to thank our listeners like Kimberly, who have courageously served our country and our communities. We will have the resources we talked about in the show. Notes if you found this episode illuminating or inspiring, please make sure you share this episode with a friend. More people need to hear Kimberly's incredible story. Thank you so much for listening and.
[01:00:47] Speaker C: We'Ll talk to you next time.
