Editor’s Note: Jordan Uplinger, who reported this story, previously worked for Feeding Laramie Valley as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer.
On a warm sunny day in Laramie, Frankie Thorne helped to prep and pack something called shares bags.
“It is a bag with eight to 10 servings of produce per family household. We deliver to about 120 households, which is about 300 people overall … this is every week,” said Thorne.
Thorne is an employee of Feeding Laramie Valley (FLV), a nonprofit with the mission of providing quality fruits and vegetables to people who are food insecure, often with food grown or purchased locally. They run a mobile food market, host a free summer lunch program for kids, as well as care for small community gardens and a farm on the southern end of Laramie.
In previous years, FLV had teams dedicated to each program. Nowadays, Thorne is often riding solo.
“It used to be done by like three to four staff members. But yeah, now we rely on volunteers,” said Thorne.
FLV, like many nonprofits, is feeling the pinch from the Trump administration’s fast-paced changes to federal grants and workforce assistance programs.
Gayle Woodsum, who’s headed up FLV for the past decade, said when Trump won last year, she knew they were in for changes.
“ The surprise [was] the level at which changes are happening.” she added.
Those changes started with Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion, a huge focus of Woodsum’s work battling food insecurity.
“We had to go through every grant contract, application, training manual, anything we had related to AmeriCorps and wipe out any language that was contrary to these executive orders,” Woodsum said.
For Woodsum and the staff at FLV, the big question was: Do we change our mission?
“I called a special meeting and I said, ‘We're being challenged here. We're being asked to do this, and I need your input,’” she said.
For two days, the staff talked about their options. Do they compromise their values? Do they rewrite everything. Do they take a stand?
For Feeding Laramie Valley, the decision was unanimous: Do what’s needed to keep serving thousands of people each year.
Then, they lost a COVID-era health disparities grant.
Then, the first email from AmeriCorps, which is basically a national volunteer program that’s like the Peace Corps but here at home, saying all deployments were paused.
“So [AmeriCorps] gave us a heads up and I was like, hmm, this is interesting,” said Woodsum. “We've never gotten a heads-up like this before.”
Then, another email terminating a different part of the AmeriCorps volunteer force. Then another email that explained the termination of an EPA grant from the Mountains and Plains Environmental Justice Grants Hub.
“Then it was a matter of maybe a few weeks, maybe a month, maybe. We then got another letter from AmeriCorps that said, as expected, here come the changes.”
The changes were: The entire program was done. Feeding Laramie Valley’s 11 AmeriCorps volunteers wouldn’t be coming this year.
“All of a sudden, we didn't hear anything. We have no contact with any member of the region,” said Woodsum.
But two members of that original AmeriCorps team were already on their way to Laramie. An email announcing the program’s demobilization told them it was over. Gwendolyn Cooley and Annika Laughlan wanted to get back to work.
“We had gotten confirmed that our team was coming to this project, probably about two weeks before we got demobilized and sent home,” said Cooley.
“Our team leader was the one that kind of brought up this idea,” said Laughlan.
“We just kind of brainstormed ideas, what we wanted to do, what we wanted to get out of this experience, if something were to come out of it," said Cooley. “And so we just kind of cold emailed Gayle and just said, ’Hey, this is a really unfortunate time for everyone. We would love to still come serve and help out,’ because all these organizations are without a workforce now.”
They’re currently working 35 hours a week for six weeks, helping Frankie Thorne pack those “shares bags,” among other projects in Albany County. They both say they managed to work out housing and a living stipend, but would have preferred everyone on their AmeriCorps team got the same chance.
“It's a really good opportunity for people who want to try
something like this and I am very disappointed that it's been taken away,” said Cooley.
“Especially because it's all about service and gaining money to further your education as well,” Laughlan added.
Despite eager volunteers and dedicated workers, FLV will still need to raise money from the community or apply for private grants to make up for lost federal funds. But Woodsum isn’t deterred.
“Keep moving forward until we can’t!” exclaimed Woodsum. “That’s what I try to keep sharing with the staff … We’re not gonna be part of ending it.”
Woodsum says Feeding Laramie Valley will be open this summer. She says it’s time for community support, not condolences.
In some ways, that’s already happening. The Laramie Garden Club, which hosts an annual plant sale, said it will be donating the sale’s proceeds to Feeding Laramie Valley this year, to help fight food insecurity in Albany County during a turbulent time for organizations that rely on federal funding.
