BLCTPodcasr W:NorthHelpLine

The Enjoy Lake City Community Podcast aims to provide information about the Lake City community. In this episode, the guests are Kelly Brown, the Executive Director of North Helpline Food Bank, and Brandon Frost, the Development and Communications Manager of North Helpline. They discuss the history and services provided by North Helpline, such as the food bank and homelessness prevention program. They also talk about partnerships with organizations like Seattle Legion Health Board and the need for volunteers. Funding cuts and increased demand are challenges faced by North Helpline, but they rely on community support through donations. Coffee Clash is mentioned as a helpful business partner. Welcome everyone to the Enjoy Lake City Community Podcast, I'm your host Chris Lieberson here with Jeremy DeCorey of AYRT Artist Productions. This podcast is brought to you by Build Lake City Together in association with AYRT Artist Productions and the goal of our podcast is to provide information for and about our Lake City community. And today our guest is the lovely Kelly Brown who is the Executive Director of North Helpline Food Bank and with her is also Brandon Frost, the Development and Communications Manager of North Helpline. So welcome to you both. Hi Chris, thanks for having us. You bet, grateful to have you here. I've had the privilege to know Kelly and work with you for several years now and really always admired and appreciated the work that you all do in Lake City. I do like to start with if there's a particular place or places in Lake City that you do like to go to. Yeah, absolutely. I just recently went to the Jazz Night that they're having at Brother Beryl and that was super fun. Awesome. Always loved Toyota Sushi. Sure. I'm glad that they're open and back in person now. Yep. Yep. Coffee Clotch. Yep. Could go on and on. Love it. Love it. Brandon, anything to... I'm also baffled at Coffee Clotch. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of great. Yeah, right? You cannot go in there and not see someone, right, that you know is, yeah, in the neighborhood. That's awesome. And Kelly, so how long have you been at North Helpline and can you just talk a little bit about your role as Executive Director? Sure. I've been at North Helpline for 10 years now. I moved out here from Florida for an AmeriCorps gig at North Helpline and was able to stay on as staff afterwards and now serve as Executive Director. Awesome. Yeah. So how long has North Helpline been in Lake City? So it was founded in 1989 by neighbors coming together, wanting to help meet the needs of their neighbors that they were seeing. It was modeled after a similar program in Queen Anne and we were actually founded with our rental assistance program where folks pooled their money to provide money for folks to, for their neighbors to have their bills paid. Okay. So keep folks in their homes, keep their utilities on and things like that. Yeah. And we didn't open our food bank until 2001 when a local food bank closed their doors and the same group of neighbors, like, well, let's figure out how to do a food bank. And that was at McDermott Place, which is at 130th, is it? So we moved into McDermott Place in 2010. 2010. The food bank actually started at the old fire station. Okay. Yeah. Which is now the Tony Reed House. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And for those of us that, or for those that are not really aware of what services that North Helpline provides, so you do a lot of stuff. What kind? We do. Yeah. So we're focused on trying to make sure our neighbors have food on their tables and a roof overhead. We try to meet those needs in a variety of different ways. We have, what we're most well-known for, I would say, is our food bank program, which we operate two programs, both in Lake City and Better Lake. And then our founding program is our homelessness prevention program, so helping folks pay their bills, stay in their homes, keep their lights on, keep their heat on, and also a whole bunch of other things. So we're really focused on bringing different services together so that folks are able to meet needs in one place. So we have community connectors on site that can help folks sign up for different benefits. We bring in partner organizations, like the North Seattle Family Center, to share their resources with clients and get them signed up for their programs, or Literacy Source or any of the other amazing organizations in our area. Yeah. Well, that's great. Like, we have the benefit of folks access food repetitively. Yeah. So we get to know the people that we serve, and they get to know us, and that builds trust. And then they come to us and they ask us, well, I need help with this situation. Like, do you know anything about, I need child care, like, how do I find child care? And we try to decrease the runaround of accessing those services as much as possible without us necessarily offering those services. We stay focused on what we do and then bring in partners to kind of meet the complete needs of the folks. That's awesome. And I think adding to that certainly would be the Seattle Legion Health Board. Yeah. Absolutely. We