How Jeffrey Zitofsky Of Westchester Independent Living Center Is Helping To Address The Growing Challenge Of Food Insecurity
An Interview With Martita Mestey
Be vulnerable — most people think it means to be weak. Not until I read Brene Brown did I understand it’s value. Profoundly changed me.
In many parts of the United States, there is a crisis of people having limited reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. As prices rise, this problem will likely become more acute. How can this problem be solved? Who are the leaders helping to address this crisis?
In this interview series, we are talking to leaders who are helping to address the increasing problem of food insecurity who can share the initiatives they are leading to address and solve this problem.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Jeffrey Zitofsky.
Jeffrey Zitofsky was a Peer Advocate for people with emotional health and physical challenges at the Westchester Independent Living Center (WILC.) Food is more than sustenance for the body, it strengthens relationships, culture and confidence. The helping professions are conduits to foster programs, like WILC encourages, that nurture it.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I didn’t fall into this career, I blossomed into it. I embrace all my experiences — easy, hard, enjoyable, heartbreaking — and they have played parts in all my careers. From my experience studying and practicing in the theater I learned to “deny nothing; use everything.” (Thanks for that one Sanford Meisner and passed on to me by Marta King and Julian Chachula.)
Due to thyroid and disease and a breakdown, I had a particularly rough time having to leave, what I thought was, my dream job as a public- school chorus and drama teacher. Looking back, I unquestionably abided by pharmaceutical and medicalized mental health services for years. When I realized I wasn’t done living, I found work as a peer, practicing mutual support in and out of the mental health system and discovered my equal to anybody.
Using each of my previous careers, I found my way into work that involved all my interests: acting, singing, equal rights, anti-bullying, cooking, designing education, and asking questions to name a few. And I was entrusted with leading and nurturing others to do the same, using their interests.
About three years ago, along with people challenged by their emotions and brains, I was introduced to working with people challenged by their physiques — all, including me for a time, disabled by society. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4596173/ I discovered my inner advocate at the Westchester Independent Living Center https://wilc.org . As a result of my work there, I’m now humbled to serve my community doing so as their direct employee working as Community Work Assistant in New York State’s Westchester County Office for People with Disabilities.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I’ll let you decide if it’s interesting, but my favorite memory happened during the first peer training I was asked to facilitate over ten years ago. To understand the difference between empathy and sympathy, I asked the cohort to create greeting cards, to themselves, for each. The first to read their cards induced at least 15 minutes of both happy and sad tears from the entire group. It was then I understood the power of the element of surprise.
Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?
My Birthday is on Christmas. When people hear this, they almost always ask me what it’s like. It’s complicated. Soon after I started working as a Peer, not long after I had my break and lost my home, job, health, and happiness,
Christmas came round I had little money to buy presents for my neices, nephews and family. When it came time to blow out the candles on my birthday cake, while surrounded by them, I realized I could give my wish away to them. I don’t think I’d have realized this had I not started working as a Peer — sharing my lived experience, not out of shame but out of empowerment for me and my Peers. I wrote a song about the experience called “Recover My Worth.” It was then I understood why I never liked the word recovery. It was then I realized that I could wanted only to recover my inherent worth I lost breaking down; I wanted and continue to want to discover the rest. I started calling myself in discovery, not recovery. I challenged my supervisors to allow me to call myself a Discovery Specialist rather than a Recovery Specialist. They didn’t allow my to insofar as paperwork, I but I did in all other aspects of my job.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
When I first moved back to NY to heal in 2004, I worked with a Case Manager from Search for Change, Ashley Brody. I was close to moving into another group home until he advocated for me to help others understand I was ready to move on. On my own, I found a beautiful new 3-bedroom apartment with two roommates. I lived there successfully for over 10 years before buying a 325 sqft Co-op, my “I Dream of Jeannie’s” Bottle, in downtown White Plains.
Four years ago Ashley Brody, now and deservedly Search for Change’s CEO, hired me to help guide the agency’s foray into hiring and nurturing peers. To boot, he gave me an award that in his words “honored Jeff’s ability to say no and help us deliver him services in a way that he knew would help achieve his goals.”
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Vulnerability, accountability, curiosity.
Each time I take responsibility for the things I do and say, I remain curious as to the effects. Not once have I regretted this decision. While being vulnerable is often looked upon as weak, when I I choose it, it’s one of my greatest strengths.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I stated before that Sanford Meisner told me to “use everything, deny nothing.” This was passed on to me while I studied acting with Marta King and Julian Chachula in Durham, NC. It’s more than about doing so while on stage. Imagine what happens if you’d do this as much as possible in life. Vulnerability; Accountability; Curiosity!
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Can you describe to our readers how your work is helping to address the challenge of food insecurity?
The COVID Pandemic hit during my first year working at the Westchester Independent Living Center. Through the Cares Act, we used the Food Insecurity Prevention Program (FIPP) to support our service recipients to purchase food and supplies to get them through this unprecedented time. I started an online group for our community to have a place to be with others called Preventative Connection. Almost every group included a conversation about what we were eating. As the holidays approached, wistfully, I commented that it’d be wonderful to share a meal together. The group wholeheartedly agreed.
I went to my Director, Evelyn Fernandez with an idea for a new way to use the FIPP — The Holiday Table program. I supported 10 service recipients to order food and have it delivered to their friends and family from all over the country and then eat it together via a video socializing application. They asked that I stop in and I happily obliged. It was amazing to watch and hear doorbells ring, doors opening to food left at their doorsteps, and people rushing back to their cameras to share their food with each other.
