How YMCA’s Stacey McDaniel Is Helping To Address The Growing Challenge Of Food Insecurity

An Interview With Martita Mestey

Commit to lifelong learning. Every day of your life you will and should learn something new. You will never know everything. Approach every relationship with the idea that every person has something to teach you. I have worked on food programs for the last 13 years, yet every day I learn something new and see potential opportunities to strengthen our efforts. There is always room for improvement! Wake up each day with eyes willing to see, ears ready to hear, a heart that feels and is deeply aware of the needs of those around you, a mind eager to be sharpened, and hands and feet ready to do good work!

In many parts of the United States, there is a crisis of people having limited reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. As prices rise, this problem will likely become more acute. How can this problem be solved? Who are the leaders helping to address this crisis?

In this interview series, we are talking to leaders who are helping to address the increasing problem of food insecurity who can share the initiatives they are leading to address and solve this problem.

As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Stacey McDaniel.

Stacey McDaniel is a nationally recognized non-profit leader and anti-hunger advocate, serving as the Anti-Hunger Initiatives Specialist with YMCA of the USA (Y-USA). Under her leadership, the Y has expanded its anti-hunger work, increasing number of youth served per year by 435% and number of meals served per year by 386%. The Y’s anti-hunger work now reaches over 11,000 sites nationwide — touching the lives of nearly million kids last year alone and generating an average of almost 100,000 meals a day throughout the country.

During the first 6 months of the pandemic, the Y network served over 37 million meals and 10 million pounds of food throughout the country, quickly scaling up hunger relief efforts using the strong infrastructure, partnerships, and network of support Stacey helped create during her tenure.

Before joining Y-USA, Stacey served at the Tiftarea Y and engaged a volunteer network of more than 105 community groups to expand summer meal program services in rural South Georgia to reach over 1,700 area youth.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

I always had a heart for service, but it was really my time at Tiftarea YMCA, my hometown Y, that changed the trajectory of my career path. As a mother of small children, I taught aerobics part-time at the YMCA. One day the CEO called me into his office. He had been reviewing resumes and noticed I had a master’s degree and was curious if I would be willing to explore expanding the Y’s mission and social responsibility work beyond the Y’s walls that would reflect the organization’s commitment to strengthening communities. While discussing the opportunity, he shared that I could truly have full ownership and vision, however, there was no money or staff to help so I would need to mobilize the community’s support. Who says no to that kind of opportunity?

After accepting the role and focusing on serving summer meals to youth across the county, I met a neighborhood organizer, Priscilla Bell Prince, at a series of community advisory meetings. She had been organizing Easter Egg Extravaganzas, clothing drives, and other events to benefit and bring joy to community youth. Priscilla asked me to ride with her to meet children and parents in some of the town’s Housing Authority Apartment Complexes. As we talked about the types of food we would be serving, one little girl circled her barefoot in the sand and her eyes lit up and she said “Peaches? I haven’t had any fruit all summer.” My heart just plummeted, and I knew at that moment, that what we did next mattered more than anything. This was my hometown, my backyard, and precious children were going to bed hungry and losing access to nutritious food the second school ended. That was not a reality I could accept.

Every child deserves access to healthy food year-round. While our YMCA did not have additional staff or funds, we did have a community that came together when called to address this need. We received an overwhelming response from volunteers and funders who saw this mission as “vital to community health.” We engaged a volunteer network of more than 100 community groups to expand summer meal program services and enrichment activities in rural South Georgia to reach over 1,700 area youth. Those are more than numbers, those are individual children who each received holistic nourishment of mind, spirit, and body because one community joined together to serve their youth. Churches adopted sites at public housing complexes and parks. Community groups sent volunteers to not only serve meals, but also to read books, engage in fun activities, and empower our kids with healthy meals along with a solid helping of love and encouragement!

In 2013, I was presented with the opportunity to work with YMCA of the USA (Y-USA) to scale this concept of mobilizing people, partners, and communities to address child hunger nationally. It was a dream come true and continues to feel like I am living my purpose.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I heard the most wonderful Y story during a site visit at the YMCA of Central Massachusetts. The director there had a colorful bracelet she wore that I commented on. She shared that a student — a little girl — had made that bracelet for her many years ago and she always wore it as a reminder of why her work mattered. The girl was in the foster system and came to the YMCA after school and summer programs on and off through different placements. She made this colorful bracelet and gave it to the director (who was then a camp counselor) and told her how much she meant to her.

