{"id":863,"date":"2017-06-30T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T13:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/?p=863"},"modified":"2017-06-26T13:16:57","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T17:16:57","slug":"amalia-swan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/?p=863","title":{"rendered":"Amalia Swan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Feeding Syracuse<\/h1>\n

By Kathryn Walsh | Photography by Alexis Emm<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Amalia Swan is doing her part to keep children in Central New York from going to bed hungry.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a big job. An estimated 13 million American children live in food-insecure homes, without reliable access to nutritious food. As the director of outreach and child nutrition for the Food Bank of Central New York, she and her team work to keep the children and families in our area fed all year long. It\u2019s a mission she\u2019s been working toward since 1995, when she first joined the Food Bank.<\/p>\n

When she started, her job was to increase participation in federal feeding programs, with a focus on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, then known as food stamps.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would go out into communities, go to senior centers \u2014 any place that would give me a soapbox \u2014 and talk about SNAP and the benefits of participation,\u201d Amalia remembered.<\/p>\n

Her role has evolved and changed over the years, but her focus has remained the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had several positions here, but my one constant has been the nutrition outreach and education program,\u201d she said. \u201cMy baby has always been my baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Amalia works on two programs that target local kids in need. Kids Cafe is an after-school program that provides kids with meals, enrichment activities and a safe place to do homework. The Summer Food Service Program provides breakfast and lunch to children during the summer, when they don\u2019t have access to the food they normally get in school.<\/p>\n

And, of course, she\u2019s still involved in SNAP outreach. She and her staff \u2014 she oversees six people \u2014 help families in need apply for SNAP benefits.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not all: when families come to the Food Bank looking for help getting food, Amalia and her team also connect them with other resources they might need.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo not only are you going to leave us with a completed application, but you\u2019re going to be referred to other services that you\u2019re entitled to as well,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

Those services might include free or reduced-cost school lunches, health care coverage or heating subsidies. The Food Bank also offers diabetes screening, provides nutrition education at local farmers markets and supports local growers by buying local whenever possible.<\/p>\n

Amalia\u2019s job requires her to wear many different hats, and no two days are the same. For the summer feeding program, she\u2019s involved with everything from finding sites to overseeing the transport and storage of meals. The outreach portion of her job involves creating and nurturing partnerships\u00a0with the departments of social services in neighboring counties.<\/p>\n

Although her days are busy, she still finds time to go into homes and meet with the families who rely on the Food Bank\u2019s services. Working with families is one of her favorite parts of the job.<\/p>\n

Finding time to do it all is a challenge sometimes. The self-professed \u201ccrazy soccer mom\u201d has four kids between the ages of 15 and 24. Her husband, James, is a nurse at Upstate University Hospital.<\/p>\n

And she and her coworkers at the Food Bank are their own kind of family. Like Amalia, Food Bank staff members tend to stay put for a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a great team. That\u2019s one of the reasons why you stay as long as you do,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019ve become part of that mission \u2014 to make sure we feed people and feed them well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feeding people well is the Food Bank\u2019s specialty. The organization helped 1,618 households access SNAP benefits in 2016, which accounts for more than 1.7 million meals. During the 2015-16 school year, the Kids Cafe program served 515 local kids, providing 79,203 meals in total. And this year, the Food Bank plans to serve more than 25,000 meals to area kids through its summer feeding program, which operates at 14 different sites in three counties.<\/p>\n

Amalia learned about the power of feeding the hungry at a young age. Her mother was known for opening her home to family members and anyone else who needed help. She had a tendency to hire strangers to do odd jobs, for which she would pay them not with cash, but with food.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were able to give him a meal,\u201d Amalia remembers her mother saying.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was my inspiration,\u201d Amalia said, \u201cand she continues to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amalia shares that inspiration with others in her field. Recently, she took on a project with Feeding America, sharing her expertise with similar, developing organizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a capacity advisor for seven different food banks across the country,\u201d Amalia said. \u201cWe worked on sustainability and process improvement. They all have current outreach programs, so my job is to help them, to look at their processes to see what they could change [and] to improve their process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharing her skills with other food banks may take her out of town, but her passion for feeding the people of Central New York remains her focus. She wants area families to know they can turn to the Food Bank of CNY for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to do as much as we can to feed folks, educate folks and let folks know that we\u2019re here,\u201d Amalia said. SWM <\/em><\/p>\n

For more information on\u00a0the Food Bank of CNY, or to get involved, visit foodbankcny.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Feeding Syracuse By Kathryn Walsh | Photography by Alexis Emm\u00a0 Amalia Swan is doing her part to keep children in Central New York from going to bed hungry. It\u2019s a big job. An estimated 13 million American children live in food-insecure homes, without reliable access to nutritious food. As the director of outreach and child…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[156,288,264,287,263,133,262],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-alexis-emm","tag-amalia-swan","tag-food-wine-edition","tag-food-bank-of-cny","tag-july-2017","tag-lorna-oppedisano","tag-syracuse-woman-magazine"],"gutentor_comment":0,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Inspire_Amalia_0717.jpg?fit=5200%2C3452&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":861,"url":"https:\/\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/?p=861","url_meta":{"origin":863,"position":0},"title":"Teresa Martini","author":"Staff","date":"June 30, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Tere of Transformation By Lorna Oppedisano | Photography by Alexis Emm Life is full of surprises. \u201cYou have one idea for yourself,\u201dTeresa Martini mused as she peered through oversized sunglasses. \u201cI thought I would be an organic farmer or travel the world or whatever free-spirited, crazy thing I thought I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Featured"","block_context":{"text":"Featured","link":"https:\/\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/?cat=99"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Inspire-tere_0717.jpg?fit=1200%2C801&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Inspire-tere_0717.jpg?fit=1200%2C801&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Inspire-tere_0717.jpg?fit=1200%2C801&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Inspire-tere_0717.jpg?fit=1200%2C801&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Inspire-tere_0717.jpg?fit=1200%2C801&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":544,"url":"https:\/\/www.syracusewomanmag.com\/?p=544","url_meta":{"origin":863,"position":1},"title":"Natalie Clair Stetson","author":"Staff","date":"February 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Excitement in the Water By Kathryn Walsh | Photography by Alexis Emm\u00a0 Canals and New York state history aren\u2019t exactly at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist these days. 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