Thousands of SNAP recipients will get extra help purchasing fresh fruits and vegetables at their farmer’s market, thanks to the South Carolina Legislature and Governor McMaster. In the budget that took effect July 1, legislators approved an increase in the amount of money allocated for the Healthy Bucks program per household from $10 up to $20.
“SNAP recipients who purchase at least $5 with their SNAP card at participating locations can now receive up to $20 in Healthy Bucks tokens to purchase additional fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Meg Stanley, executive director.
Under Proviso 38.22, the Department of Social Services shall continue the Healthy Bucks program established to provide coupons that allow Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to obtain additional fresh fruits and vegetables when purchasing fresh produce at authorized farmer’s markets and vendors with SNAP benefits through their EBT cards. Healthy Bucks coupons shall allow the beneficiary to increase the amount of produce purchased, up to twenty dollars per month.
“Healthy Bucks was created with one-time federal funds in 2012 and does not have an impact on the state’s taxpayers. We are grateful to the Department of Social Services and Director Michael Leach for requesting this change and for their commitment to this important program. It’s great working with them to make the increase happen.”
Evidence indicates that increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables can help improve health outcomes, yet thousands of low-income South Carolinians report that they cannot consistently afford to purchase fruits and vegetables. With Healthy Bucks, affordable options become more readily available to our most vulnerable families, children, and seniors.
In addition to aiding in the fight against hunger and food insecurity in South Carolina, Healthy Bucks also supports local farmers by stipulating the funds must be used at participating farmer’s markets. To find a list of participating farmer’s markets visit the SC DSS website.
A special thank you to the Budget Conference Committee members, Senator Harvey Peeler, Senator Thomas Alexander, Senator Nikki Setzler, House Speaker Murrell Smith, Representative Gary Simrill, and Representative Todd Rutherford for adopting the budget proviso continuing the Healthy Bucks program.
What a session. The second year of our two-year Legislative Session came to an end with a big bang! The South Carolina Legislature passed the School Lunch Debt (H3006) bill unanimously and the governor signed it into law. The law prevents school districts from sending students’ lunch debt to collection agencies statewide. It also stops them from adding interest or any other fees on top of existing debt.
“The fact that both the House and Senate unanimously voted in favor of my bill to end this practice shows that legislators, Republicans and Democrats, recognize the importance of ensuring that no child should face going hungry at school for fear of their parent’s inability to afford a school lunch,” said Rep. Wendy Brawley (D) Richland County, who sponsored the bill.
“H3006 is a great example of working with our advocates and our partners to positively change the school environment for vulnerable students. I couldn’t be more proud of all of our advocates who took action,” said Phil Ford, policy and advocacy consultant at Wholespire.
School districts are encouraged to apply for the USDA Community Eligibility Provision Program, a national program that provides free lunch, breakfast, and sometimes dinner for all students. It’s available for all qualifying school districts with many eligible school districts in South Carolina not participating at all.
l-r: Phil Ford (Wholespire), Representative Wendy Brawley, Ashley Lidow (WREN)
Wholespire partnered with the Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network (WREN), Save the Children, and other partners to encourage Senators to support the bill. But, the network of grassroots advocates was instrumental in getting H3006 on Senators’ radar. Action alerts were emailed to all grassroots advocates and shared on social media resulting in a multitude of responses.
This success comes off the heels of Wholespire rebuilding relationships at the State House after an election year (2020) that resulted in a large percentage of new legislators, in addition to the Wholespire rebrand in 2021.
“We spent a lot of time letting our new legislators know who we are and what we stand for,” said Meg Stanley, executive director at Wholespire. “We also had to make sure all legislators understood that our new name did not change our work.”
The potential for more legislative success is yet to be revealed. If Governor McMaster signs the budget in a few weeks, thousands of South Carolinians could benefit from an updated proviso. We’ll announce that news as soon as the budget is signed!
Additionally, there were efforts to limit any nonprofit, schools, and others from offering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or implicit bias training. These bills could have resulted in the loss of nonprofit status or the loss of ability to receive state funding. Wholespire opposed these bills that would limit educational opportunities for South Carolinians and provided support to the myriad of organizations leading the efforts.
Wholespire strives to align state and local level advocacy with an equity component of our work. We aspire to have champions in policy-making positions, to influence policy changes that advance our mission and the work of Wholespire chapters, and to have diversity within our advocacy partners.
Would you like to become a Wholespire grassroots advocate? We will periodically call on you to contact your legislators and advocate for public health, schools, equity, and many other issues related to our mission. We will email you action alerts when we need your help. Sign up today!