Fast forward years down the road, this director is interviewing new counselors, and in walks this same girl! She sees the bracelet and her eyes fill with tears as she shares how this director, and the YMCA, were such a steady source of brightness for her during her life and that she always felt welcome, safe, nourished, and loved. It was why she was applying to work at the YMCA — she wanted to help other kids like her feel the same way. This full circle story of what happens when you care, show up, and pour life and love into others sums up our “why” for the Y so nicely. The fact that these stories are happening across more than 10,000 communities through other YMCA leaders and volunteers just make this work that much sweeter.

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

Having already shared my local story, I would say the “tipping point” with my time at Y-USA was really when I enlisted the help of a team of passionate local Y leaders to support our broader network. Changing our model from one national representative — supporting more than 160 Ys — to creating a team of 15 “best of the best” Y leaders — Food Facilitators — who would have the capacity to serve the full 800 YMCA associations across our entire network was game-changing. The Y’s national network has monthly webinars highlighting bright spots, resources, and best practices — and these Food Facilitators assist in the webinar development. The Facilitators also provide toolkits designed by Y subject matter experts and national partners, and a plethora of sample resources such as Memorandums of Understanding, Requests for Bids for Food Vendors, healthy menus, blueprints for mobile vehicles and production kitchens, and more. The formation of the team first came from a small advisory panel of three trusted YMCA Hunger Heroes (Jennie Melde, Jennifer Puthoff, and Ed Wallace) who were excited to work together to innovate and create a support system that would best serve our network. Continuing to improve this model through Six Sigma techniques has shaped who we are today.

Over the past eight years, this team of Food Facilitators has built the capacity of our network for sharing innovation, scaling best practices, improving quality, and realizing a flexible framework for food programs. This work uniquely builds upon the existing resources and partners and is tailored to meet the unique needs of each community. Through the combined strength of the Food Facilitators supporting our network, we promote innovation and strategic planning, develop sustainability and fundraising resources to preserve food programs for years to come, and collaborate with community partners to mold a flexible framework for food programs.

Together, we have created toolkits that increase meal provision to teens (a hard-to-reach population) as well as weekend/holiday meal provision to children, which is a frequent gap in service time for USDA Child Nutrition reimbursement programs. To build each toolkit, we created a team of diverse local subject matter experts from across the country as well as national partners to help inform and ensure the broad applicability of the resources.

The lesson learned is to empower your network! Co-create with your standout leaders, give them the resources and framework they need to help mobilize their regions, listen to their feedback, and adjust accordingly. We build meaningful relationships, encourage authentic dialogue, and develop lasting support in our communities when we work together. This recipe creates a meaningful and lasting impact.

None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There are so many people who have poured their hearts into helping me walk this journey. My parents always spoke life into me and encouraged me to use my talents to serve others. My first CEO, Jimmy Moore, was the perfect combination of encouragement and freedom to dream big. Priscilla Prince Bell was never afraid to speak the truth and rip off my rose-colored glasses to see the struggles and realities children face. She also passionately told me, “You have to use your voice, you can help change this!” She issued a call to action, that I am still striving to answer.

There have been so many strong and empowering leaders at Y-USA who I’ve learned so much from Jackie Thurnau-Anderson who can keep her calm and bring a team together through any circumstance, Barbara Roth who pushes me to think bigger and empower a team of local leaders to change the landscape of our support network, Jorge Perez who challenged me to learn Six Sigma and apply a constant quality improvement to ensure every step of our work moves from transactional to transformational, Jane Albin who always has an eye for strategy and growth, and Heidi Brasher who helps me navigate some of the biggest changes in our organization’s history with grace, empowerment, and steadfast calm.

