WASHINGTON, DC — Yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee took up the fiscal year 2024 Agriculture spending bill, which sets funding levels for critical programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). This bill funds WIC at a level $185 million below FY23 levels and makes additional cuts to the program by cutting back a 2021 bump in benefits for participants to purchase more fruits and vegetables. The following is a statement from Lisa Davis, Senior Vice President of Share Our Strength and its No Kid Hungry campaign.

“Targeting WIC benefits is just plain wrong and goes against long-standing bipartisan commitments to the program and simple common sense. The research is clear – WIC reduces food insecurity and improves nutrition, ensuring healthier children and families.

“These cuts to WIC spending will impact 5 million participants by slashing their fruit and vegetable benefits. This will bring a child’s benefit from $35 per month down to just $11 a month for fruits and vegetables starting October 1, making it that much harder to access the nutritious food our nation’s youngest kids need to grow up healthy and strong.

“Imagine a family trying to stretch these dollars, especially when, just this week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index showed a continued increase in the cost of food, with grocery prices clocking in at 5.8% more expensive in May than just a year ago. 

“In addition to the impact of these cuts, the lack of increased funding for WIC will severely hinder the program’s ability to support caseloads, forcing participants onto long waiting lists for assistance and putting them at risk of hunger.

“We urge Congress to honor its bipartisan commitment to WIC and the millions of moms and kids who benefit from the nutrition it provides.”

The post STATEMENT: Share Our Strength’s Lisa Davis Reacts to House FY24 Agriculture Appropriation Bill’s Cuts to WIC appeared first on Share Our Strength.

In this installment, we examined the prison system that traces its roots back to slavery, and the ways in which the conditions facing people in prison — and when they return home — have significant costs when it comes to health, public safety, and human dignity. We also looked to the people and organizations that are working to reframe the national dialogue around criminal justice and building food systems based on health, equity, and justice for all incarcerated and free people.

Featured Speakers

• Dr. Douglas Wood, Director of Criminal Justice Reform Initiative at the Aspen Institute
• Kanav Kathuria, Founder at the Maryland Food & Prison Abolition Project
• Sam Lewis, Executive Director, The Anti-Recidivism Coalition
• Vonya Quarles, Executive Director, Starting Over, Inc.

The post Conversations on Food Justice: The Significant and Far Reaching Impact of the Criminal Justice System in America appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Despite rising employment rates and the promise of economic recovery ahead, millions of Americans are still facing extraordinary financial hardship brought on by the pandemic. Americans collectively owe more than $57 billion in rent, and more than 11.5 million Americans are facing homelessness. The disproportionate impact of economic hardship on communities of color is nothing new, reflecting long standing racial inequities that create pockets of poverty across the United States.

In this session, panelists dived deeper into our nation’s intersecting housing, hunger, and poverty crises. From housing affordability and income inequality to redlining and disinvestment in communities that leads to segregation, they explored the systems and structures that contribute to housing inequality, all of which come with significant financial, educational, health, and opportunity costs for people of color. Panelists also put forth policies and practices that can move the needle on equitable housing and the redistribution of wealth and resources.

Panelists included:

• Sarah Saadian, Vice President of Public Policy, National Low Income Housing Coalition
• Winsome Pendergrass, Housing Rights Activist, Housing Justice for All & New York Communities for Change
• Jesse Kanson-Benanav, Executive Director, Abundant Housing MA

The post Facing the Housing Crisis: Keeping Americans Safe, Healthy, and Connected appeared first on Share Our Strength.

“Power dynamics are central to any conversation about food justice,” shared Ikaika Hussey, founder of Hawaii Federated Industries.

During a recent live event – part of an ongoing series of conversations about food justice held by Share Our Strength, the organization behind the No Kid Hungry campaign – three generations of Hawaiian activists spoke about power dynamics of colonization and resistance that define the current food landscape in Hawaii. 

Today, the island experiences high rates of food insecurity and dependency on imported foods but also a strong movement to reconnect to traditional meals and culture.

Daniel and Meala Bishop are part of the older generation of activists who grew up in Hawaii when it was still a U.S. territory. They experienced firsthand the loss of their culture and language. In the 1960’s, school was segregated and didn’t teach them about the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. 

Daniel shared how his grandmother was taken from her family from an early age and raised Catholic without any knowledge of Hawaiian history.

“When I confronted the truth at the dinner table, it was met with great hostility,” he shared.

This older generation was instrumental in the renaissance of Hawaii embodied in the milestone 1978 Hawaiian Constitution. The document made Hawaiian an official language of the state and created an office for the protection of Native Hawaiians, acknowledging the need for reparations.

Marti Townsend, director of The Sierra Club of Hawaii, explained that the constitution created many innovative policies that are essential for the protection of the environment and food sovereignty.

An example, Townsend explained, was the public trust doctrine that “recognizes that there are natural cultural resources that are shared by everyone. Water, for example, cannot be privately owned.” 

Hussey added that many of the tenets of the 1978 Constitution, including the public trust doctrine, were taken from policies and practices of native Hawaiians prior to colonization.

Both Townsend and Hussey represent the renaissance generation that grew up after the enactment of the Constitution. Both connected historical racist attempts to undermine Hawaiian culture to the challenges faced by native Hawaiians today in a capitalist society.

The early generation of activists and the renaissance generation paved the way for the important work of young activists like Ka’iana Runnels who, in his own words, says his “responsibility in life is to feed,” and connect people to traditional ways of life.

Runnels grew up immersed in Hawaiian language and culture and with a deep understanding of the history that was hidden from Daniel and Meala Bishop.

In his eyes, it was essential for young Hawaiians to decolonize their minds and tongues, freeing the way they think and eat. And the only way to do this is to break the school-to-prison pipelines and connect kids to their history.

The six speakers – representing a multigenerational perspective on the fight for justice in Hawaii – expressed hope for future generations of Hawaiians. They see a shift in mentality and a reconnection to traditional ways of living. They also see communities working in unity to tackle challenges like climate change and the lasting impact of the pandemic.

The post Aloha ‘Āina: Food & Land Justice in Hawaii appeared first on Share Our Strength.

The fourth installment of the Conversations on Food Justice Series – a collaboration between Share Our Strength and Food & Society at the Aspen Institute- explored the importance of food in the fight for justice for Native American communities.

Speakers included Sanjay Rawal, award winning filmmaker and director of the film Gather, Nephi Craig, executive chef of Cafe Gozhoo, food activist and member of the White Mountain Apache tribe, and Sam Schimmel, youth climate activist and member of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council. The conversation was moderated by Nikki Pitre, executive director at the Center for Native American Youth at the Aspen Institute. 

Here we present three takeaways from this insightful conversation:

Food is a Path to Sovereignty

Speakers highlighted the importance of food in creating community growth and reclaiming the culture of Native communities. For them, food has memory. It can either connect you to your roots or create trauma. They spoke how native people received commodity foods, like spam and canned fish, as a band-aid whenever they couldn’t access their traditional meals, and the trauma associated with it.

Chef Craig and Schimmel have taken food as a path of connection to their communities and generating growth. 

Schimmel launched Operation Drop Fish, an initiative to support Native families affected by COVID-19 in Alaska. When delivering fish to remote communities, he was able to connect to his community and support their representation by assisting them with the completion of the census.

For Craig, who is featured in Rawal’s movie Gather, food has been a lifelong passion. He grew uneasy at the fact that Native food was never represented in any of his culinary training. He connected with elders in his community to learn more about their traditional foods which had a transformative effect on him, and decided to focus not on creating Native meals for the world to see, but rather creating them for Native communities themselves.

