DONATE NOW

VEAP

Access to healthy food, social services and housing stability

Elizabeth Neil

Elizabeth Neil

Staff Spotlight – Katie Blood

VEAP is eager to announce this month’s staff spotlight, Katie Blood. Katie is one of VEAP’s Bilingual Housing Specialists (Spanish/English), in the Social Services Department.

In her role as a Bilingual Housing Specialist, Katie works to support both English and Spanish speaking participants in the VEAP community who are experiencing housing instability, especially those who are struggling to pay their rent or those who can’t pay their rent at all. To support participants best, Katie refers them to the state rental assistance program, and to other resources available to them. In order to do this, Katie and the other housing specialists stay informed on the qualifications participants need to meet in order to access these resources and programs.

Due to COVID-19, the Social Services Department has largely moved to assisting participants with their applications to the state housing program, RentHelpMN, to make sure they are eligible and have the correct documentation. Most of Katie and the other Housing Specialists’ days are filled with phone and email communications with participants regarding the program. VEAP is grateful for the connection the Social Services Department makes with participants!

Katie loves working in an environment that seeks to be better:

VEAP evaluates itself consistently and tries to adjust the opportunities to grow and improve as an organization. I like that VEAP tries to match our programming to what the needs of the community are.

VEAP is happy to have such a devoted Bilingual Housing Specialist on our team to help participants with housing an other requests. Thank you, Katie!

 

Staff Spotlight – Paul Jacobson

VEAP is excited to introduce Paul Jacobson, VEAP’s Food & Basic Needs Director, for this month’s Staff Spotlight!

In his role, Paul oversees all of VEAP’s food programming and the staff that run them: the On-site Food Pantry, the Mobile Food Pantry, Student Food Pack Program, and home deliveries. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Paul also oversaw the transportation programming, such as rides home from the pantry and the senior shuttle. Paul’s overarching goal through his supervision and involvement in these tasks is to increase people’s access to healthy foods.

A typical day for Paul includes many meetings, interacting with his staff throughout the pantry and checking in with everyone to see if they have everything they need on the food access side of business. Along with this, Paul also has the opportunity to facilitate different groups here at VEAP, including the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team and the Visioning and Implementation team for post-COVID services. Paul’s devotion to increasing people’s access to healthy foods is one of the reasons he is a huge asset to VEAP.

Paul’s favorite part of working at VEAP is the opportunity to interact people throughout the entire organization; he is not just isolated to a few departments. Paul appreciates the variety of perspectives that help VEAP be the well-rounded, collaborative environment it is.

One special thing about Paul is that he loves to cook! Paul’s favorite part of cooking is creating a dish out of what he has in front of him with the goal of making something distinct and creative. Paul also likes to run in his free time.

VEAP is happy to have Paul devoted to helping increase participants’ access to healthy foods.

Staff Spotlight – Jessica Hering

VEAP is excited to introduce Jessica Hering, VEAP’s Social Services Director, for this month’s Staff Spotlight.

In her position, Jessica works on bringing direction and vision to the Social Services team with expanded support through facilitating weekly team meetings among many other tasks. Jessica oversees a total of ten people in the Social Services Department here at VEAP, ranging from housing specialists, social workers, phone intake workers, and the new AmeriCorps administrative assistant.

Jessica is the point of contact with Hennepin County and keeps her team up-to-date with program requirements on the state’s rental assistance program, RentHelpMN. She also seeks to creatively meet the needs of VEAP’s participants– looking for innovative ways to serve those with unique challenges.

“VEAP is grounded in the community that we serve. It’s really connected to participants who live here, other providers, faith communities and a partnership with the county. It truly feels like VEAP is such a part of this community and really responsive to its needs.”

In her spare time, Jessica likes playing softball and reading. Another interest of hers is spending time outside. Whether that be camping or waterskiing, Jessica is there.

VEAP loves having such devoted staff members working to help make an impact in their community. Thank you, Jessica, for the work you do for VEAP and our participants.

Thank you, Future Light students!

“The biggest thing I learned was working with other people and how much people actually need food.”

During the week of June 14-25, 2021, high school students participated in VEAP’s first-ever two-week installment of the Future Light program. The students entering grades 9-12 spent 25 hours volunteering in the warehouse, fulfilling participants’ food orders, sorting donations and assisting with outdoor intake. The Future Light youth also participated in educational sessions, learning about non-profit work, poverty, food insecurity and housing insecurity.

In the closing day of the first program, students reflected on their biggest takeaways and ways they can bring about positive change in their community.

Many of the takeaways by these youth from during the educational sessions and volunteering included highlighting the systemic racism ingrained within housing and food insecurity, rooted in the redlining history of Minnesota:

“Minnesota is the most segregated in terms of housing.”