Then there is the entire team of Food Facilitators who teach me something new and make me so proud and grateful every day! They are the real hunger heroes who show up in both their own communities and for the teams of communities they support. They encourage everyone to stretch and grow their anti-hunger efforts to serve more families in bigger, bolder, and more sustainable ways. Every single person you interact with has something to teach you. Are you opening your eyes to see, your ears to hear, your heart to feel, your mind to receive, and your hands and feet to serve? If not, what would happen if you did? I assure you this world is a better place when we stop to appreciate and value others.

You are a successful leader. Which three-character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Relationships — Taking the time to listen, respect, and value others is key. In all my anti-hunger work, creating authentic relationships with others has been instrumental to creating buy-in, a shared vision, and an understanding of available resources. It also helps identify gaps that need addressing and a clear path forward to action where everyone feels invested, valued, and committed.

Perseverance — My colleagues at World Central Kitchen noted they always work to “Find Your Way to Yes.” Saying no is almost an automatic response when someone asks us to add one more thing to our busy jobs and schedules. When dealing with hunger, we must commit to finding our way to yes. There will always be a million reasons why something will be hard, but we must think bigger. When trying to launch a new food program with potential food providers, I always share testimonials first followed by the financials that ensure a clear path to sustainability. Some groups will be moved by the emotion of this work and others will be swayed by the sustainable business model that keeps this mission operational for years to come.

Empathy — Kindness — Respect — these traits are inseparable. We all have our cultural lenses of how we view things based on our own experiences. Really seeing another person’s point of view, refraining from judgment, respecting their humanity, and leaning in from a place of empathy to work together to find solutions is critical to moving forward.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has,” by Margaret Mead. Repeatedly, I have seen the power of a few passionate people spreading like wildfire in their communities. The team of Food Facilitators has so many amazing examples of this quote.

Pam Suprenant at the YMCA of Central Massachusetts in Worcester, Mass., received a call from her school district during the pandemic asking for help. There was a population of students the school knew needed meals delivered to their homes. Pam put out a call to the community for volunteers and had more than 100 volunteers within an hour. The Y helped deliver more than a million meals to these students’ homes!

Jeff Snyder at the Osage Prairie YMCA in rural Nevada, Mo., was serving 40 students in his afterschool program. When the pandemic closed the schools, he worked with community volunteers and his local grocery store to provide weekly meal bundles to more than 2,400 children who registered for help. The Y only had one full-time staff member at the time, yet, he said yes and served these kids for more than two years!

Amanda Schmitz at the Monroe Family YMCA in Monroe, Mich., was serving 100 youth in the afterschool program. They found out on Friday the schools were closing, and by Monday, she had organized meal provision for 1,000 youth. Even the La-Z-Boy headquarters kitchen pitched in to help scale up meals quickly for their community kids! We should always believe that our efforts will contribute and lead to unimaginable impact if we just say yes to responding to the need.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Can you describe to our readers how your work is helping to address the challenge of food insecurity?

Y-USA works tirelessly to ensure kids and families across the country have access to healthy meals and snacks during out-of-school time to help them reach their full potential. Last year, the Y served 39 million healthy meals and snacks to more than 500,000 kids. Nationwide, the Y continues to provide 3.5 million healthy meals and millions of pounds of groceries each month.

With 30 million children relying on free and reduced-price school meals during the day, many kids and families lack access to food during the summer, on weekends, and after school. The Y can step in and fill that gap. With the help of private and public partners across the United States, such as the Walmart Foundation, the Y provides children and teens with nutritious meals and snacks as well as fun activities and a safe space as part of the Y’s afterschool and summer program.

Can you share something about your work that makes you most proud? Is there a particular story or incident that you found most uplifting?

During my tenure, the Y has expanded its anti-hunger work, increasing the number of children served per year by 435 percent and the number of meals served per year by 386 percent. The Y has also scaled federally funded child nutrition programs to reach 6,000 sites nationwide — touching the lives of half a million kids last year alone and generating an average of nearly 100,000 meals a day throughout the country. Every day I am grateful for the countless Ys, partners, and volunteers who have made this tremendous growth possible across the country. Being part of this mission and network of passionate hunger heroes is such a blessing.