“It has been the Native food that has been my most powerful educator,” he shared. “It was not academia that brought me to mental health, decolonization, indigeneity, health disparities and creating pathways.” 

Food Sovereignty is Intrinsically Connected to the Protection of the Land

Rawal, who migrated from South Asia, shared his experience as a non-native and an immigrant. “There’s very few of us migrants that have an understanding of what it means to be connected to this land. There’s a sentiment of ‘if something bad happens I can move’.”

However, he argued that for Native people, land  has an essential connection to their spiritual and cultural identity that they didn’t have a choice.

Schimmel echoed the sentiment of the importance of land for Native culture. He mentioned that climate change had significantly affected hunting and fishing in Alaska, which are essential for sustaining Native culture and food security in his community. The impact had created significant mental health effects in these communities.

“The food insecurities in Alaska are ones that are incredibly real and incredibly impactful.” He shared, “the impact of an empty refrigerator on a child’s mind is detrimental on their ability to learn and grow. Until you have food, water, and shelter, you can’t pursue any other needs. We’re just trying to get the bare minimum. A lot of our time is spent on that instead of pursuing community growth”

Schimmel argued that the Western way of land management ignored a lot of the cultural practices that supported a healthy environment in which Native communities can develop.

Native People Need Support but not Saviorism

Speakers ended the conversation with a call to support Native groups. 

They said the best  to support is to ask these communities what they need instead of focusing on creating solutions that come from the top down. There are thousands of efforts by youth and community organizations already doing great work in terms of sovereignty and protection of the land.

Rawal advised people to look up Native tribes in their local area, and to your own privilege and power to support them, elevate their voices and give them space within leadership.

Finally there was a strong call to just get informed, follow Native chefs and community groups, and to use social media as a way to build healthy relationships with Native communities.

The Food Justice Conversation Series will continue in late April with a conversation building on this one addressing food sovereignty in Hawaii. Please email foodjustice@strength.org to share any feedback, ideas or suggestions on topics you would like to see covered.

The post Food Sovereignty: Food and Justice for Native Peoples appeared first on Share Our Strength.

The second installment of the Conversations on Food Justice Series – a collaboration with Food & Society at the Aspen Institute and Share Our Strength – focused on hunger as a racial equity issue. 

Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree moderated the event, which featured Dr. John B. King Jr., the president and CEO of the Education Trust and former secretary of education, and former Maryland Congresswoman Donna Edwards. 

[Read the After Action Report]

Here are five key takeaways from the conversation:

We Must Make Systemic Change to Solve Hunger

Both King and Congresswoman Edwards drew a direct line between slavery, Jim Crow and the disproportionate rates of hunger among people of color today. They argued that transformational change needs to happen at the government level, as they see many federal and programs as designed to actually keep people from accessing them through. 

Congresswoman Edwards shared her experience being unable to receive help in a moment of economic hardship because she worked full time. Congresswoman Pingree talked about some states failing to effectively implement the Pandemic EBT Program – which offered temporary emergency nutritional funds loaded on EBT cards for children who normally receive free or reduced-price lunches in school.

They offered ideas for practical solutions like extra EBT assistance in the summer similar to Pandemic-EBT, universal school lunches for kids, and encouraging leaders to listen to families.

King noted that it’s going to take all of us to achieve lasting change. “We have to move from performative wokeness to policy wokeness,” he said, asking people to go beyond putting a Black Lives Matter sign on the yard and encouraging them to vote for equitable policies.

Stigmatization Causes Hunger

Former Congresswoman Edwards shared her own personal story about receiving food assistance in the past, and the shame that came with it. “I would come home from my job, take off my suit that I had to wear to work, put on jeans and a t-shirt and a baseball cap and go around to different food banks in order to avoid just being seen.”

The story highlighted how we need to move past demonizing people who need help. The ongoing pandemic has increased the number of people collecting meals at food distribution centers, and for many it is the first time doing it.

“Let’s change the narrative on how we think about them. Think of them, not as individuals who need help, because we’ve all needed help in one form or another,” Elliot Gaskins, a managing director at Share Our Strength concluded. “Let’s think of them as the resilient, determined and extraordinary individuals that they are.”

Healthy Food is Essential for Ending Hunger

Pingree noted that we must move past people just getting enough calories and, instead, think about the ability to access healthy food. 

They explored the historical origins of unhealthy eating and its connection to slave diets and federal policymakers choosing not to focus on healthy foods. “The irony is we think that that’s somehow saving us money, but actually, if you look at the health consequences, it’s costing us money,” King argued. 

But too many low-income families live in food deserts where there are simply no supermarkets with fresh produce and foods nearby, making healthy food all but impossible to find.

Hunger Doesn’t Stop in College

Congresswoman Edwards emphasized that many college students are not hungry because they are trying to save money for a concert. Many experience economic hardship,and of those that do, 20% are parents.”. With the cost of college increasing, and assistance like Pell grants covering only 28% of the overall costs, too many college students are turning to food banks or simply going hungry.

Calling for policies to protect these students, King noted the negative educational impacts, saying, “Think about how hard it is to be focused when you are desperately hungry. Or how much of your mental energy, if you’re a parent, is going into thinking about how I am going to get food for my kids?”

We Can’t Forget 2020

2020 has been a year that has exposed inequities and pushed us to have advance serious conversations about systemic racism and the steps to fight it. The speakers expressed that we cannot turn the page.

“My fear is that 2020 has been such a bad year that all of us want to put it in the rear view mirror, but we really can’t afford to do that when it comes to hunger,” said Congresswoman Edwards.

Please join us in the fight against systemic racism to ensure that all children and families have the food they need to thrive and the opportunity to pursue their aspirations.

________________________________________________________________________

The Food Justice Conversation Series will continue in 2021. Please email foodjustice@strength.org to share any feedback and ideas of what topics you would like to see next year.

Click here to watch our first installment in the series, which featured Black Panther leader, Erika Huggins, and executive director at FoodLab Detroit, Devita Davison.

The post Hunger as a Racial Justice Issue: Why That Matters and What We Can Do About It appeared first on Share Our Strength.

In the report’s words: “The data reveal, in the United States today, more parents are financially stable and living without burdensome housing costs. More teens are graduating from high school and delaying parenthood. And access to children’s health insurance has increased compared to just seven years ago. But it is not all good news. The risk of babies being born at a low weight continues to rise, racial inequities remain systemic and stubbornly persistent and 12% of kids across the country are still growing up in areas of concentrated poverty.”

The report’s characterization of the data as reflecting “measurable but still inadequate progress” balances celebrating progress with maintaining urgency.  Details excerpted below are worth your review. The more we go where the data takes us, the more credibility we will have and the more strategic our allocation of resources.

• Of the 16 areas of child well-being tracked across four domains — health, education, family and community and economic well-being — 11 have improved since the Foundation published its first Data Book 30 editions ago.

• The nation’s child poverty rate dropped four percentage points to 18% in 2017. Despite this good news, the poverty rate for African-American and American Indian kids remains substantially higher — at 33%.

• The likelihood that kids are growing up in families burdened by high housing costs has fallen — going from 41% of all U.S. kids in 2010 to 31% in 2017.

• The nation’s child population added more than 9 million kids since 1990. Half of this growth came from three states: Texas (2.5 million), Florida (1.2 million) and California (1.1 million).

• Low birth weight, which often portends developmental challenges, had increased three years in a row, matching the four-decade high of 8.3% of all live births (2006).The risk of having a low birth-weight baby runs highest for African-American families (13.4%) and lowest for white families (7%).

The full report can be found at https://tinyurl.com/y43dymht

The post Child Poverty Progress Is Measurable But Still Inadequate appeared first on Share Our Strength.

