Food Insecurity Lesson Plan
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Presented to Food Bank Volunteers
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Kelly Greene
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7/27/2014
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HS 6453.50
Program: Food Insecurity
Education Program
Health Topic and
Intended Audience:
Food Insecurity in America. The audience for this presentation will be
volunteers at the local food pantry or food bank. The majority of the
volunteers who offer their time and assistance to this program, are, for the
most part, fortunate enough to have never truly experienced food insecurity, so
they may have sympathy and concern for the citizens who seek help from this
organization, but they may not have had to shop for food while maintaining a
strict or limited budget. The purpose of this program is to create more
knowledgeable volunteers. Even if they have not shared the same experiences
with the community we serve, they should be aware of the issues those people
face.
Goals: Through today’s
activities, the goal is to raise awareness of the plight of those individuals
who come to the food bank for assistance every day. In order to better serve
the community and the citizens who come through our door, it’s important to
become familiar with the SNAP program and how it works, and for each volunteer
to experience the process of shopping on a strict budget, just as the citizens
we serve are forced to do on a regular basis.
Lesson/Presentation: SNAP Benefits
and Smart Shopping on a Shoestring
Setting/Audience: Adult
volunteers at area food pantry/food bank
Date: 7/12/14 – 4
hour session from 1:00-5:00 PM
Materials
Needed:
notepads, pens, pencils, whiteboards, dry erase markers, handouts from USDA and
other organizations, calculators, food bank classroom and “mock” grocery store,
food bank vouchers.
Guiding Health
Education Theory/Model: The lesson presented here is not designed to assist
with behavioral change among the participants, per se. The purpose of the
lesson is to create a greater awareness of the issues faced by those
individuals who must cope with food insecurity and/or procure food for
themselves or their families while operating with a very limited budget. The
majority of our volunteers may not have experienced this same situation, so by
mirroring the behaviors of those individuals, and becoming familiar with the
SNAP system and its mechanisms, the volunteers will become familiar with the
system, and recognize the need to learn sensible shopping habits that will make
grocery dollars go further.
For
this reason, the Social Cognitive Theory
may best fit the lesson. SCT considers the relationship between environment,
the people in it, and their behaviors (Gilbert, Sawyer, & McNeill, 2011) . The goal of this
lesson is to raise awareness among the food bank volunteers. By providing them
with a real-life situation (providing them with a voucher and giving them a
task of shopping for a week’s worth of food with only that voucher), we are
putting them “in the shoes” of those individuals our organization serves, and
thus changing their environment. The purpose of this exercise is to force them
to change their behavior (how they shop for food) and allowing them to
experience this activity from someone else’s point of view.
The
opportunity should not only raise the awareness of the volunteers, but also
help them learn to be more budget-minded and savvy shoppers. Even if they don’t
use these lessons in their own lives, they will be able to share the
information they take away from the lesson to assist those individuals who come
to this food bank for help and guidance.
Objectives:
As
stated above, our overall objective to this lesson is to help develop
volunteers who are familiar with the concepts of food insecurity, managing SNAP
benefits, and becoming more aware of the obstacles that the community we serve
must face on a daily basis.
·
(Cognitive)
– The participant will become familiar with the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP) and learn to calculate appropriate SNAP benefits
using the eligibility guidelines provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) (http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility)
·
(Cognitive)
- By the end of this session, the participant will be able to identify the
seven food items to buy when shopping on a shoestring budget (http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2014/01/16/7-foods-to-buy-when-youre-broke)
·
(Cognitive)
– By the end of the lesson, the participants will be able to accurately list
these items on the grocery list worksheet handout. (http://www.choosemyplate.gov/budget/downloads/grocery_list_interactive.pdf)
·
(Psychomotor)
– By the end of the session, the participant will construct a grocery list of
healthy foods and “shop” for these items with only the limited budget allowed
for a single individual receiving SNAP benefits.
·
(Affective)
– At the end of this session, the volunteer will recognize the challenges of
selecting healthy foods on a limited budget, and at least half of the
participants will show a willingness to experience the challenges first-hand by
volunteering to take the SNAP Challenge.
Introduction: Now that
everyone has had the opportunity to tour the food pantry facility and see how
this organization works, we’re going to spend our session today learning more
about the challenges that those individuals who regularly experience food
insecurity face on a daily basis. Many of the individuals we serve are
unemployed or disabled, but there are also many who are classified as “working
poor”, those who work a full-time job, or sometimes multiple jobs, but whose
income is so low that they qualify for additional assistance in the form of
SNAP benefits.
