Conducting a Community Assessment in Bastrop County
This past year Hunger Free Communities-Bastrop County as been conducting a community assessment within the county to get a clear idea of the food insecurity issue in their community. Executive Director of Bastrop County Emergency Food Pantry and co-chair for the Hunger Free Communities-Bastrop County Coalition, Tresha Silva, stated that the goal of the community assessment is to not only understand the need within the community but to also tailor future services to fit the specific need. The yearlong community assessment took a client centered approach by holding focus groups with members of the community who were currently using or had used food assistance programs in the past. The community assessment also incorporated community listening sessions and utilized story mapping to visually depict the need in the community. The coalition collected data on where all the food stores were located in the and conducted a food store assessment where they analyzed the quality of the food, how nutritious the food is and where the food is located. Students from the local university helped the coalition go out to the stores to administer these surveys. Now that the assessment has been complete, the coalition plans to compile the data and share the results with the public. They also plan to present their findings at the commissioner’s court, city council and the chambers of commerce.
Author: Maggie Amaku
6/13/2019