As part of our commitment to bearing witness, Chuck Scofield, Amy Zganjar, and Ashley Graham led our colleagues in planning numerous trips to New Orleans in the months and years after the destruction wrought by Katrina.  One such trip was designed for the board of the Timberland boot company on which I served.  It was that day that Mrs. Chase showed us the stove and I’ll never forget my Timberland board colleague Ken Lombard walking out to the van, getting out his phone, and calling Starbucks and the NAACP and raising $175,000 to help finish cleaning, restoring, and re-opening the restaurant.

Her obituary, which references this, will better acquaint you with Leah Chase as a remarkable and inspirational culinary and social change legend.  https://tinyurl.com/y2jjnnd6

The post Remembering Leah Chase appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Thank you Provost Christine Siegle,  President Mark Nemec, and all of you for this opportunity. Most important of all, congratulations to each and every one of you.

I will keep these remarks brief, for many reasons not least of which is a conversation I had with my son Nate who recently reminded me in no uncertain terms that it is your accomplishments being celebrated here today, not mine.  I will briefly share only three things and then sit down.

First, as much as I appreciated the generous introduction, that is not really who I am, or at least is only a part of who I am.  I am also the son of a loving mother who died from a drug overdose before I completed my education.  I was a principal architect of three losing presidential campaigns, one of which spent more than four years paying off debt.  I’m happily married, but only after a first marriage that failed. And after I graduated from college I went straight to law school and then failed the bar exam. Twice.  As the infomercial says, ‘wait, there’s more!’ But I’ll spare you.

I share this not for sensationalism or sympathy, or to hold your attention but to persuade you that no life, not even a successful life, perhaps especially not a successful life, is lived as an unbroken string of successes.  The shortcomings, failures, and even bad luck that are an inevitable part of being human need not hinder your success if you know what to take from and do with them.   Conversely, spend your life or career carefully avoiding any risk of failing and you will almost certainly guarantee it.

So try to see the world whole and to let the world see who you really are. Not because it will always be as attractive as your Facebook or Instagram feed, but because in the long run people figure it out anyway.  As my wife Rosemary taught me we live longer and healthier if our “on stage” and “back stage” lives are one and the same, an undivided life. It’s the richest blessing I can wish you.

Second, as diverse as you are in you intellect, appetites, energies, appearance and ambition, you share in common at least one gift and one power.  The gift is the ability to share your strength.

The anti-hunger and anti-poverty organization I started in 1984 with a $2000 cash advance on a credit card is called Share Our Strength and was built on the belief that everyone has a strength to share, a gift that you may take for granted but that can be deployed to benefit others. By sharing strength, I don’t mean writing a check or volunteering at a soup kitchen. I’m talking about giving of yourselves, of your unique value added as chefs have done by cooking at food and wine benefits and teaching low income families nutrition education, and as have done teachers, nurses, corporate execs, authors, architects, journalists, and so many others including low income families themselves working in their communities.

Since that $2000 cash advance we’ve raised nearly $1 billion to help end hunger in the U.S.  We’ve added millions of America’s poorest kids to school breakfast programs, and seen attendance and test scores improve accordingly.  We’ve added tens of thousands of summer feeding sites when the schools are closed. We’ve help build the emergency food assistance network of foodbanks, etc.  Solving poverty is complex, but feeding a child is not. Our success underscores what can be achieved when, in the words of the writer Jonathan Kozol, you pick battles that are big enough to matter but small enough to win.

It’s good but not good enough.  We can’t finish what we started without you. There are 40 million Americans on SNAP (food stamps) today and nearly half are children. For the first time a majority of our public school students, 51%, live below the poverty line.  11% of American children live in deep poverty, below 50% of the poverty line.

We can’t have a strong America without strong kids. You and I won’t achieve the full potential we have – to live in peace, to travel the world freely, to benefit from shared prosperity and robust economic growth if we don’t close this gap.  James Baldwin: “These are all our children and we shall either profit by or pay for whatever they become.”

The other thing you have in common, the greatest power on the planet, which each of you has in equal measure, is the power to bear witness.

I went to Ethiopia during a devastating famine more than a decade ago, to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, to Haiti after the earthquake.  I had less of a sense that I could effect change than that I would be changed by what I saw and felt, by the emotions – sadness, sympathy, despair, anger, outrage, and ultimately hope  – that are the inevitable response to such a situation.

When something affects us powerfully we often say we have been moved. The literal implication is having started out in one place and ending up in another. In this way being moved means being transformed and personal transformation is what powers social change.

Bearing witness makes us complicit.  What we’ve seen can’t be unseen – and we are left with a profound choice: do something or do nothing.

Take the opportunity to bear witness in your own way and time. Go somewhere you have not been and see something you haven’t yet seen. Look until you feel something and then tell someone what you’ve seen and felt. This is what it means to bear witness. This is what it takes to change the world.

If there was ever a time to tackle social justice challenges, this is it. Our strong economy, 50 year low in unemployment and record high stock market also creates a new moral opportunity: to finally address the scourge of child poverty that afflicts nearly one in five American children.

Our success in treating the symptoms of poverty has not been matched by success in addressing poverty itself or its causes.  Therein lies the opportunity and moral imperative. We have our first chance in decades to go beyond treating symptoms to actually addressing some of the root causes of why children live in poverty in the first place. If we do not do so now, when will we?

If we can put aside politics and focus on the children that are our common bond and future, we might find that our new moral obligation creates — finally — opportunity for all.

Third, and finally: Don’t wait.  Martin Luther King once said “In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is the thief of time. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood, it ebbs.”   These are more than eloquent words. I went to Ethiopia during the onset of a terrible famine there in 2000 and met a 13 year old girl at a school we were supporting and where we were helping to build a hospital next door.  Her name was Alima Dari and we stayed in touch, exchanging letters and photos.

One day a colleague of mine went to Ethiopia and I gave him a letter to give to Alima, but didn’t hear from him for ten days.  He wrote and said “I hate to tell you this but Alima died of cerebral malaria. She’s been misdiagnosed with Tuberculosis, the hospital we were building next door to her school was not yet finished, and by the time they got her to Addis Ababa it was too late.”  Dr. King’s very words.

You don’t have to go to Ethiopia to find your Alima. She is here in Connecticut, or Texas, or New York or California.   Share your strength on behalf of an Alima somewhere in this world. The time we’re allotted to solve problems is limited and precious.  Don’t wait!

Don’t wait until the mortgage is paid, or until you get the promotion, or until it stops raining.  Most important of all, when your intentions meet the inevitable obstacles don’t just wait.  Jaywalk if you can, break a window if you must, pick a lock.

Social change is not about having a good plan.  It’s not about being well funded. Though that helps.  Success at social change is about knocking down the obstacles between you and your plan, Often the key is in picking the lock.

We need to share our strengths because who among us would truly make it on their own?  Where would we be without our classmates, our teammates, our professors, our parents, our-coworkers, our lovers, and our friends?   Where would we be without extending our hand or reaching for one?  If anyone has ever helped you in any way, you are now in a position to honor it as you leave here by committing to bear witness and sharing your strength.

I know I wouldn’t have lasted a minute on my own.  But I wasn’t on my own and you’re not either given your years here and the community here that’s been built and surrounds you.  Congratulations to the Fairfield University class of 2019.

The post Remarks for Fairfield University Graduate Schools Commencement appeared first on Share Our Strength.

During the day there were a record number of flats because potholes filled to the top with water just looked like another stretch of dark pavement. Some riders had to come off the road when the wilderness survival blankets that were handed out were not enough to keep them from potential hypothermia. In the evenings you could find many in their room on hands and knees trying desperately to dry out their socks, shoes and clothes with a hand-held hair dryer so they could ride again the next day. Even the most experience riders afterward told me Day 3 was one of the hardest things they’ve ever done.