 

“Redlining caused segregation and its effects are still here in Minnesota today.”

Other students participating in the discussion focused on the problems rooted in poverty and housing and food insecurity:

“It’s much harder to pull out of homelessness compared to how easy it is to become homeless.”

 

“I learned about how easy it is to get into poverty and how hard it is to get out.”

Overall in their discussion, many Future Light students highlighted the impact that volunteers make and expressed their desire to continue to volunteer at VEAP and make a difference in participants’ lives.

VEAP looks forward to the upcoming Future Light sessions and witnessing the impact these students can bring to their community!

 

Staff Spotlight – Sean Trenary

VEAP is excited to introduce a new series offering a closer look at what our staff does on a day-to-day basis. First up is Sean Trenary, VEAP’s Mobile Foods Services Manager.

In his role, Sean works with volunteers who have signed up to support our Mobile Food Pantry, which involves going out into the community to bring a smaller food pantry on wheels to different sites. Sean and his team currently go to two locations, Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington and Yorktown Senior Citizen Center in Edina, with hopes and plans of adding more locations in the fall.

Due to COVID-19, Sean and his team had to scale back their mobile food deliveries and home deliveries, another program Sean works with volunteers on. For home deliveries, Sean and other volunteers bring food to those who are unable to make the trip into Bloomington to the VEAP main location. Despite COVID-19 limiting home deliveries, Sean and his volunteer team still make 15-25 home deliveries each day. We are so grateful for the devotion Sean has to making food more available to people in our community!

Sean’s favorite part of working at VEAP is being with people who want to help the community:

 “It’s encouraging to work with so many people who want to help folks. Everyone is here for the same reason, be it volunteer or staff, wanting to help out the community. It’s really empowering to me, and encouraging and energizing, to meet people in the community and hear their stories and connect with them. It’s all about those relationships for me.”

Despite being so focused on relationships and being outgoing and approachable, Sean is afraid of… mascots! Count Sean out of chatting with and building a relationship with Goldy the Gopher or any other mascots; they’re too mysterious for him!

VEAP is so grateful to have such a devoted staff and community member in Sean. Come volunteer with our Mobile Food Pantry to help out the community, talk to Sean and ask him about his fear of mascots!

Welcoming new Americorps staff at VEAP!

​VEAP is excited to welcome three new temporary staff-members to our team! These three individuals are serving as AmeriCorps Emergency Responders, an initiative designed specifically to help nonprofit organizations respond to significant needs in their community related to COVID-19.

Thore Dosdall is an AmeriCorps Member in the Emergency Response Initiative for a second year. Thore’s role at VEAP is in Food Pantry Intake, where he is helping to develop a method for collecting information in real-time from drive-up participants. Thore recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a Master’s of music in Vocal Performance in the midst of the pandemic in 2020. Before working at VEAP, Thore has been tutoring first grade students through ReadingCorps and tutoring privately for the ACT. Thore is excited to address food insecurity in his community and eager for a change of pace from tutoring first grade students. Thore is playing a key role at VEAP by helping to address more effective ways to get people the food they want. In his free time, Thore likes to play chess, read, and take walks and his favorite vegetables are Brussel sprouts!​

Elizabeth Neil is an AmeriCorps member in the Emergency Response Initiative. This is her first year in the program. Elizabeth’s role at VEAP is in Marketing and Communications Support. In this role, Elizabeth designs social media posts and website posts (including this one!), along with assorted flyers, and takes promotional pictures of volunteers and staff. Before joining the VEAP team as an AmeriCorps member, Elizabeth worked as the Creative Director of TommieMedia, an online news organization at the University of St. Thomas, where Elizabeth is studying Strategic Communications as a Third-Year student. Elizabeth is excited to work on marketing and communications work at VEAP and further her experience in this field while working for a cause she believes in. In her free time, Elizabeth likes to spend lots of time outside (preferably with dogs) and her favorite vegetable is a carrot!

Rachel Riskedahl is the third AmeriCorps member in the Emergency Response Initiative for the second consecutive year with Americorps. Rachel’s role at VEAP is the Administrative Assistant. In this role, she supports social services and finances at VEAP with processing participant assistance and completing housing surveys. Prior to working through AmeriCorps this summer at VEAP, Rachel was a beauty consultant at Target and is pursuing a degree in social work. Rachel is a rising Second-Year student at Minnesota State University Moorhead also with a minor in Healthcare Administration. Through VEAP and her position as the Administrative Assistant, Rachel hopes to gain experience and knowledge about both her major and minor. In her free time, Rachel likes to travel and watch movies and her favorite vegetable is a cucumber.