While our growth is impressive, the thing that makes me proudest is how quickly the Ys were able to respond when their communities needed them the most. During the first six months of the pandemic, the Y network served more than 37 million meals and 10 million pounds of food throughout the country, quickly scaling up hunger relief efforts using the strong infrastructure, partnerships, and network of support our team has helped create.

We saw Ys like Centre County YMCA in Pennsylvania turn its pickleball courts into food distribution centers, activate incredible volunteerism, and record food deliveries in their community under the enthusiastic leadership of Mel Curtis.

The YMCA of Greater Boston also activated quickly delivering meals to apartment complexes and creating a partnership with the city to ensure the community had continued access to meals. When this Y learned that there was a community with a high population of families needing Halal-based meals, they worked with a local Halal experienced restaurant to ensure they had culturally appropriate and trusted meals for community families.

The YMCA of Memphis and Mid-South in Tennessee scaled its operations to serve an extraordinary amount of meals to thousands of kids and worked with the city to not only deliver healthy food but also provide academic support at centers throughout the community. The entire Memphis Y’s workforce shifted to rally around nourishing our youth during the pandemic.

Across the nation we saw basketball courts become food warehouses, lifeguards and Zumba instructors help pass out meals, childcare vans transport food, and communities mobilize to help make sure kids did not go to bed hungry. The heart for the service of Y leaders and their willingness to rethink how the Y could best serve communities during difficult times makes me so proud to be a part of this organization.

In your opinion, what should other business and civic leaders do to further address these problems? Can you please share a few things that can be done to further address the problem of food insecurity?

We have all heard the saying “It takes a village to raise a child,” — we must embrace that it also takes a village to feed them. Collaboration and inviting every partner to the table to address the issue of hunger are critical to creating lasting solutions. Work with each community, hear their voices, and identify where there are current resources and support systems in place as well as gaps in service. Work together to complete the overall food landscape within that community to ensure everyone has access to the healthy foods they need to thrive.

Are there other leaders or organizations who have done good work to address the challenge of food scarcity? Can you tell us what they have done? What specifically impresses you about their work? Perhaps we can reach out to them to include them in this series.

There are so many stellar leaders and organizations working to alleviate hunger and it takes all of us!

• Walmart Foundation and other anonymous funders have given so generously to ensure food programs are positioned to keep helping our communities access fresh food.
• World Central Kitchen worked with local restaurants to provide community meals and ensure restaurant employees could still have steady work during the pandemic. They partnered with the YMCA of Metropolitan Atlanta and the YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit to help nourish their community and keep local restaurants afloat. Feeding America is another fabulous organization and we are so proud of the many partnerships with local Ys to offer food pantries, mobile markets, and grocery distributions to help with that last mile delivery for families. Together, the organizations created the YMCA’s Emergency Hunger Relief Toolkit to help ensure even more YMCAs and partners are prepared to rapidly respond with hunger relief during crises and natural disasters. Partnership for a Healthier America has also worked with local Ys like Gateway Regional YMCA in St. Louis, Mo., to provide weekly produce bags ensuring families have access to healthy food and to create greater health outcomes. The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) is a tremendous resource as well. They are steadfast supporters of advocacy and policy that will help end hunger in this country. The Y has partnered with FRAC for well over a decade and they are a lighthouse for high-quality and effective federal nutrition programs.
• Partnership for a Healthier America has also worked with local Ys like Gateway Regional YMCA in St. Louis, Missouri to provide weekly produce bags to ensure families have access to healthy foods and create greater health outcomes!

If you had the power to influence legislation, are there laws that you would like to see introduced that might help you in your work?

If I could influence legislation, I would advocate for improvements to the Child Nutrition Act that help year-round, community providers like the Y operate programs more smoothly and reach more kids in need. Key provisions to enact are included in the Summer Meals Act of 2021 (S. 1170 / H.R. 783) and include: (1) streamlining the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) and Afterschool Meal Program (CACFP) to support year-round child nutrition providers, (2) lowering the area eligibility threshold from 50 percent to 40 percent to match other federal programs, such as federally supported 21st CCLC afterschool program, (3) providing transportation grants to get children to congregate program sites where they can eat, learn, play and thrive, and (4) allowing all summer meal sites to serve three meals. Additionally, we have learned so much during the COVID-19 pandemic, so my hope is that these lessons learned — including flexibilities that allowed Ys to innovate and meet community needs — are made permanent.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.