The riders have always been the heroes of Chefs Cycle, but this year it was our staff colleagues who really stood out, too many to be able to name here. After months of careful planning they ended up working around the clock to change and abbreviate the routes to safer roads, ensure riders would have additional supports needed to complete the ride, and communicate so that all were on the same page. Tom and I heard the kind of praise that would make you proud. They are to be congratulated on their own heroic journey. It was a spectacular display of servant leadership, world class hospitality, and dedication to the mission of Share Our Strength.

This is the morning I wake up early each year, soak in a hot bath, and swear to myself I will never do it again. But of course the kids we seek to serve don’t have the option of saying I’ll never be hungry again, so I’m sure I speak for most of the riders in promising we won’t let the bike get too rusty or sit idle for too long.

The post Surviving Chefs Cycle – And Still Loving The Ride! appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Even though this will be my 5^th ride, there is an uncertainty that can’t help but make you a little anxious. The imagination can conjure an infinite number of potential indignities that loom on the long and winding road ahead.  But aside from benefiting from the training, and even perversely enjoying the three days on the bike, I ride because it is so inspiring to see what those around me – well actually most ahead of me and a few behind – are doing and why.

Hundreds of the chefs, restaurateurs and donors who have always been at the core of Share Our Strength will be persisting through pain, discomfort and exhaustion.  They will be taking risks, physically, mentally, and socially. They will forging ahead toward the finish line more on faith than certainty. In short, they will be doing all of the things we are doing and need to be doing to succeed in our larger daunting journey of ending childhood hunger. And they are doing it, as we are, because they know childhood hunger is wrong, urgent, and within their power to solve.

The post Final Countdown: 3 days til Chefs Cycle for No Kid Hungry appeared first on Share Our Strength.

The podcast began as an exploration of the connection between food and the many other issues important in our lives – our health, the environment, education, even national security.  But as we delved deeper into the life stories of our accomplished guests we saw the richness in the personal and leadership lessons they shared. Many revealed the degree to which they had achieved the success that eluded them only when finding the courage to pursue their true passion.  We also mined leadership lessons from everyone from Senators to CEO’s. I’m especially proud of the many heartfelt discussions about race, equity and inclusion, and inspiring testimonials to overcoming adversity.

Looking back on more than 120 episodes and at least 250 remarkable guests, I’ve come to appreciate how much intellectual content has been generated. I’ve also realized there might be value to our listeners, current and prospective – to sorting and curating episodes into some of the categories below.  I’ll keep an updated list of “Best of Add Passion and Stir” groupings on our blog at https://www.shareourstrength.org/blog  We’ve tried to curate so that instead of spending time looking for the best episodes, you can spend your time listening to them.

THE BEST OF ADD PASSION AND STIR

Five of our most popular episodes:

Arianna Huffington: http://addpassionandstir.com/arianna-huffington-sound-asleep-and-still-changing-the-world/

Ron Shaich;  founder of Panera http://addpassionandstir.com/can-the-secret-sauce-that-built-a-6b-business-save-our-politics/

Pink, after her 100 mile ride for Chefs Cycle: Pink,  Going the Distance for America’s Hungry Kids http://addpassionandstir.com/rock-star-pnk-goes-the-distance-for-americas-hungry-kids-2/

Soupergirl founder Sara Poulon and Community Wealth Partners CEO Amy Celep on Driving Culture and Staying True to Your Beliefs  http://addpassionandstir.com/driving-culture-change-and-staying-true-to-your-beliefs/

Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and Danny Meyer http://addpassionandstir.com/genius-knows-no-boundaries/

Leadership lessons on Add Passion and Stir:

Founder of Panera, Ron Shaich;  http://addpassionandstir.com/can-the-secret-sauce-that-built-a-6b-business-save-our-politics/

Senator Jeanne Shaheen,  http://addpassionandstir.com/senator-jeanne-shaheen-on-national-leadership-and-local-solutions/

Tom Vilsack on The Fight to Save Our Democracy  http://addpassionandstir.com/obamas-longest-serving-cabinet-member-on-the-fight-to-save-our-democracy/

Jim McGovern http://addpassionandstir.com/rethinking-the-cost-of-nutrition-programs/

Social change pioneer Bill Novelli and chef Erik Bruner-Yang on Moving The Mountain: Marketing Social Change and Making it Last

America’s most iconic chefs on Add Passion and Stir:

Jonathan Waxman  http://addpassionandstir.com/tearing-up-the-menu-leveraging-celebrity-and-innovation-to-change-the-world/

Stephan Pyles http://addpassionandstir.com/living-longer-living-better-and-rediscovering-our-humanity/

Rose Previte http://addpassionandstir.com/come-together-uniting-people-through-food-and- on opportunity/

Jose Andres http://addpassionandstir.com/jose-andres-and-the-1-killer-of-women-and-children/

Alex Guarnaschelli http://addpassionandstir.com/the-real-looming-financial-crisis-health-costs-for-poor-kids/

Mary Sue Milliken  http://addpassionandstir.com/fixing-our-broken-food-system/

Three courageous conversations on race, equity and inclusion, on Add Passion and Stir, with

Douglass Williams and Robert Lewis Jr  http://addpassionandstir.com/flipping-the-script-rewriting-the-story-of-urban-youth/

Jim Wallis and Michael Schlow  http://addpassionandstir.com/racial-injustice-the-soul-of-america-is-at-stake-part-1/

Chef Tracy Chang and Glynn Lloyd  on How Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Can Drive Profit http://addpassionandstir.com/how-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-can-drive-profit-and-build-community/

Best of Add Passion and Stir about food and national security

U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling (retired) and Air Force Master Sergeant Jennifer Medeiros on Unfit For Service: Food As A Matter of National Security  http://addpassionandstir.com/unfit-for-service-food-as-a-matter-of-national-security/

Former Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera  http://addpassionandstir.com/come-together-uniting-people-through-food-and-opportunity-2/

Courageous Cooks: Overcoming Adversity

Flynn McGarry  http://addpassionandstir.com/the-courage-to-try-cooking-at-age-11-conquering-hunger/

Andrew Zimmern on Confronting Addiction’s Demons  http://addpassionandstir.com/confronting-addictions-demons/

Adele Fabrikant of Teach For America on What Doesn’t Break You Makes You Stronger (with chef Seth Wells from Rose’s Luxury  http://addpassionandstir.com/what-doesnt-break-you-makes-you-stronger/

Strategies for Ending Childhood Hunger

Bill Telepan,  Fighting For Fresh Food in NYC Schools   http://addpassionandstir.com/feeding-1-million-kids-for-1-per-day/

Chef Jody Adams on the Cure for Ending Childhood Hunger http://addpassionandstir.com/the-secret-cure-to-childhood-hunger-is-in-our-grasp/

Irwin Redliner, This is Your Brain on Hunger http://addpassionandstir.com/this-is-your-brain-on-hunger/

Former VA First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe  http://addpassionandstir.com/lessons-from-the-bully-pulpit-showing-the-face-of-hunger/

Bridging the World’s Divides

Ophelia Dahl, Partners in Health  http://addpassionandstir.com/the-power-of-imagination-to-bridge-the-worlds-divides/

Pierre Ferrari, The Heifer Project, Bringing Dignity to Poor Communities http://addpassionandstir.com/psychological-change-bringing-dignity-to-poor-communities-2/

Carmen Burbano of the World Food Program and Chef Floyd Cardoz,  The Whole World is Watching: New Ideas In the Fight Against Hunger

