*Its been close to 6 months since my last post. I apologize. Life kind of got away from me for a bit and I kept reminding myself that I hadn't blogged in while, yet no post.*
I couldn't even read my last post. I remember the emotions so vividly and I can't revisit that time for a while. I was so frustrated; so down on myself, feeling like I would never be employed and certainly not in any meaningful way. I was in a rut and kept on digging. The hole was getting deeper and deeper and the only thing I was digging up was insecurity.
Well, when you dig that deep and search for treasure- sometimes you find it. I found it. After months of looking I found a great opportunity for gainful, meaningful employment! Could it be true? Despite my procrastination (I sent my resume and cover letter hours before the deadline) I landed a job at Virginia Poverty Law Center and I haven't looked back.
VPLC is a non-profit legal aid center staffed mostly by lawyers and some 'civilians,' as I like to think of us. VPLC provides advocacy, legal research, training, and litigation support for justice issues concerning low-income Virginians. Its a small staff of dedicated people who want to help their fellow Virginians fight the good fight against things like predatory lenders, Medicare/Medicaid and elder care malpractice, landlord/housing issues, divorce, sexual and domestic violence... the list goes on.
I work for the public benefits lawyer and our focus is on SNAP and school meals.
I work for the public benefits lawyer and our focus is on SNAP and school meals.
Currently our big project is promoting a grant, Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC), and the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP).
BIC is a grant to help school bring school breakfasts into the classroom after the bell so that all students, regardless of income, can eat a healthy meal together and start the day ready to learn. We meet with principals, attend conferences, and contact school nutrition staff all in the name of providing kids with a nutritious start to the day. We have found that schools are interested but crossing over from interest to implementation is a rarity. Somewhere between point A and point B interest fizzles out, there's an administrator who wants to be a stick in the mud, or a school decides the program isn't for them. It can be discouraging but we have a few tricks up our sleeve for the coming school year. When schools see what kind of events we have planned for next fall, we might have some schools knocking on our door.
CEP is a provision in a piece of 2010 congressional legislation aimed at helped low-income area schools to provide universal school meals. After meeting a few criteria a school can enroll in CEP and provide the entire student population with breakfast and lunch. School meals are reimbursed at certain rates depending on free and reduced meal status of the students. A meal eaten by a child who qualifies for free or reduced priced meals is reimbursed at a higher rate than a meal eaten by a full price student. I won't bore you with how this is figured out and accounted for- there's a formula and mounds of paperwork. The great thing about CEP is that it takes away the applications and paperwork needed for traditional reimbursement. With CEP the universal meals are self sustaining thanks to a higher rate of reimbursement for a larger percentage of students (and cost cutting via no paperwork).
I was told that my time in Boston working on food justice issues, especially living on SNAP, made me more grounded in the sorts of challenges VPLC wanted to tackle than any other candidate. Despite a bit of floundering and some missteps, my experiences in Boston armed me with a skill set beneficial to my passion for a more wholesome food system.
I was in a bad place 6 months ago. I'm in a much better place now.
When you're in a hole, you never know, you may find treasure.
Keep digging.
