Latest news with #RhodeIslandCommunityFoodBank
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
CEO Melissa Sobolik to leave Great Plains Food Bank
May 19—FARGO — The Great Plains Food Bank is starting a search for a new leader as CEO Melissa Sobolik announced she will be leaving the organization in July. In an email Monday, May 19, Sobolik announced she will be leaving the Great Plains Food Bank to be the CEO of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank in Providence. Sobolik's final day at the Great Plains Food Bank will be Friday, July 11. The Great Plains Food Bank is North Dakota's only food bank. It serves a network of 196 partners, like food pantries and shelters, in 100 communities across North Dakota and Clay County, Minnesota. In the email, Sobolik reflected on her work at the food bank. "Serving as the CEO and working at the Great Plains Food Bank for the past 18 years has been the honor of my life," she wrote. "I am immensely proud of the work we have done together to end hunger and nourish hope across North Dakota and beyond." Sobolik started at the Great Plains Food Bank in 2007, working with food bank members. In 2016, she started its Ending Hunger 2.0 program, which focuses on hunger prevention. She served as the president of the organization from 2019 to 2021, when she was named CEO. Sobolik is the organization's second CEO. Sobolik told The Forum she was not looking for a new job, but was approached about the opportunity at the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. "When I actually went out to Providence, I fell in love with the community, and really saw it as the next professional growth opportunity for myself," she said. Great Plains Food Bank Board of Directors Chair Jasper Schneider said Sobolik helped the stature of the organization and increased its reach. In the past five years, the food bank expanded to tribal areas in North Dakota and has increased the amount of food distributed to communities. "This has all been done in the backdrop of a pretty complicated last five years, right, when you look at a worldwide pandemic, global inflation, supply chain issues, workforce challenges," Schneider said. "Under Melissa's leadership, she's persevered through all of that." Sobolik said the most rewarding part of the job has been helping people. "Some of my proudest moments are getting to see the faces and the smiles of the people that you get to help, and hearing their stories and hearing them say 'thank you,' " she said. Another highlight of the job was a recent $5 million appropriation from the North Dakota Legislature, the largest financial gift in the food bank's history, Sobolik said. Great Plains Food Bank Chief Operating Officer Kate Molbert will serve as interim CEO as the nonprofit's board of directors searches for a new CEO, the email said. Sobolik is confident in her team's ability to continue working through the transition. "One of the things I've prided myself on is hiring people smarter than me, and so there's an amazing team to step in and do this job without me and keep the organization running and keeping people fed," she said. Schneider said the board plans to conduct a nationwide search for its next leader and is evaluating different firms to help guide that search.
Boston Globe
24-04-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Rhode Island once had the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Some fear Trump policies could bring new woes.
Advertisement 'It's been challenging,' Lupis said. Lupis is job searching at a time when there are signs that Rhode Island's job market is starting to weaken amid policy changes in Washington that have Get Rhode Map A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State. Enter Email Sign Up hurt some businesses in the Ocean State. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has been creeping up over the past few months and Rhode Island tends to hurt deeper than other states during times of recessions, said Leonard Lardaro, professor of economics at the University of Rhode Island. Advertisement 'When the national economy slows, Rhode Island goes down first. When it improves, we come out last,' he said. During the great recession following the 2008 financial crisis, . 'All these construction jobs suddenly went away,' Mary Burke, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said. 'When the housing bust happens, boom, nobody wants to build a house anymore.' Andrew Schiff, CEO of Rhode Island Community Food Bank, said as job losses began to mount, food operators reported in the summer of 2007 seeing increased numbers of people seeking help. 'It was devastating,' he said. 'There was just an overwhelming number of people coming for help and you really couldn't meet the need, you were helping a little bit but the need was so great.' Some economists say it is unclear if a new economic downturn could hit as hard. 'We're going to have to wait and see. We could possibly go into recession even if the US economy doesn't. And that's the part that worries me and then coming out of it takes us longer,' Lardaro said. Advertisement Edinaldo Tebaldi, a professor of economics at Bryant University, said the state's 4.8 percent jobless rate in March is close to the natural rate of unemployment in a normally functioning economy. 