Excellence in the Nonprofit Sector

Marc Friedman,  http://addpassionandstir.com/living-longer-living-better-and-rediscovering-our-humanity/

Michael Brown, co-founder of City Year, Cutting Through Politics: The Importance of Service  http://addpassionandstir.com/cutting-through-politics-the-importance-of-service-2/

Jeff Bradach on When Good Is Not Good Enough: The Moral Imperative of Scaling Impact http://addpassionandstir.com/when-good-is-not-good-enough-scaling-social-impact/

Our Favorite Celebrities

Rick Russo, Pulitizer Prize winning author, http://addpassionandstir.com/luck-and-moral-obligation/

Pink,  Going the Distance for America’s Hungry Kids http://addpassionandstir.com/rock-star-pnk-goes-the-distance-for-americas-hungry-kids-2/

Jose Andres http://addpassionandstir.com/jose-andres-and-the-1-killer-of-women-and-children/

Fixing Our Food System So That it Works for All

John Piotti American Farmland Trust  http://addpassionandstir.com/get-dirty-and-get-involved/

Eric Kessler, Vote With Your Wallet to Fix Our Broken Food System  http://addpassionandstir.com/vote-with-your-wallet-to-fix-our-broken-food-system/

Mary Sue Milliken and Sam Polk http://addpassionandstir.com/fixing-our-broken-food-system/

The post Curating Our Podcast: Add Passion and Stir 2.0 appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Even though this will be my 5^th ride, there is an uncertainty that can’t help but make you a little anxious. The imagination can conjure an infinite number of potential indignities that loom on the long and winding road ahead.  But aside from benefiting from the training, and even perversely enjoying the three days on the bike, I ride because it is so inspiring to see what those around me – well actually most ahead of me and a few behind – are doing and why.

Hundreds of the chefs, restaurateurs and donors who have always been at the core of Share Our Strength will be persisting through pain, discomfort and exhaustion.  They will be taking risks, physically, mentally, and socially. They will forging ahead toward the finish line more on faith than certainty. In short, they will be doing all of the things we are doing and need to be doing to succeed in our larger daunting journey of ending childhood hunger. And they are doing it, as we are, because they know childhood hunger is wrong, urgent, and within their power to solve.

Thanks to the Chefs Cycle team and so many generous friends and supporters for making the ride possible, and for keeping an eye out, and a light on, for those of us not yet finished.  You can donate at http://join.nokidhungry.org/site/TR/ChefsCycle/General?px=3315346&pg=personal&fr_id=1571

The post Forging Ahead Toward the Finish Line appeared first on Share Our Strength.

“The biggest art form is how we live our lives and most of us don’t pay enough attention to what we value, what’s important to us, to the mastery of how we live our lives… What moves the needle whether nonprofit or for-profit business are creative ideas and they are the first to be sacrificed when we are exhausted and running on empty. When we are exhausted and running on empty, that’s when we are we are the worst version of ourselves. I dislike myself when I am exhausted and running on empty because I am  less empathetic, more reactive, more upset by the slightest things,  I can still do transactional things and still get stuff done but the joy goes out of life.  If your life is just about productivity and no joy there is something wrong and you need to recalibrate.” – Arianna Huffington

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of this episode of Add Passion and Stir because of the two amazing women in it: Arianna Huffington who founded the Huffington Post, and now Thrive Global, along with chef Claudia Fleming, a longtime Share Our Strength supporter from her days at Gramercy Tavern and now at the North Fork Table and Inn.  It’s a great conversation about how to change the world by investing in yourself, your health, and your creativity.

Listen in at http://addpassionandstir.com/arianna-huffington-sound-asleep-and-still-changing-the-world/  or on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/add-passion-and-stir/id1164624510?mt=2   Enjoy and please share.

The post Sound Asleep and Still Changing The World – Arianna Huffington and chef Claudia Fleming on our podcast appeared first on Share Our Strength.

In opening the conference and welcoming the attendees, I shared what I believe to be three important truths about our work.

The first truth is that childhood hunger is a solvable problem. Whether in urban or rural America. It may be the most solvable of all the problems facing our country. You don’t need a single fact or figure to know it.  We are blessed with an abundance of food and bipartisan support for food assistance programs. What we have not had is the political will to ensure that every eligible child is connected to them.  When we don’t solve it children get hurt. That’s obvious. But it’s not just kids who are hungry but yours and mine too. Because our schools suffer. Our health care system suffers. Our economy suffers.

Americans are desperate for evidence that progress is possible and we have that evidence. We have added 3 million kids to school breakfast programs. So far we have protected SNAP and WIC. We know the ingredients it takes to succeed: expertise, advocacy, financial resources, best practices, collaboration, and persistence.  We can bring these to bear in rural America as we have in cities across the country.

When our food assistance programs are fully utilized, we get a glimpse of what is possible. Poverty, homelessness, unemployment were once guarantees of hunger.  They are still a terrible burden. But they no longer have to be a determinant of hunger.  Where kids are getting three meals a day, they have a chance.

Second, we win or lose at the state level and local level. If your focus is on Washington, D.C. you will feel like nothing can get done. Recently we spent time with many of the nation’s governors at their annual meeting. They cooperate. They collaborate. Don’t assume partisanship cannot be overcome. Children are the most vulnerable and the least responsible for the situations they are in and I haven’t met a governor yet who doesn’t appreciate that. Our efforts knock down barriers between kids and the food they need, but governors can help scale those efforts.

Third, is a harder truth, and another reason I feel such urgency about our collective commitment to rural America. We can’t solve childhood hunger by focusing on kids alone. These kids live in houses with adults and all of the terrible and toxic stresses that exist for parents in poverty. The sooner we reach our participation benchmarks for school meals and summer meals, the sooner we can find additional ways to support kids by making sure their parents and families have the economic stability they need.

Two things are true at once– (a) we’ve made tremendous progress and have shown what’s possible; and (b) we’re not done yet and need help reaching all kids. Rural America needs us to succeed for reasons that go beyond only its children.  I was recently with former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe who shared that as governor his primary focus was on economic growth and workforce development. He emphasized that the key to his success in attracting businesses to the state was the investments made in children and education that began with making sure every child was fed.

We have the opportunity to make American stronger child by child.  While in Kentucky, my colleague Chuck Scofield and I had the opportunity to spend a couple hours with the author and poet Wendell Berry at his farm about an hour from Louisville.  We talked about rural hunger, and sustaining small farming communities, and immigration, and family and church.  Of kids in need we talk about the heartbreak of being hungry and he said, quietly, “well maybe that’s what a heart is for.”  And he added “It seems to me that if you are not willing to do a small thing where you are there’s no sense trying to change policy around the globe.”

I am grateful to all who attended the Rural Child Hunger Summit for knowing what their own hearts are for and for the small and large things they do every day to make this a country in which there is No Kid Hungry.

The post Our Nation’s First Summit on Rural Childhood Hunger appeared first on Share Our Strength.

• Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourner

I’ve long wanted to meet Jim Wallis who has been such a powerful and spiritual leader in the battle against racial injustice. He is the author most recently of America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege and The Bridge to a New America.  This week’s podcast was with Jim and Michael Schlow, a phenomenally successful chef who depended on food assistance for part of his childhood. The conversation was so riveting that we let it run long and broke it into two episodes, the first of which we just released and can be found at http://addpassionandstir.com/racial-injustice-the-soul-of-america-is-at-stake-part-1/ or on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/add-passion-and-stir/id1164624510?mt=2 I hope you’ll share with others you think might be interested.

The post Who Sits At Your Table? One of our most personal and provocative episodes of Add Passion and Stir appeared first on Share Our Strength.

