EDITOR, The Tribune.

LAST Friday, October 1, the work of the Food Assistance Task Force came to a formal end. For seventy weeks without interruption, and all the while in the face of the global Covid-19 pandemic, food security for tens of thousands of Bahamian households was assured.

Constituted in the Spring of 2020, the public private partnership was a $54m investment by the Minnis administration and likely will be remembered as the largest and most successful social aid programme in our nation’s history.

In scope and scale, the Task Force is the largest Bahamian public private partnership ever crafted. It has elevated awareness of what can be achieved when the government embraces the private sector as a willing and able partner, and, in return, the private sector contributes its experience and know-how for the greater good. It has cemented the role such partnerships should play in national development as our country moves forward.

The Bahamian public deserves to know the facts about the Task Force. Paramount is the extraordinary contribution the participating NGOs made. In fact, the success of the food assistance programme rests squarely on their shoulders.

While the term hero is often overused, the Task Force’s zone leaders truly earned that accolade as their efforts were nothing short of heroic. At the peak of the pandemic in 2020 57,000 households had registered for assistance. The zone leaders’ dedication to helping the most vulnerable among us day in and day out often meant the needs of people they did not know took daily precedence over their own families and loved ones — sometimes, over their own health and wellness. That dedication continued for seventy weeks, over holidays, throughout lockdowns, in the face of great uncertainty, and around the clock.

In this age of great cynicism, political silliness, and wide-spread negativity, it was singularly uplifting for me to work alongside these dedicated and indefatigable front-line workers. They are a source of profound inspiration for me. I admire them deeply and I encourage Bahamians everywhere to thank them for what they did. They averted a national crisis, and the nation owes them a great debt of gratitude.

The Task Force’s zone leaders were Bahamas Feeding Network, the Grand Bahama Food Assistance Committee, Hands for Hunger, IDEA Relief, Lend a Hand Bahamas, One Eleuthera Foundation, and, during 2020, the Bahamas Red Cross. These NGOs will require the on-going support of the private sector in the weeks and months to come because the need for food assistance is still real. Moreso, they are deserving of support in the months and years to come because they embody all that is good about the Bahamian NGO community. Their contributions to national development cannot be overstated.

I would be remiss if I didn’t call deserving attention to the thousands of hours of work by dedicated volunteers associated with these NGOs. Their contributions, especially during the height of 2020’s need, were truly invaluable and should be widely acknowledged.

What the NGOs do not deserve is politically motivated sideswipes. It is always tempting to use the shock value of a big number for political gain. But when that manoeuvre threatens to negatively impact the integrity of the NGOs I worked alongside of, I feel compelled to speak out.

The weekly spend of the programme during 2021 was slightly more than $768,000. The money goes quickly when you divide it by the 18,000 households requiring assistance this year. Throughout the past nineteen months, the NGOs worked tirelessly to value-engineer its food parcels to a much higher amount through local donations, discounts, leveraged purchasing with local vendors, and the incredible engagement of volunteers.

The math is straightforward: with a weekly budget of $768,000 the breakdown per household unit was $42.66 which included non-food expenses. Another hallmark of the Task Force was the commitment to keep administrative costs at 8-9% in New Providence, 10-12% in the Family Islands generally, and 20% in Abaco (where most of the infrastructure was lost during Hurricane Dorian). Recognising that every dollar would make a difference to a family in need, the Task Force’s decision to keep as much money as possible in actual food assistance was unanimous.

In the context of government operations, these overhead numbers are unheard of. They are one of the great advantages of public private partnerships as the implied savings can create a large opportunity for leveraging the benefits of the programme for the wider good.

In New Providence weekly food parcels were valued at approximately $38 for a household of four persons. Imagine, if you will, the humility that comes when distributing or accepting such a meager parcel for an entire household. Each of us certainly wished we could give more. As chairman, I often received anguished calls from NGO zone leaders asking, “how can we do more?” Together we would devise ways to provide additional emergency support. The Task Force was bolstered continuously by expressions of deep gratitude from persons in need. Text messages and voicemails moved many of us to tears and steeled our resolve to carry on.

