Performing Department
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Non Technical Summary
QARI has proposed a school-based community food project addressing food security needs for migrant and asylum-seeking families in New York City. Almost 20,000 migrant and asylum-seeking students started at New York Public Schools in the 2023-24 academic year. Many of their families have unstable housing and employment, which subsequently increases food insecurity. QARI, a community-based organization serving immigrants in NYC for the past 7 years, proposes to partner with 10 public elementary schools across high-needs Bronx and Queens school districts. Our goal is to reduce the language, informational, and financial barriers that migrant and asylum-seeking families face in accessing healthy food. Five activities will help us achieve this: (1) produce bags to 800 families through the SNAP-based Fresh Food Box model; (2) Providing 750 families with multilingual SNAP enrollment and recertification assistance; (3) providing ESOL classes for 150 student caregivers; (4) hosting 45 nutrition education events to share multilingual information about healthy eating and local resources in the school neighborhoods; (5) conducting a community needs assessment to inform the development of a pilot Workforce Readiness program for migrant and asylum-seeking adults. Our goals and activities strongly align with the CFPCGP program goals by focusing on multiple approaches to meet the immediate food needs of low-income migrant and asylum-seeking families, while helping them build their knowledge and language capacity to navigate their new food system and also laying the foundation for QARI to provide future programming addressing economic and workforce needs as an upstream determinant of community food security.
Animal Health Component
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Research Effort Categories
Basic
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Applied
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Developmental
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Goals / Objectives
QARI has proposed to partner with 10 public elementary schools across high-needs Bronx and Queens school districts. Our goal is to reduce the language, informational, and financial barriers that migrant and asylum-seeking families face in accessing healthy food. Five activities will help us achieve this: (1) distributing produce bags to 800 families through the SNAP-based Fresh Food Box model; (2) providing 750 families with multilingual SNAP enrollment and recertification assistance; (3) providing ESOL classes for 150 student caregivers; (4) hosting 45 nutrition education events to share multilingual information about healthy eating and local resources in the school neighborhoods; (5) conducting a community needs assessment to inform the development of a pilot Workforce Readiness program for migrant and asylum-seeking adults. Our goals and activities include multiple approaches to meet the immediate food needs of low-income migrant and asylum-seeking families, while helping them build their knowledge and language capacity to navigate their new food system and also laying the foundation for QARI to provide future programming addressing economic and workforce needs as an upstream determinant of community food security.Goal 1: To support low-income migrant families' immediate food security needs by expanding produce distribution at Bronx and Queens public schoolsObjective: Over 3 years, to distribute healthy produce boxes using the SNAP-based Fresh Food Box program to 800 low-income migrant families across 10 Bronx and Queens public elementary schools. Goal 2: To reduce financial barriers to food access by improving migrant families' ability to procure food with multilingual social services assistance.Objective: Over 3 years, to assist 750 low-income migrant families across 10 Bronx and Queens public elementary schools with SNAP/EBT enrollment and/or recertification, or referrals to other food assistance programsGoal 3: To improve community knowledge and capacity to address food security needs through nutrition and language education for migrant and asylum-seeking families.Objective 1: Over 3 years, to hold 45 nutrition education events across 10 Bronx and Queens public elementary schools to educate 4,000 community members about improving nutrition and existing support services to increase community food security.Objective 2: Over 3 years, to engage 150 migrant student caregivers across 5 Bronx and Queens public elementary schools in basic or beginner English (ESOL) class to improve their workforce readiness and ability to advocate for their families' food needs.
Project Methods
As QARI is committed to continuous improvement of our programs and services to meet the needs of our target populations, we will be planning to incorporate both process and outcome evaluations to ensure monitoring and evaluation happens regularly throughout the grant life cycle. Our process evaluation indicators are designed to answer the following questions: Are our programs reaching our target population of migrant and asylum-seeking families of elementary students at our partner schools? What are the facilitators and barriers to clients' accessing our planned activities? Our outcomes evaluation indicators address the following question: Were our program activities effective in reducing language, informational, and financial barriers to food security in our target population over the past 3 years? Evaluation activities will be conducted internally and will be led by our Operations and Development Manager. Evaluation data collection instruments will be developed in collaboration with the Chief Operating Officer, Director of Programs and Program Coordinators. The Program Coordinator will take primary responsibility for data collection and reporting onto QARI's internal Salesforce platform. This data will be managed and analyzed by the Operations and Development Manager to assess QARI's progress in meeting process and evaluation indicators. Findings will be communicated to the whole team and used to support any necessary changes to the programs.Process and outcome evaluations will primarily focus on the following activities: food distribution, social services, ESOL classes, and nutrition education and outreach events. The community needs assessment for our workforce initiative pilot program development will not be assessed through this evaluation; however, we will monitor internal program data to check whether activities are following the intended timeline, and will aim to produce and submit at least one grant proposal for the pilot program at the end of Year 3 as an outcome measure.Process evaluations will be integrated into internal program monitoring efforts and will assess fidelity of program implementation, whether launched services are being utilized by families from our target populations, and facilitators and barriers to both fidelity of implementation and resource utilization by the target population. Process indicators will be tracked through internal program data (including internal program data, communications with partners, participant registration and attendance data) to assess progress. Where necessary, quantitative metrics will be supplemented by qualitative insights from families participating across QARI services at partner school communities, as well as from school staff, to identify facilitators and barriers to service delivery. Qualitative data is currently intended to be captured through informal conversations and supplemented through survey data captured during the midline and endline outcome assessments (see below). However, in the event of significant deviation from expected milestones, QARI will allocate resources to conducting additional focus groups with school families to understand how to make our services more appealing and accessible to them.Outcome evaluations will be designed to assess the effectiveness of our programs at improving food access for migrant and asylum-seeking families in our partner schools' communities by providing assistance to mitigate language, financial and informational barriers to food. Data on program participation rates will be collected at each food distribution and social service day at each school and will be recorded in Salesforce. This data will be monitored regularly for quality assurance by our Operations and Development Manager, and will be leveraged for midline and endline assessments at 18 and 36 months post-start of the grant implementation period, respectively. These assessments will be supplemented by pre-post survey data of school communities engaging with the food distribution and social services programs to assess the individual and combined effectiveness of these programs in improving access to healthy produce. Event attendee surveys will also be used to assess the effectiveness of the provided programs and materials in reducing informational barriers to food access. These surveys will be disseminated at and after all events using Google Forms, and will be assessed at 18 and 36 months post-start of the grant implementation period. ESOL participant completion is assessed using assessments made available through the Burlington English curriculum used for the classes, and testing and completion data from this is logged and tracked internally on Salesforce. This data will be assessed at 12, 24 and 36 months post-start of the grant implementation period to attain feedback from cohorts in each academic year. Additionally, students who complete a level of the Burlington English curriculum through our ESOL classes will be provided with a post-completion survey to assess their perception on how this will affect their ability to navigate everyday tasks related to food access. Program completers will also be invited to participate in focus groups at the end of every academic year for more qualitative insights on the effectiveness of the ESOL classes in reducing their language barriers to food access.?