A helping hand for young Island families

Young families like the Hulkas are finding ways to live on the Vineyard. 

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From left, Hanna Santos, Korrine Altieri, Maria Hulka, Jan Hulka, and baby Oliver Hulka are all part of the WIC program. —Courtesy Health Imperatives

Living in another country, away from family, brought some uncertainties for the Hulkas, especially since they were establishing their roots in an area with a high cost of living —Martha’s Vineyard. 

Originally hailing from Central Europe — Maria Hulka coming from Slovakia on a visa last year, and Jan Hulka having moved to the Vineyard from the Czech Republic 15 years ago — the young couple married in June of 2023 and are raising their baby son Oliver in Oak Bluffs. 

Jan told The Times that while they prepared to expand their family, there was a “level of fear” for how the couple would manage Island life. 

“We are kind of two foreigners here in the country just having a few good friends,” he said. “We were not sure how the system really worked … what kind of support we can expect.”

Fortunately, the Hulkas were able to find various avenues of support on the Vineyard, from the team at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital when Oliver was born to Island mothers who donated extra milk when Maria had trouble lactating. 

One of the programs that the family has been relying on is the federal Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, administered by Health Imperatives on the Island. 

“It’s been very helpful,” Maria said. 

Health Imperatives, an organization that helps maintain the health of low-income and vulnerable people in Southeastern Massachusetts, was granted a $374,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture last May to improve food security for individuals on the Vineyard. 

Toward this end, the organization honed in on the Vineyard WIC program, which supports lower-income families with children age five or under. 

Julia Kehoe, president and CEO of Health Imperatives, said there was a push by the federal government to reach more people from rural areas and minority communities. 

A major way the service is providing help is through localized engagement. Before the grant, Health Imperatives was only able to send someone to the Vineyard twice a month, a schedule impacted by canceled ferries. 

Now, the organization has established a local presence on the Vineyard to reach more Islanders, being able to meet families three times a week and conduct outreach two days a week. Additionally, Kehoe said collaboration with local organizations, like Island Grown Initiative, has been critical to the program’s on-Island operations. 

Efforts to reach more eligible people — such as giving out information where potential program participants may gather, like the food pantry or the library — seem to be paying off. According to Korrine Altieri, the WIC nutritionist and outreach program manager at Health Imperatives’ Vineyard location, there were a total of 392 participants benefiting from WIC services on Martha’s Vineyard from August 1, 2022 to July 31, 2023. Since the grant, the total number of participants from August 1, 2023 to April 30, 2024 was already at 391 participants, with an expectation that there will be 500 participants by the end of July. 

Additionally, the monthly average caseload for WIC participants has not dipped below 260 since November of 2023, when the grant really kicked off. That’s a slight increase from a monthly average of 255 in previous months. 

Health Imperatives plans to present their local engagement model to the Department of Agriculture. 

“We’re hoping that over time, USDA will take what they learned from our successes and build it in so that there’s a more sustainable way to provide ongoing WIC access on the Island,” Kehoe said. 

Access to food has been a growing need on the Vineyard. A quarter of year-round Islanders are registered with Island Grown Initiative’s food pantry and while not all registrants use the pantry regularly, the number of Islanders that do have quadrupled in the past five years. Other free food programs on the Island have also seen an increase in participants. Altieri said many food pantry shoppers are already a part of the WIC program. 

Kehoe said the WIC program allows for someone earning up to 185 percent of the federal poverty level to benefit, although there are some slightly higher allowances for Alaska and Hawaii. For the rest of the states and territories, this would be up to a gross annual income of $47,767 for a three-person household, according to the federal Food and Nutrition Service. 

“In a place like Martha’s Vineyard … it’s very difficult because the cost of living is so high and none of that is taken into account for eligibility,” Kehoe said. “So, what that means is someone who is eligible for WIC on Martha’s Vineyard is, in reality, multiple times poorer than someone who’s eligible for WIC in somewhere where the cost of living is much lower, such as some of the states in the south.” 

Besides reduced food costs, WIC staff from Health Imperatives educates participants leading to a better understanding of what can be purchased through the program. They can also help individuals with limited English proficiency while at the grocery store. While there are various groups on the Vineyard, like a growing Spanish-speaking population, the focus for Health Imperatives’ language services currently on the Vineyard are for the Brazilian Portuguese-speaking residents. 

Hanna Santos, who moved to the Vineyard from Brazil when she was 12, works at Health Imperatives as a bilingual interpreter and WIC ambassador. She said she received “huge support” while attending Tisbury School. She is also studying psychology at Cape Cod Community College with hopes to be a counselor in the near future. 

“My dream has always been to give back to the community,” Santos said. “I hope to be able to do that for many years.” 

Santos said being an immigrant helped her to have “empathy for everyone.” 

“As foreigners, we tend to value things a lot more than other people simply because, at least in my country, we don’t have the resources that we are provided here,” she said. “We’re just looking for a better life, a better future for our kids and our families. So, we are really grateful to be here in this country and be a part of wonderful things.” 

Programming staff said a major benefit of WIC is that it does not check on a person’s immigration status, which allows more people in need to benefit from the program. 

Kehoe said there was a scare when the Trump administration considered reviewing how federal benefit programs were being used by people, including checking their immigration status. 

“WIC was never going to be a part of that,” she said, “but as soon as they started talking about it, we had people calling us from Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Plymouth, Hyannis and asking to get off the WIC program, so we knew that this fear around immigration was part of the reason that people … weren’t accessing those benefits.”

Kehoe emphasized this kind of fear was why it was so important to have someone from the community and someone who can speak the same language to reach out to people who may be in need of a program like WIC. 

Considering there is an upcoming presidential election in November with former President Donald Trump as the Republican candidate, Health Imperatives is keeping an eye on the results and how that may impact their clients. 

“I think it’s safe to say we’re always looking at what could happen to all programs affecting low-income people and women’s right to choose and all of those issues that are important to us,” Kehoe said. “We’re hoping that there aren’t changes made to these critical programs that support families.”

For a number of Vineyard families, like the Hulkas, the WIC program continues to be one of multiple factors sustaining them on Martha’s Vineyard. 

“It’s like [a] piece of a puzzle that’s put together,” Jan said. 

Perhaps more important than the program itself was that it became a doorway for the Hulkas to find a community of young families on the Island to support each other. 

“It’s all about sharing,” Maria said.