In many areas and for many people, food parcels were the only practical option and canned goods were often a necessity as recipients did not have refrigerators or even electricity and therefore no means to preserve perishable food. Some beneficiaries physically could not get to distribution centres, and, in those cases, the parcels were delivered.

Abaco suffered the most catastrophic of Dorian’s damage and for much of 2020 its grocery stores were still recovering and struggling to reopen. During that period, parcels were the only option for food assistance in our northernmost islands. An enormous logistical distribution programme was developed to receive shipped in goods, break them down and then package them up, and distribute them weekly across mainland Abaco and all its surrounding cays.

The Task Force also used vouchers. In Eleuthera, for example, vouchers sourced through grocery stores in various settlements proved to be the most efficient way of “distributing” assistance throughout the 100-mile-long island.

Similarly in Grand Bahama, vouchers were the most cost-effective means of assistance. But the need was so great, and the Task Force’s budget so relatively limited that the GB Committee was pushed to devise a means of alternating weeks of assistance, effectively helping twice as many people as the budget was designed to do.

Warehousing food for a centralised pantry concept was considered by the Task Force in its formative weeks. The Task Force considered this to be extremely resource intensive, requiring huge outlays of cash and then ongoing administrative costs that would diminish the pure investment in food. Given the urgency, the unknown duration of the programme, and the enormous administrative infrastructure this concept would require, the Task Force did not consider it to be a viable option.

The Task Force has always understood that vouchers are known to preserve dignity and freedom of choice. It is not possible to pack the same value into a voucher that is spent in the retail environment as a food parcel created in a discounted, wholesale environment. Still, vouchers can also stimulate micro-economies when purchased from within a community. A practice developed overtime within zone leaders in New Providence of reducing the value and contents of the food parcel and supplementing it with a voucher for meat. This was well received.

One of the great strengths of the programme is it never attempted to reinvent the wheel. Rather, the strengths of existing structures were tapped into — the know-how and extensive networks of NGOs. NGOs answer to Boards of Directors, usually monthly, who demand transparency and accountability. Additionally, the Task Force pledged to remain nimble, to critique its own methods weekly, and to change course if circumstances on the ground warranted. A significant point in case, Abaco food assistance became 100% vouchers in the last phase of the programme.

One of the long-term objectives of any national emergency food assistance programme should be to not exist. In Abaco, IDEA Relief eventually employed persons who had been receiving food assistance, securing the manpower needed for the enormous weekly distribution undertaking. The One Eleuthera Foundation first employed previous beneficiaries to clean community roadsides. Then, building on the principles of “teach a man to fish”, they implemented a course in cooperative farming, taught participants best farming practices for a wide range of vegetables, phased growing so produce would not enter the market simultaneously, and supported the new farmers throughout. In the densely populated Nassau City Zone, Lend a Hand assisted beneficiaries create resumes and find jobs. They also offered stipends to young men who assisted with unpacking shipments and repacking the food parcels. This modest programme helped to restore dignity and reduce conditions that propel people into crime.

In our weekly virtual meetings, I often told my NGO colleagues that as Chairman I felt as if I was “herding cats”. Everyone would laugh. Each NGO was fiercely independent and their close association with the communities in which they worked gave them a unique perspective that demanded attention, response, and support. Amidst the danger and logistical challenges of the COVID crisis, each remained so committed to the cause that I was constantly humbled by their dedication. Each is proudly Bahamian and represents the very best of the nation.

My work with the Task Force’s NGO zone leaders filled me with hope. In an unprecedented time, they designed the largest-scale humanitarian aid programme our country has known and implemented it, not flawlessly but certainly with distinction. While the Task Force has finished its work on the ground, the need for food assistance remains. To address this, there is much that can be learned from our mistakes and successes that should be considered moving forward. We welcome opportunities to contribute to defining that way forward.

I know I speak for each of the NGOs when I say it was a great honour to serve our beloved country in a time of such need.

Susan Holowesko Larson

Chairman, National Food Assistance Task Force