The California Food Stamp Guide is a special project of Legal Services of Northern California, in collaboration with and the generous help of leading anti-hunger advocates from California Food Policy Advocates, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County and the Western Center on Law and Poverty. All principal and contributing editors are listed below.

By way of background, this Guide is a revised and updated version of a similar guide originally published online in 2001 by Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC). The earlier online guide was based on a guide published by California Food Policy Advocates (CFPA) in July 2000. The CFPA version in turn was based on an earlier version of the venerable FRAC Guide to the Food Stamp Program (currently in its 11th edition), published by the Food Resource and Action Center (FRAC). Those long in the national legal services community, of course, know that it was David Super who “back in the day” (OK, 20 years ago) was the progenitor of the original FRAC guide.

In more recent years, the guide was updated annually by Rosemary French for use in her annual Public Benefits Overview trainings. Rosemary is President of Benchmark Institute, which has long set the standard nationally for advocate training within the legal services community.

Now, seven years after it was first published online by LSNC, the entire guide has been revised, reorganized and updated for use by legal services and other hunger advocates in California. Legal Services of Northern California has provided all the technical, production and hosting resources for this online guide. The project leader for the guide was Brian Lawlor, Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC), assisted by Donna Pearson in the LSNC Redding Office.

But the real work of editorial consequence was done by the following advocates who took on the core editorial work required to make this project a success:

Principal Editors:

Jodie Berger, Legal Services of Northern California

Dora Luna, Western Center on Law and Poverty

George Manalo-LeClair, California Food Policy Advocates

Kate Meiss, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

Nu Usaha, Western Center on Law and Poverty

Contributing Editors:

Rose Caudillo, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

Michael Chung, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

Abby McClelland, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

Eli Palomares, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County

Tatiana Torres, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County