Success Story - Food Bank

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For most of us, thoughts of gathering at the table for special occasions and weeknight dinners conjure up the smells of steaming casseroles, fresh bread, or something smoking on the grill. But not everyone can relate – tens of thousands of our neighbors face hunger and food insecurity every week. 

According to Feeding America, the largest nonprofit working to end hunger in the United States, “Millions of people in America are just one job loss, missed paycheck, or medical emergency away from hunger.” People struggling with hunger are often grappling with other hardships at the same time, such as housing insecurity, low-wage jobs, reduction of work hours, medical issues, college education costs, lack of affordable housing, and discrimination. Hunger is a complex issue that touches every community in every state. Fortunately, food banks like Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico are getting creative in meeting the immediate needs of people facing hunger.  

Food Insecurity in New Mexico

New Mexico has a statewide population of 2.1 million, and tens of thousands of residents need food assistance each week to live active, healthy, and productive lives. According to Feeding America, one in every seven New Mexicans faces hunger. The statistics are even more startling when you focus on youth: through no fault of their own, one in every five children in New Mexico is at risk of hunger.

Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico has been working to change the harsh reality of hunger in New Mexico for more than 40 years. The Albuquerque-based organization sources and redistributes over 32 million pounds of food every year to more than 340 partner organizations so they can feed children, students, seniors, disabled individuals, veterans, and low-income families who wouldn’t have enough to eat otherwise. Providing nourishing food to people experiencing hunger is Roadrunner’s tactical mission, but this 501(c)(3) nonprofit is striving to accomplish even more. 

The Challenge of Internet Access

“The less time our neighbors have to spend in a food line, the less stigma they feel,” explained Sarah Haynes, Co-Senior Director of Programs at Roadrunner Food Bank. “We want to give them the dignity of a streamlined process, so it looks more like a quick trip to the grocery store instead of a long wait in a food line.” 

To accomplish this, the team at Roadrunner needs as much information as they can get from partners who are distributing the food at soup kitchens, senior centers, clinics, food pantries, and other hunger relief organizations. Who better to gather data and learn about the unique situations of low-income and food-insecure New Mexicans than those who are directly working to feed them? 

Roadrunner Food Bank is rolling out a platform called “Service Insights” to its food distribution partners, so they can efficiently register community members moving through the food lines and track helpful data. But the platform doesn’t work without Internet access. 

“Our distribution partner sites might be in church basements, parking lots, or in very rural and frontier communities,” said Haynes. “While the state is looking to expand broadcast services, some of our partners are in places where Internet service is either out of budget, doesn’t reach beyond their building, or simply does not exist.” 

Using Technology to Take the Stigma Out of Food Lines

If Roadrunner wanted to collect data from locations like these, they needed to find a mobile Internet services provider who could help them get their partners connected affordably. Thanks to the due diligence of a previous co-worker, they found Mobile Citizen. At the time, Mobile Citizen offered mobile hotspots and up to 5G LTE mobile Internet service with unlimited data exclusively to schools, libraries, social service agencies, and nonprofits like Roadrunner Food Bank for $120 per year. 

“Instead of paying $40 to $50 a month in data costs per Internet hotspot, Mobile Citizen’s $10 a month means we can devote more dollars to feeding our neighbors instead of operating costs,” explainedBecky Gomolka, Service Insights Coordinator for Roadrunner Food Bank. “We’re really grateful for that.” Gomolka also praised Mobile Citizen customer service. As one example, she described how much easier it was to change over to 5G than she expected in the spring of 2022: “I assumed there would be some work required on our end, but Mobile Citizen really made the upgrade to 5G painless for us.”

Since 2020, Roadrunner Food Bank has purchased 58 mobile hotspot devices from Mobile Citizen. The team uses hotspots for the nonprofit’s own community-based food distributions and provides hotspots to food distribution partners throughout the state as well. “Our partners are an extension of what we do in food assistance. To be able to work through them and collect that data to understand the health challenges, income inequality, housing insecurity, etc., helps us really address the issues that are contributing to hunger,” said Haynes. “Working with Mobile Citizen and having solid dependable mobile Internet service in all of these places has been a game-changer.”

Aside from registration data required by government food programs, any additional data is always optional and confidential. It has also been invaluable to the team at Roadrunner Food Bank to provide insights that help them advocate for the people they serve. According to Haynes, “We are utilizing the data from our partners to show why it’s important to raise the SNAP poverty level threshold from 185% to 200%, and we can demonstrate that our partners saw service visits increase by four times when New Mexico and federal requirements removed pandemic-era SNAP allotments on March 1.” Haynes said the data also helps the team write better grant proposals. “The flow of shared knowledge helps funders understand the importance of providing this source of technology and Internet access to our partners. It all works together in this wonderful chain, and Mobile Citizen is very much a part of that,” she concluded.

Getting Connected with Mobile Hotspots for Nonprofits

Haynes and the rest of the team believe that mobile hotspots and tablets enrich and empower Roadrunner Food Bank’s partners. “Our partners aren’t always super tech savvy, but they talk about how easy it is to use the Mobile Citizen hotspots and the tablets,” said BriAnna Koehler, Training and Implementation Coordinator. “My favorite thing about food banking is that we get to make these great connections with the community. And I think that using our Service Insights platform really fosters those connections because it encourages everyone to really get out there and chat with community members.” 

Koehler is one of many Roadrunner Food Bank employees and community volunteers who work Roadrunner food distribution events throughout the year. At one of the food bank’s largest distributions, 4,700 adults and children were served over three days for the Thanksgiving holiday. 

Visit rrfb.org to learn more about Roadrunner Food Bank’s hunger-relief services in New Mexico.

