Nonprofits & Nutrition

Our seventh episode, “Kentucky Nonprofits & Nutrition” hosted by Brian Simmons, features segments on Moveable Feast’s food delivery service and Faith Feeds glean Kentucky program. We’ll visit Seedleaf Farms and learn how they are nourishing our communities and take a look at the Bluegrass Domestic Violence Farm Program. Hosted from a “live kitchen” featuring Simply Nutritious by Kate, this will be an appetite pleasing program not to be missed!  

Sponsored by: Mayor Ed Burtner of Winchester 

MOVEABLE FEAST:

If Moveable Feast Lexington ceased to exist there could be more cases like the man dying not of AIDS, but of starvation, because of being too sick to shop and prepare meals. There would be more AIDS related deaths because of people not being able to afford nutritious meals that help to make the rough medication regimes possible to handle, resulting in more people not taking their medications or not as prescribed. Studies have shown that proper nutrition leads to more medication compliant patients and therefore fewer illnesses and hospitalizations reducing that health care cost to the community by as much as $41,000 per year. There would be more people on the street because by supplying food to the home it frees up scarce income to be able to afford better and more stable housing. If we were not here, there could be more cases of HIV because a medication compliant HIV infected person usually attains a viral load that is undetectable and the virus is much harder to spread to another person. With Hospice clients if we were not here it is the caregiver that suffers most. They are tasked with the burden of caring for a dying spouse, in most cases, and are usually elderly. We take away the burden of preparing the evening meal and free up income that the low-income household desperately needs at this time. Moveable Feast also allows many of these families to stay together instead of being split up by one having to go into nursing home care due to too much burden on the elderly caregiver. One example of this was a client who was caring for his wife with Alzheimer’s when he was diagnosed with lung cancer and went into Hospice care. He was unable to keep up all of his care giving duties and prepare meals too. With our help they were able to stay together in their home until three weeks before he died. Find out more click here! 

SEEDLEAF: 

Seedleaf is a small nonprofit. We have a staff of two and an AmeriCorps VISTA member. We operate ten community gardens and five market gardens. We offer weekly cooking events for area youth, and monthly cooking events for adults (Soups On). We are putting forth small, replicable solutions to global problems. Unfortunately, if Seedleaf ceased to exist, it is likely that much of Lexington would not notice. As one board member puts it, we are too small to fail. The difference we aim to make is likely to take the next 40 years. While we have what I think are impressive metrics on the number of area youth we are reaching, and the number of volunteers we are engaging, the deepest part of our work has to do with building relationships, and helping people change their diets and activities over the course of a number of years. It took our society quite some time to get into this mess; barring some calamity, it is likely to take us that much time to get back to a more healthy way of living on our earth. If Seedleaf ceased to be, it would represent a missed opportunity for communities in Lexington to move toward that healthy life. However, I also think that on the day that Seedleaf concluded our work, or ceased to be funded to do our mission, many participants and volunteers who have partnered with us in this work would carry their positive impressions from our programming to other fertile soils. These seeds would move out from our realm of influence and bear fruit that cannot be anticipated. This is the hopefulness of the garden: even from death all is not lost, and something good can come in its proper season. Find out more here! 

BLUEGRASS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE FARM PROGRAM:

BDVP serves survivors of intimate partner abuse and their communities in the 17 county Bluegrass Area Development District. We do this by sheltering over 230 individuals a year who are fleeing unsafe homes, providing thousands of court advocacy services, providing access to and financial assistance for attorneys, answering thousands of crisis and informational calls, conducting trauma informed care and peer led support groups, educating teens about dating violence, and partnering with multiple community agencies to provide the holistic care. The Kentucky Domestic Violence Association estimates that 1 in 3 Kentucky women will be victims of intimate partner abuse and that as many as 50% of homeless women and children are homeless due to domestic violence. These are the families and individuals we serve. Without BDVP’s services, the barriers holding many of these individuals in violent homes or keeping them homeless would still exist. While domestic violence does not discriminate, the vast majority of survivors we serve do not have any other resources. They would be either homeless or in constant fear without the resources we provide. Recently, BDVP received a letter from a former client thanking us for the services we provided her and her son. This case presented a very high lethality risk and involved interstate agencies. No one at the table quite knew where was the safest place for this family. They came to BDVP. While shelters can be very intimidating places exacerbating the trauma already held by victims, this client felt that we not only provided her with a safe space to go, but also treated her with a level of respect, love and kindness she has not experienced in other agencies since receiving our services. Specifically, she mentioned how she always felt welcomed by staff and that their doors were always open to her. She went on to say that had her first experience not been with our shelter, she would have returned to a lethal situation. We believe that it is our job to love people until they learn to love themselves. The survivors who walk through our doors are deserving; they are of value. Find out more here!

 FAITH FEEDS:

Faith Feeds is on its way to establishing an infrastructure for providing healthy food to homeless and low-income men, women and children in Central Kentucky. In just the last two and one-half years, nearly 200,000 pounds of food has been diverted from the waste stream and thousands of individuals have had a little more access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Faith Feeds has provided peaches that were made into peach milkshakes for children and a peach cake for adults; fresh sweet corn, which created smiles as wide as the ears were long; an opportunity for middle school youth to learn how to make tomato sauce and pumpkin pie filling; and an avenue for community involvement and understanding of the food challenges faced by nearly one-half of our community. We have just touched the tip of the iceberg. With time, we can divert much greater quantities of food that would otherwise go to waste so that people throughout Kentucky have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. While it may sound like “pie in the sky”, we believe we can help significantly decrease, if not eliminate, hunger in the Commonwealth. Without Faith Feeds this opportunity will be missed! Find out more here!