Poverty on the Palouse

In December of 2017, a group of local citizens representing faith communities expressed concern with increased food insecurity needs in the community. This issue was also identified several years earlier, during the original Poverty on the Palouse Forum series held last in 2014. In 2014, homelessness was the issue brought to the City by Steve Bonnar, Sojourners Alliance Executive Director. Results from that forum included the development of Family Promise of the Palouse. 

Mayor Lambert reinvigorated the Poverty on the Palouse Forum approach to address this current pressing issue of food insecurity. The City is happy to facilitate this discussion and invites all interested community members to attend. This initial issue-framing meeting will consist of information sharing and brainstorming to allow the group to share and learn about opportunities and challenges that can drive goals and tasks.

Poverty on the Palouse is a citizen-based initiative group focusing on concerns raised by the community.  The current goal of the Poverty on the Palouse Forum is to address food security issues by supporting and empowering community members to increase education around access and awareness to healthy foods.  Our focus at this stage is on relationship building with community partners offering assistance and to identify specific individual needs related to food security.  We will work in cooperation with existing agencies to support or create sustainable systems to address the above goal.

Information gathered from previous work as well as more current statistics on food insecurity in our community is included in the related materials to the right.

Please join the conversation. If you know of anyone who may be interested in participating, please don’t hesitate to invite them to join as well. Thank you in advance for your support of the community.

Contact Information

For more information on the Poverty on the Palouse Forum series, please contact Jen Pfiffner, Assistant to the City Supervisor by email or by phone at 208-883-7123.  

To stay up to date on Poverty on the Palouse, please join the Poverty on the Palouse group through our Notify Me service.