The Food Stamp Professionals are the newest and fastest growing professionals group in Tampa Bay. They have exploded onto the business networking scene representing and educating a key and growing demographic – professionals now living on food stamps.

What started out as a small group in line at the state welfare offices has surged to over 20,000 members in just a few weeks. Phil McKay began chatting with others in line and they quickly bonded offering each other sympathy and support. The twelve men and women agreed to meet again to continue, word spread quickly and 120 showed up to the first informal meeting of the new Food Stamp Professionals organization.

The organization offers a deep rich aggressive schedule of programming that directly targets their members’ needs. Seminars on coupon cutting, dumpster dining, and mortgage foreclosures are offered as well as recipe sharing and group therapy.

“The number of educated professionals with good skills who are out of work in Tampa Bay is astounding. Without jobs we are stuck here under oppressive mortgages that are killing us slowly. It is natural for us to seek each other out for mutual support and understanding. People here have resonated because we are all relieved to know it is not just us” said Phil Mckay.

The Food Stamp Professionals have big plans beyond their current successes. They are working now to erect and operate a tent city commune on the outskirts of town. A place where professionals who have lost their homes and jobs can live safely and not be just an isolated homeless person.

Centralizing the population of unemployed professionals into a sizable densely packed mass will allow for easier management of assistance programs which could easily come to the tent city.

The dense population of a tent city can make it easier for them to find work. Mckay envisions local companies sending trucks into the tent city to hire day laborer programmers, accountants, financial advisors and the like. 

Sill some express fear of a densely packed population of unemployed educated people living on welfare. “That is the kind of mass the begins revolutions. Won’t be long till they are making demands and rioting” Said Jessie Black of Brandon. Hillsborough County. Officials prefer to see it built in Polk County.

“The important thing is we Food Stamp Professionals are not giving up, we are not going away. We will survive” said Phil Mckay “The economy will not kill us off.”.