“You can taste whatever emotion you are putting in the food, positive or negative. You can taste love.  It sounds a little touchy feely but if you cook a meal in a bad mood it doesn’t look nice and doesn’t take great.  If you come in feeling positive that expresses itself in the food and on the plate.  There’s a necessity to having love as part of the workplace.”

• Chef Joy Crump

This week’s podcast episode with Chef Joy Crump and serial entrepreneur Jeff Grass focuses on how to create a positive culture that leads to high performance.  Our conversation digs deeper into the philosophy that Joy summarizes as “we don’t hire knuckleheads or people who aren’t kind.”   Listen in and please share: http://addpassionandstir.com/the-first-rule-of-creating-a-winning-culture-we-dont-hire-knuckleheads/ or at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/add-passion-and-stir/id1164624510?mt=2

Thanks to all who have been suggesting guests and topics. In the next few weeks we will be featuring former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, and Jim Wallis, one of our nation’s most compelling faith-based champions of social justice.  And before the end of this month we will hit 100,000 downloads. (97,904 as of this morning!)

The post The First Rule of Creating a Winning Culture: We Don’t Hire Knuckleheads! – on our new Add Passion And Stir appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Since the beginning of our No Kid Hungry campaign, there has never been a moment like this in which economic conditions yield such a favorable foundation for our success. If you leave aside political views about who deserves the credit, and focus just on measurable facts, the facts are that millions more Americans are working, at increasingly higher wages, especially Americans who had the most trouble finding employment. This translates into significantly less childhood hunger, and ultimately decreasing demand for food assistance. The public food and nutrition assistance programs we support are designed to work exactly this way.

That in turn means more opportunity for us to help prevent kids from being hungry in the first place, and a corresponding responsibility to think anew about how to best do that.

The post The best anti-hunger news of 2019 so far … appeared first on Share Our Strength.

• former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell,
• new House Rules Committee chair Jim McGovern,
• Massachusetts First Lady Lauren Baker,
• Au Bon Pain and Panera Bread founder Ron Shaich,
• the World Food Program’s Carmen Burbano,
• award winning chef Hugh Acheson; and many others.

And favorite previous episodes with José Andrés, Danny Meyer, Pink, Tanya Holland, Dorothy McAuliffe, Andrew Zimmern, Alex Guarnaschelli, Curtis Stone and others can be found on our website and on iTunes.

It’s easy, and free, to subscribe and have each new episode hit your podcast app each week, or let us know if you’d like us to send you a weekly email. In addition, we’d love your feedback and recommendations on guests, topics, and how to continue to grow our audience.

Thanks and please enjoy our weekly conversations about food, passion, and making a difference in the world.

The post More Prominent Business, Political, and Culinary Leaders On ADD PASSION AND STIR appeared first on Share Our Strength.

           Our political culture has evolved from unpleasantly divided to unacceptably ugly.  It is undeniable that we’ve seen bigotry, misogyny and racism become more accepted and normalized. Leave aside where the blame may lie, but make no mistake, this not only stands in the way of our specific goals, but it also transcends them in importance. We have an obligation to make the values that have always been implicit in our work, explicit. We need not and should not do so in a partisan, divisive or finger pointing way.  But we must say out loud that our values of inclusiveness and diversity mean that when we say No Kid Hungry we mean No Kid. No city kid and no rural kid. No Baptist child and no Muslim child. No fifth generation American child and no immigrant American child. No straight kid and no gay kid.  No white or black or Latino kid. And while we must work with anyone, from any party, from any Administration who is willing to join us in combatting the politics and bureaucracy and indifference that too often stand between a hungry child and a healthy meal, there will be no ambiguity about our values.

The post Confronting Bigotry With Values: Our New Moral Imperative appeared first on Share Our Strength.

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Sue never expected to be a mom for a second time. When her daughter’s life crumbled under the weight of addiction, it forever changed Sue’s life too. Her one-bedroom trailer isn’t meant for three people, but Sue and her two grandchildren make do. Patrick and Scarlett share a bed in the bedroom, Sue sleeps on a recliner. They live about 5 miles from the town’s only grocery store and don’t have a car. They’ve never been to a summer meals site because the kids have no way of getting there. People drive fast on the country roads, and Sue worries about people high on drugs hitting the kids if they walked or took bikes, but that’s a moot point since they don’t have bikes anyway. Sue skips meals sometimes to make sure the kids eat, when I ask her about it she just brushes it off. “I’m old, I don’t need much to eat anyhow.” Sue is always laughing, Scarlett and Patrick inherited that from her. And, they’re both honor roll students, clearly whip smart. Scarlett pulls me down to her level and then tells me that if I want to call her Charlotte I can, and then nearly falls over laughing at her own joke.

 

Chloe is delighted when we get to her house. She’s only five, but she loves people. We saw a snakeskin she found in the woods, we were introduced to all her dogs and cats. She insisted that I take her picture from many different angles. Louise is another grandmother that found herself entering a second round of motherhood. Her son struggles with addiction, he left Chloe and her baby brother Noah to be raised by Louise and her husband. Their cabin is nestled in a quiet meadow. It emerges like a bastion of comfortable, intentional solitude when you come upon it after a drive through the woods and up and down several steep mountain sides. Louise laughs when I ask if she’d bring Chloe to a summer meals site in the future, they only drive when it’s absolutely necessary. Gas costs money.

The post Bearing Witness in Appalachia: Unseen America appeared first on Share Our Strength.

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We’d pedaled just under 200 miles in 2 days and with one more day to go.  The first day from Carmel to King City took us through the Salinas valley. We saw what John Steinbeck saw: the back breaking nature of the manual labor that harvests the food we so enjoy. “These migrants are more American than half the politicians in Washington” one rider said to me.

 

Restaurateur Christopher Myers and I compared notes on what we’d witnessed: Dozens of bikers who couldn’t go on but wouldn’t quit, pedaling so slowly up steep hills that from a distance it looked as if they had stopped and got off their bikes. The quadriceps of some cramped and were hard as stone. One sat silently against a tree with ice bags on her knees.  Those who overheated poured ice over their head to lower the temperature of their body’s core. As the heat intensified, a silence descending on the ride.  Riders stopped for water every 3-4 miles, sometimes knocking on farmhouse doors, in addition to the official water stops every 25 miles.  The day before, Ellen Bennett crashed and needed 21 stitches in her hand. The next day it would be Allan Ng, who broke his collarbone and will have surgery this week. “It was carnage,” Christopher said, his eyes wide, “Carnage!”  

 

Temperatures hit 106 degrees that day and there was no shade to be found. I had less than 15 miles to go, one-third of it a steep mountain pass. I wanted to finish, having completed every leg last year and having trained more this time around.  But the heat overhead and off of the asphalt had sapped my energy and along with it some of my spirit. I feared what stopping would do to my confidence on the third and last day. But I feared going on as well.

 

Near the crest of what would be my last hill of the day I saw a lone orange jersey near the top, a biker straddling his bike with both feet on the ground,  head down and resting on his folded arms across the handle bars. He was as still as a statute.  I pulled alongside. “Are you okay?” He lifted his head slowly. It took a moment for his eyes to focus.  He didn’t say anything but didn’t have to. “Let’s just walk for a little while” I said softly.  After 15 minutes a support car pulled up. We loaded our bikes on the back and got in.

 

Does it seem inconsistent if not insane to say that almost all of us look back on it as exhilaratingly fun? Is that the nature of resilience or simply time’s passage?  At dinner, several chefs said Share Our Strength had become their doorway to the healthier lifestyle they wanted to create for themselves but never knew how. If they could get healthier they could help their customers do so too, as well as the hungry kids we seek to serve.

