One of our furthest-reaching programs, Market Match, is getting a nice spotlight in the media. Civil Eats, known for its provoking coverage of all things food-related, ran a piece this week that covered California’s efforts to address the 4 million residents who lack consistent access to adequate food. Market Match is pointed to as a tool that has already been growing by leaps and bounds, and is poised to scale up even more to close this food gap.
The article details how California’s government has stepped in as well with the newly passed AB 1321. The bill establishes a landing place for funding to help expand programs like Market Match. The next step is to fill that bucket through the budget process – which will be worth double to our state, since funding this program can bring a match by the federal government. Because of advocacy of hundreds of groups at the national and state level, the different levels of government are now more aligned to help support our common goals of making healthy food easy for the four million hungry Californians. This is an important step, since we need both the federal and state governments’ partnership in order to create the scale of solutions required. Check out the full article, and stay tuned – getting the state to commit a modest amount of funding in 2016 will be one of our priorities.