had the privilege of having Socia Love Thurman in here last week to talk about them being in. And so, and that partnership is going great, sounds like. Yeah. Yeah. We're super excited to have them. We've had, when we built the building with Lehigh, we built clinic space because we were hearing from the folks that we serve that that was a high need for them, that they weren't able to access care. So, we built a clinic space, had a wonderful partnership with RotaCare for many, many years. NeighborCare was one of the first tenants, but then they opened their beautiful new location. And finding the right partner to be upstairs after all these years is really exciting. And to have the full breadth of services that they're planning on bringing here, they just kind of are getting started with pediatrics and general practitioner care. Our dental van is going to start coming out regularly in April, so it'll be parked right in front of the food bank. Right. And their clinic. And yeah, just lots and lots of more things that we're working on. Establishing partnerships, bringing WIC on site, if we can possibly do that. So, we're excited about what the future can hold as well. I know that North Alpine's often seeking volunteers. And so, if you were, if somebody was interested in volunteering with North, what would they find when they come to show up to volunteer? What kind of things might they be doing? So, there are a variety of different ways that you can volunteer with North Alpine. We have our food bank volunteers that help both distribute and sort foods as it comes in. Sorters are very important. We have drivers who help pick up food and bring it to us from local grocery stores, like Fred Meyers. Yeah. And also, drivers who take food to folks who can't make it into the food bank. I would say drivers right now are the positions that are most needed. In addition to, like, we have a weekday distribution, Wednesday morning from 9 until 145 is the food bank. There's two shifts in there, so you don't have to work that whole time. But that's the sort, like, generally the lowest kind of amount of volunteers that we have sign up is for that middle of the week distribution because people work 9 to 5. But for folks who do have that flexibility, we would love to have you come in and help us distribute food on those days. And then there's also a variety of, like, admin type of volunteer opportunities, working with the development team on events, or community outreach, and then there's service on our board as well. Okay. We're currently recruiting also for board members. Okay. So, in terms of the volunteer aspect, if people wanted to get connected to that, do you have the, have the... Yeah. So, you can visit our website, NorthAlpine.org, and click get involved and donate time, and they'll have instructions on, well, there'll be applications, there'll be descriptions of different ways to plug in with volunteering. You can also just email our volunteer coordinator, Maddie, at volunteers, with an S, at NorthAlpine.org. Awesome. And I know, you know, we know, and you all are great about getting information out about when things are, you know, impacting food access, and so I know, we know that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as a lot of people know it, there's funding cuts there that are, that are affecting your work. Are there other things that are kind of... Yeah. I would say, overall, we were able to receive some federal funding during the pandemic, which was hugely helpful in being able to, like, staff up to meet the demand that we were seeing, increase our food purchasing budget. We've had to do, like, a budget amendment this year to increase our food purchasing budget so that we're able to offer a more complete offering from our food bank that folks can visit and meet some of their food needs, as well as increase the cultural appropriateness of food or cultural diversity that's available in our food bank. And we've seen overall funding trends trend outward. We're not raising as much as we were before, which we anticipated coming out of the pandemic. However, the need in our community is growing with these cuts to SNAP, with inflation, with folks' dollars not stretching as far. And so a lot of folks come to us just to kind of support their budget and meet their family's needs and stretch that paycheck just a little bit farther. And so that's been very challenging. We're seeing more people now access our service than at the, during the pandemic. And to see that and be working with a decreased funding availability has definitely been a challenge. We have some good reserves, and we're planning on using our reserves to support our work because we need to make sure, but that's not totally sustainable, so we're also working really hard to increase our income as well. And the support from the community is the largest portion of the funds that support our work. Donations from individuals and neighbors is the largest portion of the funding. And that can be done directly through the website. Through the website as well, yeah. There's an orange button on the top. Donate now. Perfect. And I get, you know, as a partner in the