 

 

The entire experience was “sharing strength”, up to and including unforgettable images of one rider after another struggling up a steep mountain pass with another stronger rider on each side of him/her, one of their hands on the small of his back gently lifting him forward even as they struggled one handed to pedal themselves up the rest of the way.

           

As challenging as is the ride, what we do every day at Share Our Strength and Community Wealth Partners is even harder: insisting on transformational rather than incremental change, maximizing impact for every child, designing new ways for individuals and businesses to share their strength, maintaining our commitment to innovation and accountability, all while knowing that the cathedral we are building may not be finished in our lifetime.

 

I went to sleep on the evening of the second day saying to myself that I wasn’t riding again tomorrow. I would be a volunteer instead.  But when I woke up 6 hours later I couldn’t wait to get back on the bike.  Again there were steep hills. But temperatures were in the mere eighties.  I rode from start to finish as I had the first day. Even kept up with Tom Nelson (mostly). We exceeded $1 million raised. It was a glorious ride.   

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            I will keep these remarks concise, for many reasons not least of which is a conversation I had with my ten year old son Nate who reminded me in no uncertain terms that it is your accomplishments being celebrated here today, not mine.

 

              So, appropriately chastized, I will briefly share only three things and then sit down.

I know I wouldn’t have lasted a minute on my own.  But after Penn I was never really on my own again because I had the benefit of my wonderful years here and the community that surrounded me.  You do too. Congratulations. 

 

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Last night was Share Our Strength’s annual Taste of the Nation event at the National Building Museum.  It was the 28^th year we’ve held the event and it included chef Roberto Donna who was at our first event and Bryan Voltaggio who has been deeply engaged with us for the past 5 years, as well as dozens of other talented chefs and restaurateurs. 

 

Over three decades the commitment of the culinary community to ending hunger has been nothing short of extraordinary, probably exceeding the unity, generosity and commitment of any other industry when it comes to addressing a social problem.  The return on that investment has been equally impressive: millions of children added to the school breakfast program, thousands more summer meals sites around the nation, and building the capacity of a highly sophisticated emergency food assistance network of food banks.

 

The post “No Great Cause is Ever Lost or Ever Won. The Battle Must Be Renewed and The Creed Restated” 28 Years of Taste of the Nation appeared first on Share Our Strength.

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            The amount of this specific grant was small, but it leveraged hundreds of thousands of additional dollars. And First Lady McAuliffe is squarely on message about the educational advantages of this type of bipartisan approach.  We are seeing similar results in Nevada, Colorado, Arkansas, Maryland, California and numerous other states. 

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All of the riders are already looking ahead to the next challenge, and the next way they can share their strength. Think about joining us for all or part of next year’s ride. Remember, if I can do it, anyone can!

The post From The Chefs Cycle Finish LIne appeared first on Share Our Strength.

          Memorial Day weekend was a key training milestone, with extended time for long rides.  One thing that struck me is just how much the challenges of this ride parallel the challenges we face ending childhood hunger. The chefs who are riding in Chefs Cycle will raise an incredible amount of money that will enable us to feed millions of kids.  But more important, they are demonstrating qualities invaluable to our No Kid Hungry campaign.

           Participating chefs are not only raising money but personifying the role of persistence in teaching, inspiring and leading. That’s what gives me confidence we will succeed in achieving No Kid Hungry.

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            Near the end of his remarks, Johnson said: “My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school…. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry. They knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes….Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.”

            “I saw it in their eyes.”  When else have you heard a U.S. president speak this way? It’s an all too rare example of how the act of bearing witness shapes a leader’s character, fuels their ambition, and ultimately impacts policy that changes the world. Whatever one thinks of President Johnson, few disagree that his force of personality made him effective as a legislator and later as a President getting legislation enacted into law.  Part of that personality was forged by being in a position to see firsthand how others lived, and to let himself feel something about it.

            “I saw it in their eyes.” This crucial element of leadership too often goes missing in our politics today. In its place we have “I saw it in the public opinion polls” or “I saw it on cable news”.  But it’s not coincidental that LBJ declared war on poverty, or that he was the last president to elevate the issue so high on the national agenda. He was a consummate politician but what he’d seen and felt clearly did not, could not, dissipate even decades later.  Just the opposite. It remained vivid enough to share with 70 million Americans who watched that prime time broadcast and the U.S. government assembled in its entirety under the Capitol dome.

            “I saw it in their eyes.”  To bear witness in this way, to enable others to do so, is not just a task for politicians and elected officials. It also remains the most solemn and powerful of our many responsibilities at Share Our Strength and Community Wealth Partners.  (Share Our Strength’s most recent report on Hunger in Our Schools can be found @ http://www.hungerinourschools.org/ )

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His response to my email was characterized by both humility and genuine appreciation for what we have worked so hard to achieve through our No Kid Hungry campaign:  “If, in some small way, the stories have helped advance your great, important work, then that is worth far more than any prize. I’m grateful to get to write about the problems you all are working to solve.”

If you don’t have time to read the series you can get a good sense for its power from The Washington Post’s one page letter to the Pulitzer committee nominating Saslow.  See @ http://www.pulitzer.org/files/2014/explanatory-reporting/saslow/saslowletter.pdf

In talking to his Post colleagues about the people he wrote about and who “I owe the most to” he explained: “They’re the ones who take the huge risk. It’s a huge act of courage to have somebody call, who you don’t know, from out of town, and say that they want to come be with you constantly in sort of, you know, every corner of your life in this moment where things are usually not going well and there’s a lot at stake. That’s an incredible thing to ask of people, and yet they say yes, and I wonder a lot about that because I’m not sure I’d be the person who said yes. And I think it’s because people are so — they really crave to be understood and they want to know that what they’re dealing with matters. And I think our journalism should validate that and it should take good care of the trust they’re giving us to come into their lives.”

Saslow is 31 years old and hopefully represents a new generation of reporters committed to bearing witness and giving voice to the voiceless. 

The post A Pulitzer Prize for Giving Voice to the Voiceless appeared first on Share Our Strength.

The nature of songwriting is to take an experience or idea and boil it down to its essence and Seeger’s words did exactly that. I stopped and scribbled them down because his sentiments felt like a wonderful reinforcement of exactly what we’ve been doing: at the NGA summit in Detroit, with our new partner Good Housekeeping, in our videos about school breakfast, in our recruiting for Dine Out at the Restaurant Leadership Conference in Arizona, on our Facebook page and Twitter feed, in the best practices that Community Wealth Partners share with clients, and in so many other ways.

We’re not just finding the positive stories, we’re creating them. But Seeger’s point is that is not enough. People are inspired by learning of positive outcomes, what works, knowing a problem is solvable, and by those who hold themselves accountable for solving it. Small steps forward play as valuable a role as the large. And so we must continue to find ways to not just create or find the positive stories but also be about “getting people to tell them to each other.”

  By the way, Judson Memorial Church is worth checking out whenever you are in NY. It was built in 1892 and financed by John D Rockefeller, designed by legendary architect Stanford White and includes 17 spectacular stained glass windows by the master of that art form, John LaFarge.  It pursues a comprehensive social justice agenda. And it quotes Pete Seeger.

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NHSA REMARKS

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Thank you Kathy Underhill for that introduction and congrats on the continued progress of Hunger Free Colorado. Your leadership is the reason so many of us are here today. Not just your leadership but the great results you are getting in leading the No Kid Hungry campaign and the effort to end childhood hunger. I know that you are just back from maternity leave and I am grateful that in addition to everything else you have contributed you have chosen to contribute another activist in the next generation of anti-hunger advocates. Also we have numerous distinguished guests but I want to especially thank Kevin Concannon from the USDA who is one of America’s most dedicated public servants and champions for kids.

