The National Grocers Association Foundation has appointed Brielle Underwood as its project director for the SNAP EBT Modernization Technical Assistance Center.
Underwood comes to the NGA Foundation from The Food Trust in Philadelphia, for which she served as a project manager, overseeing the organization’s farmers market programs and assisting with grant reporting and evaluation.
“We look forward to working with Brielle as she leads the efforts to further SEMTAC’s objective to assist more grocers in getting on board with online SNAP. She comes to the project with extensive experience navigating federal guidelines and working with advisory groups,” said Chelsea Matzen, director.
“She’s also spent the past year earning a software testing and quality assurance certificate, which will go a long way toward building out our TA tracker and assisting retailers with their SNAP online vendor options.”
SEMTAC will teach retailers the federal requirements for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Electronic Benefit Transfer modernization, including the online purchasing and mobile payment programs.
The foundation was awarded a $5 million grant by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service to establish a technical assistance center that will guide grocers through the process of implementing online SNAP grocery purchasing.
The development of SEMTAC will pave the way for more smaller grocery operators to offer SNAP online purchasing, making them more competitive and better able to provide service to food-insecure Americans. Increasing access to online grocery purchasing is particularly important to rural communities and areas served by stores with limited selections of healthy foods.
More information about the grant can be found at nationalgrocers.org/news/nga-foundation-tapped-to-advance-snap-online-programs.
The NGA Foundation is the nonprofit arm of the National Grocers Association. The foundation provides independent retailers with tools to develop more effective recruiting programs, enhance retention efforts and bolster professional leadership development opportunities for employers.
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