community, are there particular business partners in the North Seattle area that kind of tend to be helpful to the food bank and good partners? Absolutely. Coffee Clash has been a tremendous partner, one of the reasons why we love them so much, but also the coffee and the baked goods. But they recently did a Care the Share the Love event for us during the month of February where they donated funds as part of some delicious cookies that they sold. Hall Bent has a, well, to the downside of anything, we ask them pretty much, but we have Gate City coming up. They grow beer specifically for us that gets sold to various bars and restaurants across the city. And they ask that the bars and restaurants donate a dollar per pint back to North Helpline when they sell the beer. We're excited about Gate City this year. We're trying to, we're seeing it as kind of a relaunch of the event. It started not too long before the pandemic. And Hall Bent continued to do it all throughout the pandemic in a more low-key way. But we're ready to get back out there and hang out with our community and share about the work of North Helpline and delicious beer. Yeah, right. Yeah. And then we also have our Empty Bowls. Coffee Clash is supporting as a soup partner, and we're holding one of the events at Hall Bent. Yeah, Empty Bowls. Empty Bowls. And Brandon, thank you for joining us. And so, yeah, can you tell us just kind of what is Empty Bowls and maybe what it kind of looks like this year and how people can get plugged in? Absolutely. So Empty Bowls this year is somewhat of a return to form after a few years of modified events during the pandemic. This year, we're going to have pop-up events at various areas in our community. We're starting at our Bitter Lake Food Bank. Then we're moving to the Kraken Community Iceplex. Oh, that's exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Really excited to have them on board this year. And then finally, finishing up, of course, at the premiere, Hall Bent Brewing on the Sunday of the event. That's on March 24th and 26th of this year. Empty Bowls as a whole really signifies the filling up of bowls that we have. We share them together. This will be the 14th annual community meal that we've had. Yep. And the goal is to come together, all aspects of our community, donors, volunteers, neighbors, everyone all in one place, to share a meal, to remember the work that we're doing and that's ahead of us, and to hopefully enjoy some beautiful bowls as well. Yeah. We have... I love my collection, by the way. I don't do that. I think I take the brownie out of my cup. We have some good bowls. We have great bowls. So, in addition to the free soup that's available, which is donated by local restaurants, we also have local schools, potters, glassblowers, woodturners, the full gamut of local artisans that donate these bowls to us. And then we can then sell those to raise funding for our essential programs. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. It's wonderful. I've got some shout-outs I'd like to do. Yeah, please. To all the partners that are making this year possible. That's great. Just a few here. We've got Virginia Mason, Franciscan Health, United Healthcare, Brenner's Hill Real Estate, Hilberg, The Tentmaker, and Walsh Construction. Great. Thank you all for supporting this year's Empty Bowls. Love it. Love it. Yeah. Thanks, Brandon. Yeah. Hope to see you this March. You bet. Yeah. Is there anything else that you'd like to share? Just to share that we would like to invite everybody to participate in our community building at North Healthline. Come get to know your neighbor. Come participate and help meet needs in your own neighborhood. Absolutely. Go ahead here. I would just like to say that I've always been a fan and I'm impressed at how you guys do everything and would just like to volunteer our services if you ever need a videographer or a photographer. Oh, he's talking the same language. Yeah. Definitely. We have your back. Awesome. So, yeah. I think if you, you know, to help tell any stories that you'd like to tell, I would really look at you as being somebody that can help you. A podcast is an interesting, like doing audio instead of a video. Yeah. I love that. We could get some better stories that way. Yeah. We just, we always try to be very cognizant of not like, I don't know, like just trotting somebody up to like have a spotlight on their struggles and how, you know, anyway. We try to be very careful. Absolutely. Yeah. We appreciate the offer. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So, I'm just going to do a quick wrap up. Okay. Yep. So, thank you both and to North Helpline for all the wonderful work you all do in this community. Lake City is fortunate to have you. You can find out more information about North Helpline. One more time, Kelly, for? Northhelpline.org. There you go. Easy enough. We hope you've enjoyed our podcast. If you have ideas for future podcasts, you can email me at chris.leverson, that's L-E-V-E-R-S-O-N at C-H-S-hyphen-Y-W-A-dot-O-R-G. Special thanks to Jeremy and Aorad Artist Productions. I'm Chris Leverson and we encourage you to please enjoy Lake City. Thank you. Bye.