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POSTER PRESENTATION: Vermont Everybody Eats FEMA Response to Covid-19
Abijah, Priscilla Panyin
Abijah, Priscilla Panyin
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Abstract
Food systems must navigate uncertainty as they experience and respond to crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic amplified or magnified several interconnected slow-crises, including hunger, housing, food supply chain vulnerability, and job insecurity. Launched in August 2020, the Vermont Everyone Eats (VEE) was a FEMA-funded, state-wide COVID-19 response program geared at reducing food insecurity to support community resilience. The program provided prepared meals to Vermonters while boosting the local economy by keeping local restaurants and farmers in business at a time of general economic crises associated with the pandemic. While the emergency response financial support FEMA provided was valuable to response and recovery efforts, its funding structure simultaneously created uncertainty for VEE organizers. More research is needed to understand how communities are impacted and respond to these funding uncertainties during times of crisis. This poster examines how VEE leaders anticipated and responded to varying degrees of certainty associated with the pandemic and FEMA funding. It also explores how certainty and uncertainty due to FEMA funding, whether positive or negative, extended far beyond just the financial assistance itself to food system, labor, and social sustainability. This research is valuable to policy makers and administrators of food assistance programs to better understand how they can navigate between the certainty and uncertainty associated with their source of funding.
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2024-09-17
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