TOPEKA — When the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe, Paige Olson was struggling to provide for her Iola family of five, unsure when their next meal would come.
Olson talked about her struggles as part of a Kansas Appleseed summit Wednesday at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. Olson, southeast Kansas advocate for Kansas Appleseed, and her colleagues met with the public to address the needs of Kansans and available resources.
“During the pandemic, I was working at a coffee shop and making minimum wage, and my husband had lost his job, he was unemployed, and we have three kids,” Olson said during an interview at the summit. “So we were trying to figure out: How are we going to feed our family?”
Nearly 50% of Kansas households have had to choose between paying for utilities or paying for food, according to a 2021 report for the Kansas Food Bank.
During the pandemic, Olson and her family had to budget carefully, choosing which expenses could be pushed back to allow for the purchase of food. Utility payments were one of these areas, as the company wouldn’t shut them off until the following month. Additionally, they would make large Walmart purchases to save money on gas by avoiding multiple trips.
With so many stress points, Olson said, other areas of concern fell through the cracks. One time she forgot to add money to her children’s lunch cards.
“Things like that will slip whenever you’re focusing so much of your mental capacity on where your next meal is coming from,” Olson said. “How are we gonna pay our bills? All of that stress.”
Haley Kottler, campaign director for Kansas Appleseed, said food insecurities and hunger are not single-issue topics.
“Tackling hunger in Kansas is going to take a multifaceted approach,” Kottler said. “With that, Kansas Appleseed isn’t going to do it alone, just like all of our partners aren’t going to do it alone, the law, the Legislature is not going to do it alone. Food banks aren’t going to do it alone. We have to come together to ensure that we can tackle hunger.”
Kottler presented a summary of bills involving food insecurities from this year’s legislative session, including House Bill 2141, which wasn’t passed after a 20-20 vote in the Senate. The bill would have required guardians of children to cooperate with child support administrators in order to receive federal food assistance.
Kottler also spoke about House Bill 2094. The bill will deny federal food assistance to people between the ages of 50 and 59 who are classified under federal law as able-bodied adults without dependents. The new restriction applies if they fail to participate in a training program after reporting less than 30 hours of work in a week.
Effective July 1, this bill will add hoops that people who really need these benefits will have to jump through, Kottler said.
The Wednesday event was among a series of summits Kansas Appleseed has planned throughout Kansas in response to legislation and efforts to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The summits allow for individuals working to create a more nutritionally sustainable state to share the struggles their communities face and ways Kansas can move forward in a positive way.
“It’s great just to get people together and to support one another,” said Sarah Karns, director of Heartland Healthy Neighborhoods in Shawnee County. “In that way, I think these conversations encourage us to go forward in our work.”