Published January 2024

I learned so much speaking with these passionate food bankers at Roadrunner!   

For over a century, the Center for Hearing and Speech has helped more than one million St. Louis, Missouri–area residents with hearing loss overcome barriers and connect with their communities. 

Staff at this full-service audiology clinic have outfitted thousands of patients with hearing aids, but that isn’t the only technology they've used to accomplish their goals. In 2020, the Center began providing patients with mobile Wi-Fi hotspots and tablets to use at home so they could stay connected to health services, friends, and family members throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Grants for Affordable Internet

“Some of our older adult patients found themselves very cut off during the pandemic,” explained Sharon Elliott, a social worker at the Center. “Internet became vital for connecting with family, church groups, telehealth providers and more, but many of our patients either couldn’t access internet from home or couldn’t afford it.” 

She and her colleagues considered internet access a natural extension of the Center’s mission to empower communication for people with hearing loss, so they wrote grants to make it happen. Then they stretched those grant dollars as far as they possibly could by purchasing hotspot devices and high-speed mobile internet service from Mobile Citizen. 

A digital equity project of Voqal, Mobile Citizen offers low-cost mobile internet devices and unlimited 4G data plans exclusively to schools, nonprofits and social welfare agencies nationwide. The low flat fee pricing and quality devices appealed to Elliott, as did the company’s responsive and friendly service. 

Bringing Wi-Fi into Patients’ Homes

Before becoming a social worker, Elliott worked as a librarian. On a regular basis, she taught kids and adults how to use technology and research tools on the internet. That background has come in handy as she helps the Center’s patients get set up with Wi-Fi at home. Most of them are between the ages of 60-75, but the oldest is 103. “They want to learn, and they have so much to share,” said Elliott.

“When we ask if they’re interested in getting online, almost everyone says yes,” Elliott explained. “They use the Mobile Citizen Wi-Fi hotspots to attend Zoom church services, schedule doctor visits and Covid-19 vaccinations, play online bingo, join the Center’s weekly virtual Circle of Friends meetings, and generally keep isolation and loneliness at bay.” 

One added bonus of delivering and setting up Wi-Fi devices is that Elliott can uncover other ways to help while she’s in patients’ homes. Besides showing them how to stream music or watch movies online, she connects them with resources for everything from food and wheelchairs to access ramps.

Being able to hear well is an important first step, but staying connected to their communities is just as valuable to patients' quality of life. For that reason, these hotspots will likely be an important component of the center's work long after the pandemic subsides.

Published March 2022

It might surprise you to learn that small towns, tribal lands, and remote, far-flung addresses of rural America aren’t the only areas with digitally underserved households. Yes, many countryside dwellers are still waiting for reliable high-speed internet connections to reach them. However, in our well-connected cities, you can find whole neighborhoods where the percentage of residents living without broadband is shockingly high. In our digital divide blog post last month we talked about the role affordability plays in the US digital divide, but we only scratched the surface of another significant factor: location. 

Urban Digital Deserts

The number of people living without wireless or in-home broadband services is three times higher in urban areas than rural, according to a blog by the Brookings Institution. 

In some big cities, costs can vary tremendously from one block to the next. The reason? Lack of consistent investment by internet carriers. While broadband corporations moved quickly into affluent neighborhoods, they held back from investing in poorer sections. Digital redlining created internet deserts where broadband service options are extremely limited and pricing isn’t competitive. Even when low-cost or government subsidized internet programs do become available, community members can still be hindered by a lack of devices and digital skillsets. 

Out of frustration, city residents are taking things into their own hands. In Detroit, Michigan, for example, members of the Equitable Internet Initiative built their own wireless network. Their goal: to bring affordable access and digital training opportunities to underserved communities—predominantly communities of color—in the Detroit metro area. In Chicago’s South Side, another nonprofit group raised funds to set up mobile Wi-Fi hotspots to support independent sellers at neighborhood farmers markets. They also provided hotspots to students who didn’t have internet access at home.  

New legislation promises to help. The Infrastructure Bill includes several “broadband affordability” initiatives to protect digital equity. Among other things, it will extend the existing Emergency Broadband Benefit and create rules designed to put an end to digital redlining and other discriminatory practices. 

The Digital Divide in Rural America 

The Infrastructure Bill should make a big impact on rural America too. It includes $1 billion to enable open access middle mile broadband infrastructure. These dollars will make it more feasible for providers to build connections from existing backbones to far-flung connection points (at a small town library, for example). Once a connection is made, a local high-performance broadband network can fan out to households and businesses in the surrounding area. According to the FCC’s 2021 broadband report, about 17% of American in rural areas and tribal lands still lack access to a fixed 25/3 Mbps broadband service. Keep in mind that today’s carriers offer high-speed broadband service that exceed 100 Mbps, so the percentage of rural Americans lacking high-speed internet access comparable to city dwellers would be even higher.) 

The benefits of connecting rural communities go beyond the direct personal impacts to those currently living with slow, spotty, or non-existent internet service. It is fundamental to supporting rural industry, connecting critical services, and driving prosperity in vast areas outside US metros.

Ending Digital Poverty

In our modern tech-driven era, no one should be left in digital poverty. The internet is essential to job searches, schoolwork, health and government benefits access, social connections and more. Equitable internet access across all communities will allow people to thrive, regardless of their race, economic status, or physical address. 

Our mission is not simply to bridge, but end the digital divide. That’s why Mobile Citizen offers affordable pricing on mobile internet devices and unlimited data plans exclusively to schools, libraries, nonprofits, and social welfare agencies nationwide. 

Published January 2022