Arizona Anti-Hunger Alliance receives $7,500 ELCA Hunger Grant
About the ELCA World Hunger Education and Networking Grant
Lutheran Advocacy Ministry Arizona (LAMA) gratefully acknowledges receipt of an ELCA Hunger Education and Networking Grant in the amount of $7,500 for the Arizona Anti-Hunger Alliance.
As a reminder, LAMA is a founding partner of the Arizona Anti-Hunger Alliance.
ELCA World Hunger Education and Networking Grants are designed for projects that provide educational opportunities to deepen participants’ understanding of poverty and hunger (including root causes and intersectional issues) and equip participants to work toward effective solutions.
Projects involving direct service within communities are only eligible if the service happens within a program for service learning. If your project involves direct service, ELCA World Hunger’s Domestic Hunger Grants may be more appropriate for your needs.
Previous grantees have included:
synod-wide bike rides to promote hunger awareness;
service learning events for youth and young adults;
online and in-person workshops;
community organizing training;
creation of new resources to help participants learn about hunger; and
local research projects to help others learn more about hunger, health, and housing in their community.
The work of grantees in the past has focused on a wide variety of areas, including climate change and sustainability, housing security, racial justice, worker justice, reducing food waste and economic justice.
What will the funds be used for?
Funds for this initiative will be used to enable the Arizona Anti-Hunger Alliance's (AzAHA) work in its infancy. Grant funds will be used in three different areas:
Area 1: Advocacy Day
AzAHA organizes an annual advocacy day at the Arizona State Capitol, in which all of our coalition partners collaborate to advocate for the most necessary changes to hunger policy in our state.
Before the 2024 Hunger Advocacy Day (February 21st), participants will attend an advocacy training session facilitated by our partners at Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest with their new Advocacy 101 Toolkit. The coalition will have also selected specific pieces of legislation to advocate for, and prepared brief educational materials and one-pagers about them. In the past, our coalition has focused on the Double-Up Food Bucks AZ SNAP bill and on bills aiming to restore SNAP benefits to ex-felons. After the Advocacy Day, participants will gather together to share about the experience and discuss what they wish to see for the next advocacy day.
Area 2: Story Collection
AzAHA aims to collect at least 100 stories of lived experience from around Arizona, individuals and families who are currently experiencing or have in the past experienced food insecurity and hunger. The stories will be collected on story collection forms, with questions to be developed and workshopped by our coalition. Stories will be collected by staffers of our member organizations and by volunteers who travel to food banks, shelters, worker houses, schools, community gardens, and houses of worship. Story Collectors will be required to educate themselves on the best practices of non-profit story-telling with a toolkit made available through our coalition. Participants will be informed about our story collection purposes and our advocacy work, and will be able to withdraw their stories at any time if they wish.
As stories collected will be submitted to our coalition's website manager, at which point they will be uploaded (and digitized when necessary) and made accessible to all of our members through a shared platform.
Area 3: Arizona Hunger Policy Retreat
Grant funds will help us sponsor a retreat in the fall of 2024. Funds will secure a facilitator and a location for AzAHA’s broader coalition to gather. We will then be able to review our first two years of work and discern a direction for our future work together. Materials reviewing our legislative wins, losses, and connections, as well as our network organizing will be provided.