'This rate is not excessively high,' he said. But that could change if President Trump's 'The consequence of this can be very severe here in Rhode Island, yet it's very hard to predict it at this point, given all the uncertainty that we have in both the U.S. as well as our trade partners' response,' Tibaldi said. Schiff, of Rhode Island Community Food Bank, said many Rhode Islanders are concerned about the high cost of living beyond just food. People are not saving enough, particularly among low-income earners, and are going into debt. 'The other thing is people are very nervous about the cuts in federal funding that are being considered in Washington to programs like SNAP, because that was a savior last time,' he said. The uncertainty in the economy could also lead to businesses pausing investment. 'If you don't know which direction the economy is going, you're probably not going to make any big decisions,' Burke said. 'You're not going to start hiring a lot of people.' Matthew Weldon, director of the Rhode Island Department of Labor, said the uptick in the state's unemployment rate mirrored what is happening in the region and the country as a whole, as 'There have been local and national stories about companies that have had layoffs. We've seen that over the last few months and that's contributed to the number of unemployed in Rhode Island, which has contributed to a slightly increased rate,' Weldon said. Advertisement Brown University, one of the largest employers in Rhode Island, i In March, At the same time, national economic dynamics have the potential to contribute to the uptick in the jobless rate in the state, according to Weldon. 'When programming is cut, when funding is cut and layoffs result, that can certainly impact our unemployment rate, it can drive down our number of employed Rhode Islanders and Rhode Island based jobs,' he said. Lupis, who has been looking for a job for a few months, received help with resume polishing, networking and interviewing skills from the nonprofit 'My goal is to find something by this summer,' he said. 'As time goes on, and the more financially challenging it is, that means I have to lessen my full goals of what I want to get.' Brenda Clement, executive director at the nonprofit HousingWorks RI, said one legacy of the financial crisis is that a mortgage, residents may find it difficult to find affordable options. Advertisement 'I worry about what is going to happen in the long term if we start to see large scale slowdown of the economy and large scale layoffs and people losing jobs,' she said. Lardaro, the economics professor, said Rhode Island has benefited from its proximity to Massachusetts and Connecticut as its neighbors, so job opportunities, though out-of-state, are not far away. 'That has helped to keep our unemployment rate lower than it would have been if we had to rely totally on in-state jobs,' he said. Other analysts said Rhode Island's labor market has changed compared to when the great financial crisis hit. 'We have a deeper, a greater mix of business and industry and services, professional services. And I don't think there's any over-dependence, if you will, on any one particular industry,' said Laurie White, president of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. Businesses are also better attuned to dealing with crises, having gone through the great recession, the pandemic and now the uncertainties of a changing economy, she said. 'People seem to be more out of the box, more resilient in finding solutions to get through it. So the mantra would be, you know, 'we have to get creative to figure out how to get though this,' as opposed to being paralyzed,' White said. Omar Mohammed can be reached at
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Supply crisis: $1 million worth of food cut from RI Food Bank by USDA
Cuts in federal food assistance have left the Rhode Island Community Food Bank looking for a way to replace more than 500,000 pounds of food, worth over $1 million, to feed hungry Rhode Islanders through the end of September. U.S. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed are drawing attention to the problem as they've joined 24 other senators in a letter to United States Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. The senators say the Trump Administration is "dramatically reducing aid for local food banks across the country" as grocery prices rise and more families rely on help from food banks and other sources. All of the senators signing the letter are Democrats, except for Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Angus King of Maine, who are independents. The Rhode Island Community Food Bank distributes food to its 147 member agencies, including food pantries and soup kitchens, across the state, helping to feed 84,400 hungry Rhode Islanders each month, a record number, according to the food bank. Fourteen truckloads, carrying 541,529 pounds of food and scheduled to arrive at the food bank between now and Aug. 18th, have officially been cancelled, according to Kate MacDonald, director of communications. "These canceled loads include important proteins like chicken, pork and eggs," MacDonald said via