At
the conclusion of today’s session, you will all be familiar with SNAP, you will
know who qualifies for these benefits, you’ll know seven grocery items which
are considered the most nutritionally sound for those who must learn to stretch
their grocery dollars, you’re going to construct a grocery list and “shop” here
in the food pantry, on a strict budget. If you are particularly moved by this
experience, I would like to see if you will volunteer to put yourself in the
shoes of the public we serve, and agree to take the SNAP challenge, spending
one week preparing and eating only those foods which you have purchased with
the SNAP benefit allowance, based on the participation guidelines handout.
http://www.harvesters.org/_FileLibrary/FileImage/ParticipationGuidelines-evergreen.pdf
Content
Outline
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Method
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Time
Needed
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Materials
Needed
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1)
SNAP
·
What is SNAP?
·
Who funds it?
·
Who is eligible?
·
How are benefits calculated?
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Lecture/Discussion
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One hour
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Notepads, pens, pencils, whiteboard,
markers, calculators, PowerPoint handout
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2)
Learning to Shop with limited funds from SNAP
·
Making a plan
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Where to shop
·
What to buy
·
How to save
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Discussion/Activities
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One hour
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USDA handouts, computers with internet
access
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3)
Let’s Go Shopping!
·
Meal planning
·
Making a grocery list
·
Shopping at the pantry
·
Explaining purchases
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Activity/Discussion
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One hour, 30 minutes
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Notepads, pens, calculators, grocery
“vouchers” or play money
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4)
Wrap-up
·
Raising awareness
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Experiencing firsthand
·
The SNAP Challenge
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Discussion/Questions
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30 minutes
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None
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The
four-hour lesson, shown above, will be broken into four parts.
Part 1 – SNAP – This part
will be presented in a lecture format, discussing the USDA’s SNAP benefits
program. How did SNAP begin, and how is it funded? These questions will be
answered, and then there will be a discussion about who is eligible to receive
SNAP benefits and how benefits are calculated. Using handouts from the USDA
which indicate guidelines for SNAP benefits, the participants will be given
several samples of individuals or families who may or may not be eligible for
SNAP benefits, and they will work together to calculate what the benefits will
be for each sample. Depending on the size of the audience, this activity will
be completed in small groups, with each group taking a different sample.
Part 2 –
Learning to shop on a SNAP budget – This section will be part discussion
and part activity. We will discuss a list of seven food items which are both
nutritionally sound and inexpensive, and which can be included on the grocery
list of most any SNAP shopper. We will also talk about the importance of meal
planning, where to shop most affordably, what items to look for, and where to
find coupons. Participants will use the internet to look at grocery ads or find
coupons.
Part 3 – Let’s
Go Shopping!
– Based on budget estimates for SNAP benefits for a single individual, each
participant will make a shopping trip to the food pantry store to “purchase” a
week’s worth of groceries for him/herself, using a voucher or play money. Prior
to shopping, everyone will create a basic meal plan and a grocery list to
follow. At the store, participants will shop, following their grocery lists as
closely as possible, and using their calculators to keep track of their
purchases. Anyone who exceeds the set grocery budget must put something back to
stay within budget. When everyone is done, we will spend time discussing the
purchases, and the rationale for buying the items acquired.
Part 4 – Wrap-up – As part of
the wrap-up, we will discuss the SNAP Challenge, the program which tasks those
participants who volunteer to participate with living for one week on the
typical SNAP allowance that they had for their shopping trip. By taking the
SNAP Challenge, each volunteer will get to experience first-hand the difficulty
of eating every meal on a strict budget for a full seven days. The idea is that
by experiencing this challenge, and possibly feeling hungry part of them time,
empathy for the citizens we serve will be increased. Even for the most
compassionate volunteers, this dose of reality can improve and increase their
resolve to continue their work to help food pantry clientele, and to better
understand how to discuss their hardships.
We
will set aside 5-10 minutes during the wrap-up period for questions and
comments from the participants.
Anticipated
Problems/Solutions: Technical
issues are always a possibility. In order to be prepared for any issues with
the PowerPoint presentation, I will provide handouts of the presentation to the
participants. This will allow them to make notes, even if the presentation proceeds without incident.
The
students will be given the opportunity to look for grocery coupons or circulars
via the internet, but if there are issues with connectivity, I will provide
some grocery adds and circulars for the participants to look through as they
prepare their shopping lists.
References
Crowe, A. (2014, January 16). 7 Foods to Buy When
You're Broke. Retrieved from U.S. News and World Report: http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2014/01/16/7-foods-to-buy-when-youre-broke
Gilbert, G. G., Sawyer, R. G., & McNeill, E. B. (2011). Health
Education. Creating Strategies for School and Community Health. Sudbury,
MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Harvesters Community Food Network. (2014). Take the Food
Stamp Challenge. Retrieved from Harvesters.org:
http://www.harvesters.org/GetInformed/Index.asp?x=060|080&~=
United States
Department of Agriculture, 2013. Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program. Eligibility.
Retrieved from: http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility.
United
States Department of Agriculture, (n.d.). Healthy
Eating on a Budget. Retrieved from: http://www.choosemyplate.gov/budget/index.html
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