A Visit to Fox Lake Correctional Facility
| CommentsEarlier in the year, the Fox Lake Correctional Facility made a donation to Feed My People Food Bank, our member in Eau Claire. Not the facility or the staff at Fox Lake, but the inmates at the facility.
The donation was of the precious "unrestricted" variety - the food bank could use the donation however it saw fit - but the donors' one request was that at some point in the future, someone would attend one of their Diversity Enhancement Program seminars and tell the men what the donation was used for.
Emily Moore, the executive director of Feed My People Food Bank, asked if I could be free, given that it's a much shorter drive for me than for her, and I told her I'd be happy to do it.
The facility and I worked out a date and I forgot all about it until the date emerged on my calendar earlier this month. While I've given tons of presentations like these, I didn't quite know what to expect or how to structure this one.
Would these incarcerated men really be interested in the work of food banks and our vision for a hunger-free Wisconsin?
As it turns out, the answer to that question was a resounding yes.
I have no idea what any of these men did that led to their incarceration, but as a group, they were some of the most engaged and interested people that I have ever presented to. A handful of the guys were taking notes, scribbling down the factoids from my PowerPoint presentation, and their overall level of insight and inquiry really surprised me.
About halfway through through my presentation, I realized that I was on my humbling descent from the top of Mount Stupid.
You know Mount Stupid. If not, this graphic clearly describes the dynamic.
In April, I gave a keynote at The Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma's Partner Agency Conference where I talked about client empowerment, engaging the people we serve, their stories, insights and lived experiences, and having empathy for their journeys. It was a good talk and for a time, I thought I knew something.
Then just a few months later, there I was at the Fox Lake Correctional Facility talking to a group of men who may have been clients in the past and could be clients in the future, thinking that they wouldn't have anything interesting to say about hunger-relief.
My slow walk of shame down Mount Stupid began when I asked them how much more money they thought food insecure families would need to feel food secure. The answer is about $15. They said $14. Before learning the answer, I had pegged it at $25.
When I talked about the logistical challenges to food sourcing and distribution, they came up with innovative, exciting ideas and potential partnerships, ideas that I've only heard introduced at high-powered hunger-relief and food bank leader meetings and convenings.
One of the guys wondered why municipalities didn't convert abandoned and foreclosed lots into urban farms, which could then be a local economic development tool to grow fresh food to sell. This of course is exactly the initiative underway at Home GR/own Milwaukee.
Going into the talk, I had made the error of thinking that simply because these men had made a mistake that landed them in jail, they wouldn't have deep insights on solving societal problems.
Just because they were incarcerated doesn't mean they're not smart or interested or know a thing or two about getting food into people's bellies. In fact, they probably know more than most and are probably more invested in doing something about it.
Finally, at the bottom of Mount Stupid, I just shut up and listened to what they were eager to share with me and I learned about the potential for an internet farming army, how grocers can collaborate with federal nutrition programs and food pantries to change the emergency food system, and how an Uber model might change just in time delivery for food.
This engagement really gave me a new perspective on generosity. Not only are these men generous with their ideas, they are also more generous with their money, dollar for dollar, than many of us. They make under a dollar an hour for their labor inside the facility and they chose to collectively donate $1,000 to our Feed My People Food Bank. Even though they pooled their donations, the percentage of what they chose to give must be very high as a portion of what they make. The chaplain at Fox Lake, who runs this program, shared with me that on an annual basis, the men coming through her program give up to $12,000 to different causes.
When I left the facility, I had a new found appreciation for generosity and openness thanks to what the inmates showed me.