email. In the last fiscal year, 30% of the food bank's food came from USDA commodities, while 42% was purchased and 28% came from donations, according to MacDonald. The food bank doesn't receive federal funding, just food from the federal government. The federal cuts in food deliveries are coming at a time when the food bank is in danger of losing some of its financial support from the state as well. Governor Dan McKee's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 lowers the food bank's allocation from $800,000 to $550,000, according to MacDonald. "At a time when we're already serving more than 81,000 people per month, the cumulative effect of cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, and school meals will have a catastrophic impact on Rhode Island families," MacDonald said. "If the food bank is hit with a cut to our state budget, a cut in the federal commodities we receive, plus increasing food costs due to the administration's tariff policies, we're facing an incredible challenge," MacDonald said. The federal government provides food to communities around the country through USDA programs such as The Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), according to Whitehouse and Reed. The senators describe TEFAP as a "core USDA nutrition program" that buys food from American farmers to provide food assistance to those in need. The senators say cuts to the program hurt the hungry, as well as American farmers. "We write regarding the reported cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars in previouslyapproved funding for food banks and other emergency food providers through The EmergencyFood Assistance Program (TEFAP)," the senators wrote to Rollins. "A cancellation of these funds could result in $500 million in lost food provisions to feed millions of Americans at a time when the need for food shelves is extremely high due to costly groceries and an uncertain economy." 'If true, this major shift in a program utilized by emergency food providers in every state in the nation will have a significant and damaging impact upon millions of people who depend upon this program for critical food assistance,' the senators wrote. 'In addition, this program consists of purchases of U.S. commodities at a time when America's growers and producers are struggling due to tariffs, proposed tariffs, animal disease and many other challenges.' There's confusion around the federal government's plans, and the senators say their letter asks Rollins key questions. The following are among those questions: Has USDA cancelled previously approved purchases of food provided through TEFAP? If so, what level of funding has been cancelled thus far and when will state agencies be notified of any cancelled TEFAP purchases? Does USDA plan to cancel additional purchases of food provided through TEFAP? Has USDA paused any TEFAP food orders or purchases? If so, what is the current status of those orders or purchases? Does USDA intend to un-pause these funds? In 2023, the senators noted that 50 million Americans turned to emergency food providers like food banks and food pantries, according to a report from Feeding America, America's largest network of food banks. "While food banks rely on a variety of sources (including private) to obtain food for distribution through their networks, federally purchased commodities are a key part of how they provide nutritious meals to Americans," the senators wrote. In Rhode Island, nearly two out of five households have trouble affording adequate food, according to the food bank's 2024 Status Report on Hunger in Rhode Island. This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: USDA cuts deliveries to RI's Food Bank. Leaders say it hurts everyone.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Food bank advocates push for more funding in proposed state budget
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Advocates are raising awareness about food insecurity and the need for more state funding. Staff and supporters of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank gathered outside the state house Thursday on what has been dubbed 'Food Insecurity Awareness Day.' Those advocates were fighting for more state support, saying the funding for food bank operations has decreased under the new proposed state budget. That funding supports a network of 147 member agencies statewide and funds are proposed to be cut from $800,000 to $550,000. According to the 2024 status report on hunger, 38% of Rhode Island households are food insecure. The food bank and member agencies serve more than 84,000 people each month, which the food bank says is a nearly 9% increase from 2023. 'This Food Insecurity Awareness Day, we must come together to protect funding for snap, school meals, and other basic needs programs,' said Ellen Teller, chief government affairs officer of the National Food Research and Action Center. Food bank CEO Andrew Schiff also stressed the importance of this state funding. 'Rhode islanders cannot afford this cut. With nearly two of every five Rhode Island households struggling to afford adequate food,' said Schiff. 'Our state has an obligation to step up and meet this urgent need.' Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