Cooking and eating mostly plants and using mostly complex sugars and carbs has been a passion of mine for about 30 years. So, it’s no surprise that talking about food continued in my groups. Sharing recipes became a highlight. People wanted to learn how to cook. Again, I went to my director and then to our new Executive Director, Margaret Nunziato with an idea to use the FIPP to help service recipients buy ingredients and equipment to make recipes together. Margaret suggested I contact our agency’s Diabetes Prevention Program to collaborate. “An Afternoon of Live, Online Diabetes and Disability Friendly Cooking” was born.
I used my phone to have friends (Thank you, Stephanie, Phyllis and Tom!) video me cooking from my apartment and held the groups via ZOOM. We shared our tips and stories while I cooked — some cooked along. In all, we had a great time and learned while doing it. Soon, some of our service recipients wanted to teach us some of their recipes. One of our recipients conceived of and taught us how to cook two of her recipes. Members want more groups. I reached out to a community center where I previously worked to collaborate using their professional kitchen to hold, when it’s safe, live cooking classes using the FIPP. This collaboration is in the works!
Food is cultural and connective. While we offer funds to help people eat and stay healthy during this pandemic, I enjoy focusing my work on how we can use food to connect people emotionally to stay both mentally and physically healthy.
Can you share something about your work that makes you most proud? Is there a particular story or incident that you found most uplifting?
Yes, I earn my living with my work. I also use my work to uplift myself and others. Working in advertising taught me that although a good turn of phrase can sell a product, it really is word of mouth that builds businesses. The same goes for delivering services. When I receive an intake that says, “a friend of theirs told them to call and ask for Jeff for help,” my heart fills. I can only say that when I work, I’m compassionate, curious about them, and I’m vulnerable and share how I can relate while delivering them services. Makes a difference for them and me.
People who joined the cooking classes purchased both a pressure cooker and food processor using FIPP funds to make some of the recipes. Two group members continue to contact me to share what they continue to make with these appliances and ingredients they learned to use. Unfortunately, they were recently diagnosed with Cancer. They are grateful to have been introduced to ingredients and these appliances to help them eat healthier to get them through their treatment.
In your opinion, what should other business and civic leaders do to further address these problems? Can you please share a few things that can be done to further address the problem of food insecurity?
Money is always helpful for anyone, including leaders to give in times of trouble. Thinking out of the box to engage people to understand they can use the money to feel happy and more connected is just as important than the funds themselves. From my experience, when I share my interests and what I go through I engage others to do the same, whether they are coworkers or service recipients. I think we are taught to put up too many boundaries in the name of being professional while delivering services. I use the word respectful more than professional in these instances — respectful is a verb I can understand to utilize and address in any work.
Are there other leaders or organizations who have done good work to address the challenge of food scarcity? Can you tell us what they have done? What specifically impresses you about their work? Perhaps we can reach out to them to include them in this series.
The Mental Health Association of Westchester’s Sterling Community Center has always made food a connecting service of theirs. When I worked there, we used to serve a homemade lunch, from scratch, made by staff and service recipients. What’s more they designed a beautiful café and meeting space where everyone could gather and meet. Sterling also designed a program to train people who have mental health challenges to cook, clean, and serve in the food industry. Lastly, Sterling is staffed by people who have lived experience with mental health challenges of their own and they share it in service to their recipients.
If you had the power to influence legislation, are there laws that you would like to see introduced that might help you in your work?
Now that I work for my local government, I realize I can influence legislation to not only help disabled people, but my community, as well. I can help able-bodied and minded people understand we are all made better if, rather than disabling people from having access to everything we have, we make it a priority to invite everyone, no matter their abiliites, to live, work, and play, literally, among us on our streets, in our buildings, workplaces, restaurants, fields, etc.
As Adam Smith said, we humans are self-serving and need government to ensure justice. During my second week in my new local government job I was part of an online meeting about local recreation. I asked that those in charge of employing people to take into account staff being able to service people with impairments, not only participate in activities but thrive. And if they aren’t comfortable and/or don’t have the skillls to do so, to ask for training to be able to do it. We need to have the funds to promote this training.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
The five things I wish I was told when I started working in the advocacy field are:
- Be vulnerable — most people think it means to be weak. Not until I read Brene Brown did I understand it’s value. Profoundly changed me.
- Take it easy — our culture values hard work at all costs, even friends and family time, self-care time, and laughter. Breathe and smile.
- Don’t take myself so seriously — laughing at myself gives me the power to share my foibles and personality.
- Be curious more than judgmental — this is one of my mantras and I learned to practice this about 10 years ago. Anyone who knows me understands how it profoundly affects my life.
- Focus on feeling happy no matter what — I literally practice not allowing negative thoughts to linger for too long. I have no regrets, but I can only imagine how much I could have avoided so much pain by doing this. That being said, I am, happily, the person I am today because of all my experiences. Hard experiences happen and I can smile my way through them.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
People are born with impairments, not disabilities — it is society, when uncaringly designed — legislatively, socially, and physically, that disables people. My movement has been and continues to be educating the public about the advantages of living and working amongst disabled people more than separated from them. There are many advantages but that’s a whole other article.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
I’d love to share a meal with Oprah Winfrey. Her entrepreneurial spirit and skills, gratitude, curiosity, compassion, artistry, love, and relationship with food continue to inspire me. I miss my “appointment” at 4pm each weekday with her. She has influenced my life more than any other.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I’m on Facebook and Instagram where I hopefully deliciously mix my work and personal life. You can also find me as part of New York’s Westchester County Office for People with Disabilities.
914 995 2956
https://disabled.westchestergov.com/
This was very meaningful, thank you so much, and we wish you only continued success.
How Jeffrey Zitofsky Of Westchester Independent Living Center Is Helping To Address The Growing… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.