A few tentative steps inside the grocery store door, an older couple stares at the bright packaged and fresh foods stacked in attractive displays. Mothers push small children past them in shopping carts, swerved occasionally by the tot’s appeal for a particular treat. To the left, checkout lanes are clogged with carts of bagged groceries, some of them heaping full as coal carts emerging from deep underground.
The couple moves slowly to address their meager shopping list, but their minds race with calculations. Not only the price tally, but also the apportionment of the food they buy. How far will this bargain bin soup stretch? Will rice keep hunger at bay? How much peanut butter can you stand?
That was when Quentin and Jo Bauer of Immaculate Conception Church in North Little Rock came face to face with the reality of what they were attempting to do — live on the equivalent of food stamps for a week.
“I felt so anxious shopping,” Jo recalled. “There was a sense of embarrassment at what I was buying and what people thought when they saw what was in the cart. Just then, we ran into an acquaintance of my husband. He looked at what we had and thought those were strange things for us to be buying. When we explained what we were doing he said, ‘Well, good luck with that.’”
The story still stings for Lauer, 72, who took on the week in October after watching the 2012 documentary “A Place at the Table” in September. In it, she learned of the SNAP Challenge, a weeklong experiment designed to drive the plight of the poor home to participants.
“I really tried to put my mind into what it would actually be like to depend on food stamps and what people would think about you,” she said. “My husband and I chose to do the challenge, but those who are actually on SNAP don’t have a choice.”
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), what used to be known as food stamps, made the news Nov. 1 when funding was reduced 5 percent. The reduction, which impacts a family of four by $36 per month, came as supplemental funding to the program approved during the 2009 recession came to an end.
The challenge asks participants to attempt to provide food on the same money allotted SNAP recipients.
After viewing “A Place at the Table,” Jo Lauer asked pastor Father Tom Elliott if the parish would sponsor a showing of the documentary, which he readily agreed. Roughly 30 people attended at the screening, although it’s unclear how many actually did the challenge.
For Father Elliott and his fellow participants in a three-day parish SNAP Challenge Nov 5-7, that meant $1.50 per meal. He said the timing of the parish challenge and funding cuts were entirely coincidental, but reinforced the difficulties people who rely on the program face.
“I had been eating healthy whole grains, fruits, vegetables and what we all found was, you can’t buy that,” Father Elliott said. “I was able for that three-day period to buy one banana. One banana.
“We kinda got off easy,” he added, not even half joking. “The government has actually reduced that to about $1.40. That would’ve been an even greater challenge.”
“Not having lived by myself, not having to provide my own food, the shopping was very difficult,” said Martin Siebold, a seminarian assigned this year to Immaculate Conception. “There were definite instances throughout the three days where I was worried. I was wondering if I was going to have enough food. I’m so used to being able to just eat whatever I want when I’m hungry.”
More than 500,000 Arkansans — 17 percent of the population — are projected to receive SNAP in 2014, including 232,000 children and 91,000 elderly. The average payout per household in 2012 was $278.
“It awakened an awareness in me that I have hungry brothers and sisters,” Jo Lauer said. “They’re not ‘those people’; they are my brothers and sisters in Christ.”
Parishioners were encouraged to post comments on the parish’s Facebook page during the three days, some of which revealed frustration with public assistance fraud. Father Elliott was pleased with the dialogue and hopes it continues, to lead his flock to greater understanding of others.
“We’ve deeply criminalized the poor in this country,” he said. “It’s easier to criminalize them so that I don’t have to feel guilty and shameful for the fact that I live the way I live. And I think most people, if we really dug deep, we’ve all experienced that. We don’t want to have to deal with the guilt and the shame, so we say, ‘Oh, well, they’re mentally ill, oh, they’re a criminal and they’re abusing the system.’
“The real call of charity and helping the poor is rooted in relationship, not a handout that a person could abuse or not.”