“Growing Local SC brings leaders together to create community-based solutions for a resilient food system for South Carolina,” states Project Director Nikki Seibert Kelley. Mrs. Kelley notes, “Local food systems are complex and highly place-based, making it essential for communities to build networks around the people working locally to get food from farms and gardens to the table.” The pandemic highlighted the vulnerability in global supply chains, demonstrating the importance of building regional economies able to withstand disturbances. Growing Local SC brings together agencies, organizations, coalitions, food hubs, and businesses to create a network focused on building systems to equitability, effectively, and economically source, aggregate, and distribute local food to South Carolinians. Growing Local SC is designed to be reflective of the state’s local food system and also includes:
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Food system leaders across the state are encouraged to engage in Growing Local SC by joining the South Carolina Food Policy Council as a member, participating in the annual meetings, and getting engaged through committees, local food councils, and coalitions. Visit www.growinglocalsc.org for more information.
Setting health-related policies are, perhaps, one of the first steps in creating healthy environments, influencing behavior change, and addressing health equity on a systemic level. When health-related policy is incorporated into churches, the potential to change the health of a community is impactful. And, when teens lead the policy charge, encouraging church leaders to adopt health-related policies can be simple.
That’s what teens found out throughout a three-year partnership between Wholespire and the 7th District AME Church’s Young Peoples Division (YPD). Through The HYPE Project®, youth teams were able to get more than 60 health-related policies passed at their churches. Examples of policy changes made by teens and their church leaders include:
Teens at Pine Grove AME Church in Columbia meet to plan their policy proposals.
Offering water, fruit, and vegetables when meals are served,
Including physical activity breaks during services and meetings, and
Removing saltshakers from tables in church dining halls.
Teens played many important roles in the development and passage of these health-related policies. They helped decide what policies were most appropriate for their churches, wrote the policies, and presented them to church leaders for approval.
Sometimes, policy change requires changing a policy that already exists rather than creating a new one. At Mother Emanual AME Church in Charleston, teens worked with their culinary committee to update their kitchen policy. This updated policy was changed to include healthy food choices on their menu.
The HYPE Project® teaches teens that promoting policies is key to getting everyone in on the healthy eating and active living movement. Teens developed activities to promote health-related policies like creating a walking program, producing physical activity videos, and hosting kick-off events.
At Pine Grove AME Church in Columbia, teens hosted the Reshape your Diet and Witness the Fitness community event at the Pine Grove Community Recreation Center to promote their church policies and to encourage the community to adopt a healthy lifestyle. They offered a healthy snack taste test, games, fruits of the spirit canvas painting, line dancing, healthy recipes, and door prizes.
“The youth participation at this event made me proud. Because of this event, the church is starting a community faith walk beginning the first Saturday in the month at Harbison Park,” said Miranda Blocker, YPD director at Pine Grove AME Church.
Teens led events like church walking groups to promote their policies and to encourage members to become more physically active.
At Bethany AME Church in Union, teens successfully encouraged their church leadership to create health-related policies for their kitchen. In addition to serving fruits and vegetables at church-hosted events and removing the salt shakers from tables, they decided to stop serving fried foods altogether. After promoting the policies, they’ve seen individual behavior change.
“We noticed that a lot of our church members have started to exercise more (such as joining gyms, walking) and eat healthier,” said Rena Goode. “We also noticed that our kitchen committee has increased healthy food choices for meal service.”
Through youth engagement and The HYPE Project®, the 7th District AME Church’s teens are taking on larger leadership roles and becoming community changemakers. Visit The HYPE Project® page to learn how teens can make change happen in your community.
In February 2019, the University of South Carolina Lancaster (USCL) applied for a Let’s Go! 3.0 mini-grant to increase access to its outdoor recreation amenities by adopting an open community use policy and to continue its active community environments work with Wholespire Lancaster County, formerly Eat Smart Move More Lancaster County.
The partners had completed several community health improvement projects that increased access to healthy opportunities. The mini-grant would help complete their vision while focusing on the Clinton community, a Qualified Opportunity Zone (QOZ) in the City of Lancaster. QOZs are characterized as economically distressed communities defined by the census tract.
Existing projects that needed to be completed were:
Improvement of the built environment in the Clinton neighborhood by extending bike lanes and crosswalks and offering a loop to the Lindsay Pettus Greenway, which improved access to the USCL campus.
USCL public health students conducted an assessment on student on-campus walking behaviors. They used the data to develop walking routes for anyone to utilize while on campus.
USCL’s recreation facilities were open to the public (including trails, walking routes, tennis courts, picnic pavilion, 5K starting point, bike lanes, and crosswalks). However, the promotion of these facilities has been limited to word-of-mouth.
The Gregory YMCA began managing the operations of the University-owned recreation facility. USCL secured funding for the YMCA to provide sliding scale financial assistance to income-eligible YMCA members on a long-term, sustained basis. Approximately 400 Lancaster residents utilize this benefit from the YMCA, many of whom live in the nearby Clinton community.
