A vivid look at issues affecting America's most vulnerable, through the lens of one Brooklyn family trying to keep everyone fed.
As stories with impact go, this one stands out: The lead subject of the piece, struggling to feed her family during the pandemic, was tracked down on social media and hired by a reader for a job.
The all-formats package by reporter Luis Andres Henao and visual journalist Jessie Wardarski, both of AP’s religion team, chronicled the struggle of Sharawn Vinson and her Brooklyn family as they battled food shortages and myriad other crises, taking readers into the lives of a family that has little but manages to help others – even as they worry about their next meal. In addition to pandemic-driven money woes and food insecurity, the story addressed other issues confronting Americans, including racial inequality and conflict with police.
To fully understand the issue of hunger in New York City, Henao and Wardarski spent weeks speaking to everyone from people in food pantry lines to officials in charge of the crisis response. But a major challenge was finding the right subject, and the delicate task of convincing that family to give up-close access to journalists.
AP reporter Luis Andres Henao, left, plays a video game with Mason Washington at the family’s home in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 20, 2020.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
After several days of back and forth with a mutual source, the AP pair gained the trust of the Vinson family, shadowing them as they volunteered to distribute meals, celebrated a remote school graduation and worked out during a football practice. The family was forced to send their 11-year-old twins to spend much of the summer with their father, six states to the south, where they’d at least be fed. The personal details shared by the family gave readers a better understanding of the breadth of issues facing a vulnerable segment of the population – people disproportionately affected during the pandemic.
Mason Washington, 11, reaches for a hug after being awakened by Sharawn Vinson, his mother, in their three-bedroom apartment in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Aug. 13, 2020. For two months this summer, Mason and his twin sister Maddison were sent to live with their father, six states to the south, knowing that way they’d at least be fed.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Mason Washington, 11, stands in the kitchen of his family's apartment after browsing the refrigerator for a mid-morning snack in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 13, 2020. The family has struggled to keep food in the cupboards during the pandemic: “It was hard feeding them three times a day,” said Sharawn Vinson, his mother.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
The Vinson family cat, Rabbit, walks under a folding table piled with graduation posters, glitter and balloons as the family decorates the living room walls for daughter Maddison’s virtual middle-school graduation in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 20, 2020.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Maddison Washington, 11, carries her nephew Hunter Stewart, 5, down the hallway toward her mother’s bedroom at the Lafayette Gardens housing development in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 20, 2020. Washington’s mother sent her and her twin brother to stay with their father in North Carolina for part of the summer while she saved money, food stamps and Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfers (PEBT) to ensure the family had enough food when the siblings returned.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Sharawn Vinson looks out the window of her 16th-floor apartment as she talks on the phone with the New York Police Department’s Chief of Community Affairs Jeffrey Maddrey in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 13, 2020. At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic this spring, Vinson often woke up crying. A recurring thought was making the unemployed single mother desperate: that her kids could go hungry.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Jasmin Vinson, 25, puts shoes on her 5-year-old son, Hunter Stewart, while visiting her mother and siblings at the Lafayette Gardens housing development in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 7, 2020. Vinson and her son currently live at a shelter for families in the Crown Heights neighborhood.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Maddison Washington, 11, stands beside a park bench where three young men were shot at her family’s housing development in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 13, 2020.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Hunter Stewart, 5, helps pack and deliver food to residents of the Lafayette Gardens housing development Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 8, 2020. Stewart currently lives in a shelter for families with his mother. Asthe extended family struggled to put food on the table in the first months of the pandemic, they volunteered to help distribute supplies to neighbors who also were having difficulty staving off hunger.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Mason Washington, 11, center, warms up with teammates at the first football practice of the season in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 9, 2020.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Mason Washington, 11, runs a drill with teammates at the first summer practice of the Brooklyn United Youth football season in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 9, 2020.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Malachi Keller, 15, right, leans back in an office chair while watching a Black History Month police promotional video during a meeting with police at One Police Plaza in New York, Aug. 24, 2020. Keller’s cousin Sharawn Vinson sought the help of the chief of the NYPD’s Community Affairs department after police officers pointed guns at her 11-year-old son when they were searching for a shooting suspect in the Vinsons’ apartment building.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Maddison Washington, 11, left, sets up a laptop as Isaiah Greats, 12, background, and Hunter Stewart, 5, right, gather to watch Washington’s virtual graduation from middle school in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 21, 2020.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Maddison Washington, 11, sits among balloons in the colors of her middle school as she prepares for her virtual graduation ceremony celebrated with a small group of family and friends in the living room of her three-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 21, 2020.
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
Maddison Washington, 11, stands at her bedroom mirror as she finishes getting ready for her virtual graduation from middle school in Brooklyn, New York, Aug. 21, 2020. “Everybody else had a graduation, even her twin brother. ... And she has to have a virtual graduation,” said Sharawn Vinson, Washington's mother. “So it makes you sit back and think, what is their life going to be like going forward, what's going to happen?”
AP Photo / Jessie Wardarski
The package attracted attention and wide play. It was featured by The Los Angeles Times and highlighted in one of its newsletters. Rachel Maddow shared it in her blog to more than one million followers. And the story was published by hundreds of AP members and customers. The AP Images blog also gave the piece prominent display.
One reader for whom the story resonated was Gina Herrera, who hired Sharawn Vinson to answer phones and take food orders: “I read the article and I felt that I was in a position to help her and her family,” said Herrera. “I felt that she’s a strong woman, sweet, but strong, and that she'd be a good fit because she’s a fighter.”
For a rare, intimate look at a family on the front lines of food insecurity during the pandemic, featuring riveting photos and video, Henao and Wardarski share this week’s Best of the States award.
