Mar Mar Lin helps refugee families navigate food benefits in Wisconsin

Mar Mar Lin’s work shows how food access often begins with one steady person who can bridge language, paperwork, and trust. For 12 years, she has helped refugee families apply for and keep FoodShare benefits as they build lives in Wisconsin, a job that is as much about navigation as it is about nutrition. For food recovery groups like A Simple Gesture, her role is a reminder that the most valuable frontline workers are often the ones who make the system understandable.

The real job behind access

Hunger Task Force identifies itself as Milwaukee’s only Free & Local food bank and says it is 100% community-supported. That matters because it frames Lin’s job inside a broader anti-hunger network that depends on public donations, pantry partnerships, and staff who can move people from crisis toward stability. Her media profile says she helps immigrant families learn about Hunger Task Force and other community resources that can make settling into new routines and lives easier and more affordable.

That kind of work changes what frontline capacity looks like. In a neighborhood donation program, the obvious labor is the green bag pickup or the food delivery. The less visible labor is the person who knows which household needs a referral, which family needs an interpreter, and which form will keep benefits from lapsing.

How Wisconsin’s FoodShare system works

Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services says FoodShare is the state’s version of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The agency also says applicants complete an interview after they apply, and that interview is done by phone unless the applicant asks to meet in person. For families still learning the system, that detail matters because a missed call or an unfamiliar voicemail can become a lost benefit.

DHS also says free language assistance, or other aids and services, are available upon request for anyone who has difficulty understanding English or has a disability. The agency offers FoodShare forms, guides, handbooks, and videos, and some materials are available in different languages. That is not a courtesy add-on. It is part of the program’s design, and it is one reason multilingual navigators are so effective when they sit between a family and a public benefit office.

FoodShare’s reach is large enough to make those access points matter well beyond one neighborhood. DHS says the program supports the food budgets of nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites, which means every successful enrollment, recertification, or interview can affect a substantial share of the state’s hunger response.

Why status, language, and paperwork all intersect

Food access work becomes more complicated when immigration status enters the picture. DHS says refugees are not subject to the five-year bar for FoodShare, and a July 1, 2024 operations memo says certain Ukrainian parolees are treated as refugees for FoodShare eligibility purposes. Those rules matter because they determine whether a newly arrived family can even begin the enrollment process on standard terms.

The policy details are only part of the story. Families who have fled conflict or displacement often arrive with limited familiarity with U.S. systems, uneven documentation, and little confidence that asking for help will be safe or worth the effort. A skilled advocate can explain what an interview is, what documents might be needed, and why a phone call from the state is not something to ignore.

DHS adds another layer that often gets overlooked: public benefits received by children and pregnant women will not impact their parents. That matters in communities where fear and confusion can keep eligible families from seeking help at all. In practice, the job of a trusted advocate is to turn those rules into plain language before myths or fear do the work of exclusion.

What Lin’s history says about community trust

Lin’s current role builds on years of immigrant-support work inside Hunger Task Force. In January 2022, the organization said she was then serving as a Burmese-speaking FoodShare Outreach Assistant and working with translators to help 65 Afghan families relocated from Fort McCoy to Milwaukee sign up for FoodShare. That same effort included culturally appropriate food boxes, with the first 120 boxes delivered that day.

Those details matter because they show how access work succeeds when it is tailored, not generic. A food box can help for a week, but a translated application, a completed interview, and a reliable follow-up can change a household’s monthly outlook. The 65-family effort also shows how quickly a response can scale when an organization has staff who already understand language access and community trust.

A February 2024 Hunger Task Force profile pointed to the same pattern from another angle. It said FoodShare Advocate Carmen Delvalle helped Greenfield resident Ivette Rivera Soto navigate FoodShare and at one point receive up to $204 a month in benefits during the pandemic. The amount is specific, but the broader lesson is broader still: one informed advocate can change how a family gets through a hard season.

What this means for A Simple Gesture’s work

For a doorstep donation network, the lesson is not to turn volunteers into caseworkers. It is to recognize that food recovery does not end at pickup or pantry drop-off. When households are new to the area, when paperwork is intimidating, or when language creates a wall between help and need, the organization that can make a warm referral becomes more effective than the one that only counts bags.

That has direct implications for recruitment and retention. Staff and volunteers who can speak a community’s language, understand its customs, and explain the path to help are not side support. They are core infrastructure. Coordinators who treat outreach, intake, and referral as real operating roles, rather than extras, are more likely to keep families connected and keep workers engaged over the long haul.

For A Simple Gesture and similar food recovery programs, Mar Mar Lin’s career makes the same point from every angle: the work that lasts is the work that clears the path.