Let’s Go 3.0 mini-grant funds were used to:
Hire a professional designer to create a campus map of outdoor recreational facilities open to the public, which included the student-design walking routes.
Purchase and install way-finding signs that promote the open use amenities and walking routes.
Promote the open community use agreement policy to the community. Promotional strategies included issuing a press release to The Lancaster News, posting the press release on USCL’s website and social media, and announcing the existence and availability of these community resources at USCL’s student orientation and Clinton Elementary School’s Parent Night.
Purchase bike racks for the Lindsay Pettus Greenway trailhead in the Clinton community and the USCL campus.
Initial Challenges
For USCL, the challenge wasn’t creating new opportunities for physical activities, it was promoting the ones they already had. The USCL campus has seven buildings, a YMCA in the physical education building, tennis courts, and about a mile and a half of natural path trails.
“We’re very community-oriented, and there’s a lot of word-of-mouth advertising. This is how a lot of small towns, small communities go. We just assume that people know things, but we’re only reaching our own social circles,” explained Lauren Vincent Thomas, professor of health promotion education and behavior at USCL.
The first step was passing an open community use agreement. “When we learned about the Let’s Go 3.0 mini-grant to promote and pass an open community use agreement, I felt like we kind of already had it, we just hadn’t set it as a policy,” said Thomas. “In reality, people use the trail and the tennis court IF they know that they can, but it wasn’t widely known information.”
During the initial conversation with university leadership, they said people already knew about the trails. Convincing them that the project had value was most of the battle with the project. According to Thomas, “Wholespire had this great manual that answered all of my questions. I felt very equipped and confident when the Education Foundation asked about liability.”
A Snowball Affect
Before this project moved to the next steps, debris that was dumped in front of trails was cleared. “It just sent a message that we didn’t care about the campus,” Thomas said while explaining how things like debris deterred people from using the trails. “After that, it was just about updating some features and showing what the campus had to offer. The website was updated, billboards with maps were placed in prime positions, and trail markers and entrances were added.”
Once the project was started, more opportunities were uncovered. “We found money to put split rail fencing up to show off the trail and leveraged funding from another grant to put bike racks in, and we worked with the South Carolina Wildlife Federation to certify that we had a wildlife habitat,” said Thomas. “It reminded us of what we had and gave us the opportunity to share with other people.”
Thomas’ favorite part of the project has been connecting with people who are readily willing to offer their own gifts, talents, and resources.
“We just needed to give them the opportunity and generously thank them for what they offer. For example, we partnered with, an organization in our community that builds ADA ramps for seniors and people who have disabilities, to build a new bridge on one of the trails. They were willing to do this project for us for free as long as they got the credit. There is so much creative generosity in our community. Now, our partners feel like the trails are just as much theirs as it is USC Lancaster’s and that’s exactly what we want.”
New Conversations
The students on campus have been enjoying the positive changes the project brought. The picnic shelter has seen new light now that people know it’s there and university organizations have been enjoying the cleared trails. An outdoor club put in geocaches and monitors them to add new prizes and F3, a male CrossFit group, uses the trails for Saturday morning runs.
The project has also affected conversations about the university’s 10-year Master Plan. “This mini-grant project has primed us to have that bigger conversation about walkability in our community,” said Thomas. “There is a four-lane highway between USC Lancaster’s campus and downtown Lancaster that could benefit from a crosswalk or pedestrian bridge!”
Thomas is hoping this project is the start of making the community more bike- and pedestrian-friendly.
This last legislative session has been one for the books. From dealing with COVID-19 recovery to very polarizing social issues, the South Carolina General Assembly has been very active. Wholespire has been busy building relationships and fighting for greater access to healthy lifestyles.
For the 2021-2022 Legislative Session, we have been tracking 13 bills in the Senate and House. You can check out the legislative watch list here. Two of these bills passed full House and have moved on to Senate Education Committee.
H3319 – Under this bill, students that are eligible for free and reduced lunch must be offered the same meal as other students and these meals must be offered regardless of if the student owes money for previous meals. Districts cannot penalize students for failing to pay for school lunches and the State Department of Education will develop and provide a model policy and template for school meal debt collection to each school district.
H3006 – Under this bill, school and school districts would be unable to use debt collectors to collect outstanding debts for school lunch or breakfast accounts. It would also prevent these entities from assessing or collecting any interest, fees, or additional charges for outstanding debts.
While the legislature may be out of session until a special session, planned for September & October, Wholespire remains committed to continue the work in the “off-season.” We will continue to build relationships with elected officials and decision makers across the state, and we will be providing resources to our advocates on the ground. Additionally, the Wholespire team has developed a 3-class advocacy training series for our chapters and partners – Government 101, Advocacy 101, & Relationship Building 101.
We look forward to sharing more with you and advocating to make South Carolina a healthier state. Please contact us at info@wholespire.org if you would like to learn more about our advocacy efforts.