1. Look for bright spots and shining stars. In any situation, look for what IS working! When I first onboarded at Y-USA, serving a network of more than 160 Ys was overwhelming. Looking for the Ys that were passionately rolling up their sleeves to serve more youth meals and engaging them to help support other Ys to create successful food programs was key. Enthusiasm for the mission can help inspire and motivate others to join them too! You might easily become overwhelmed if you only look at what is not working. However, by focusing on your bright spots and empowering your passionate leaders to connect and support other staff across the network helps spread the vision and overall success. This strategy helped change our retention rate for food program Ys from 67 to 99 percent.

2. Commit to lifelong learning. Every day of your life you will and should learn something new. You will never know everything. Approach every relationship with the idea that every person has something to teach you. I have worked on food programs for the last 13 years, yet every day I learn something new and see potential opportunities to strengthen our efforts. There is always room for improvement! Wake up each day with eyes willing to see, ears ready to hear, a heart that feels and is deeply aware of the needs of those around you, a mind eager to be sharpened, and hands and feet ready to do good work!

3. Complete; do not compete. Our goal at the Y is to strengthen communities. The best way to do that is to listen to our communities and find out what the needs are as well as what the current supports are in place. Identify where there are gaps. How might we help kids access more meals when school is out, shore up the last mile of delivery for food distribution, or partner in any other variety of ways to create a more complete food ecosystem? The Y of Greater Long Beach’s Youth Institute Director Sokthea Phay did an amazing job of identifying gaps in food access for families. Through collaboration with diverse partners, their team ensures broad and culturally appropriate food distribution events are uniquely tailored to fill the gaps in their community and ensure more families have convenient access to the healthy food they need to thrive.

4. There is power in bringing people together. With everyone that joins a cause, the effort becomes that much stronger. Before long, you are no longer just a thread, but a thick rope that has the power to pull others out of a valley and onto the mountaintop! Using your voice to help others see the need, giving them a variety of options of how they can help (and ensuring they find their way to yes by choosing a path that they can see themselves in), yields big results over time. It is how the Y has increased the number of children served, nationwide, over the last decade by 435 percent.

5. Speak life. Use your words to build people up, create a positive vision of the future, and unite our communities. You give energy to what you focus on. If you only focus on the negative and all the things that could go wrong, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Focus on the positive, what could go right, and the talents each person shares and contributes, and we will create that better future that we all long for and deserve. I had a women’s leadership mentor, Gigi Woodruff, tell me to only spend 60 seconds maximum talking about what was not working and then to shift to what we can do about it and what is working. She said that your brain shuts down and will not be receptive if you spend any longer than that because your fight or flight instinct kicks in and hijacks your logical thinking. Since then, I incorporate this strategy with all my focus groups and coaching sessions with my team. We have left these meetings forming tools and resources that help shore up support for an entire network of anti-hunger advocates. Not to mention each of our team members has shown incredible growth and impact and created an entire support network that inspires and empowers Ys across the nation to alleviate hunger in big ways rather than being bogged down in all the reasons they could fail.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Get engaged! Encourage local businesses, organizations, and community members to volunteer at least once every summer at a summer meal site. Hunger is a trickster — it hides in plain sight leaving 76 percent of Americans to believe it does not exist in their own community (FRAC — America’s Views on Hunger) despite the reality that one in six children are wrestling with this seemingly insurmountable challenge daily. When you step out into the community and interact with children who genuinely need the meal you are giving, it compels you to take off the rose-colored glasses, see the need, and be a part of the solution!

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them.

Author Brené Brown inspires me. I would welcome the opportunity to share a meal, trade ideas, and learn from her.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can follow the Y on social media platforms to stay up to date on our work.

• Twitter: @ymca
• Instagram: @ymca
• Facebook: YMCA of the USA
• LinkedIn: YMCA of the USA (National Resource Office)

This was very meaningful, thank you so much, and we wish you only continued success.