We have this conversation this morning at an extraordinary time. The presidential election is a month away and as usual, politics triumphs over issues. The first debate is only hours away. Congress has adjourned without passing any of the appropriations bills that are its first and primary responsibility. The world is an increasingly dangerous and complicated place. Syria, Sudan, Libya, and gasoline prices, structural unemployment, challenges with the Euro.

And here at home, 46 million of our fellow citizens remain mired in poverty including more than 22 % of all of our children. There are 16.4 million poor children in rich America, 7.4 million living in extreme poverty. Children under five are the poorest age group in America and one in four infants, toddlers and preschoolers are poor during the years of greatest brain development.” The report’s sobering statistics include: more than 1 in 4 children in the U.S. are on SNAP; 39.1 percent of black children were born poor in 2010. Only 3% of eligible infants and toddlers secure spots in Head Start due to funding constraints.

Though frustrating, we can understand when political leaders struggle with problems so complex and in some cases beyond their control that they seem unsolvable. Syria. Sudan. Libya. Gas prices. Structural unemployment.

But what about failing to solve those problems that are solvable? What about failing to solve those problems where we know the answer, there is bipartisan support for it, and the resources needed have been set aside? Failing to solve those kinds of problems, with no excuse other than politics, transcends incompetence. It breaks faith with a generation of children that are the most vulnerable and the least responsible for the situation in which they will find themselves.

There is no better example than the tragedy of childhood hunger in America today. What I want to talk about today is why it is a solvable problem.

46 million Americans are on food stamps for the first time in history and almost half of them are children. 22.5 percent of our kids in this country live in poverty. More than one in five.

Not everyone is as passionate as those of us in this room about the issue of childhood hunger, or at least they may not think they are at first. But then again, if you are passionate about education, about health care, about nutrition and obesity, about American economic competitiveness and American economic security, you may find that childhood hunger is more important to you than you realized. Because such hunger – unprecedented and unnecessary in America in 2012 – is compromising our national goals in each of these areas. Teachers tell us so. So do physicians. So do business leaders, economists and even our generals and admirals.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have shown sufficient inclination to take this issue head-on. Even more remarkably, there has been very little pressure on them to do so. Why? Because the historic economic inequality that characterizes and divides America in 2012 has been both consequence and cause of increased political inequality. The voiceless are even more so.

But the most recent Census Bureau data showing poverty that is entrenched year after year leads to at least one inescapable conclusion: Ignoring poverty will not make it go away. With few exceptions, political leaders have refused to even talk about poverty, let alone offer any big or bold anti-poverty initiatives. And for nearly a decade poverty has continued to grow worse. Imagine the 1968 campaign without a mention of Vietnam or civil rights. Or the 1976 post-Watergate election without a discussion of campaign finance reform. Or 1980’s race’s between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan not focusing on the energy crisis of the Iran hostage situation. It’s hard to think of a presidential election in which the great crises of that particular time was met with silence and played no part of the campaign.

But critical anti-hunger programs like SNAP and school meals work. As poverty has worsened, food insecurity has not, demonstrating the effectiveness of the safety net.

So our response must be twofold. One is to insist on better political leadership and better public policy. The other is to assume the responsibilities incumbent of citizens living in a republic. There is much we can and must do. Not “we” as in the collective “we”. We as in you and me in this room.

Because while solving poverty is complex, feeding a child is not. Our American children are not hungry because we lack food or because we lack food and nutrition programs. They are hungry because they lack access to such programs even though such programs work and the funds have been set aside to support them. Is it possible to think of a more lame excuse?

What do I mean by “lack access”. I mean that of 21 million kids who get a free school lunch by virtue of their family’s low income, only 9 million get breakfast although all 21 million are eligible, and only 3 million get meals in the summer time when the schools are closed. Here in Colorado the ratios are similar. During the 2010-2011 school year, of the 356,000 kids who got school lunch in this state, just over 100,000 ate breakfast.

The consequences are predictable and devastating. At Old Mill Middle School in Maryland, Principal Sean McElhaney told us of the morning he conducted standardized tests and a student wrote “I don’t care” across his. He prepared to give that student the usual lecture until the student said “Principal Mac, I haven’t eaten, I’m hungry and that’s why I wrote that.”

As devastating are the consequences, there are solutions. In Los Angeles County Mayor Villaraigosa recently announced that their experiment with breakfast in the classroom in one school will extend to 700 L.A. county public schools over the next three years. In the last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote a letter urging all school officials to explore the benefits of such alternatives to breakfast in the cafeteria.

But why is there this disconnect in the first place given the enormous need and the resources that exist to solve the problem? The disconnect is because children are not only vulnerable, but voiceless. Kids don’t vote, make PAC contributions, belong to organizations or have lobbyists. All they have is you, and me.

And that’s why we need to do this work more powerfully. Powerfully enough to be able to reverse this effects of our negligence on a generation of children.

Imagine a time and a place in which everything you know to be true – because your instinct tells you so and because you’ve learned it – is set aside in favor of its opposite. Instead of putting oil in your car, you use water until the engine grinds to a halt. Instead of farmers watering their crops they let the harsh sun destroy them. Instead of building with the best steel and stone you instead use sand and water and knowingly face inevitable collapse. Instead of saving money to invest in long-term value creation and a better future, you opt instead for the immediate gratification that comes from spending everything you have?

This is how a generation of children are being raised today, in complete contrast to what we know is essential for their well being and success, in contradiction to not only maternal and paternal instinct but science and research as cutting edge as anything to be found at the intersection of neuroscience, molecular biology, technology and child development. The result is not only harmful to those specific kids, but to every single American taxpayer who bears the burden of far greater remedial expense, to our economy, our criminal justice system, and ultimately to our national security.

There is a very brief window for ensuring that kids get the nutrition and stimulation they need for their brains to grow properly. For decades we’ve given lip service to the belief that investing in early intervention now is more cost effective than paying for the consequences of not doing so later. But our ears don’t hear the words our lips have spoken. The length of time required to solve social problems does not align with a political cycle that requires re-election every 2,4 or 6 years.

It’s always difficult, whether in business or public affairs, to marshal the will to make investments that don’t pay off until the long term. But when applied to our children it not only means lost opportunity but devastating and often irreversible damage. As Share Our Strength’s national spokesperson Jeff Bridges often says about the fact that 16 million American children struggle with hunger “If another country had done this to our kids we’d go to war against them.”

I hope that as citizen leaders you will succeed where our political leaders have failed. On the airplane that brought me here I looked down at the farms and factories, at the small towns and schools where children were taught that Presidents and Congress, Governors and Mayors act on their behalf no matter which class they belong to. From that vantage point America looks fertile and full of possibility. But our leaders no longer see the whole, as one can from this vantage point. They have instead narrowed their vision to see only what is small and advantageous in the short-term. As a result they perpetuate the smallness, the narrowness, and the division. By such actions they are choosing to follow rather than to lead. The only remedy is for others to lead, for citizens and community organizations and businesses to act not on behalf of a class, but on behalf of a country. As graduates today you not only have that opportunity, but that responsibility. And you can do so by sharing your strength, creating community wealth, and bearing witness.

More than 50 million Americans living in poverty desperately need our help. But just as much as they need us, we need them if America is to maintain a position of strength and competitiveness in the world. A country with one sixth of its population trapped in poverty, on food assistance, unemployed and dispirited will be hard pressed to lead and inspire in ways that live up to America’s legacy. American can’t be strong if her kids are weak.

No one spoke more eloquently about the need to share our strengths than the poet Gwendolyn Brooks who wrote:

We are others harvest

We are each other’s business

We are each other’s magnitude

And bond.

Those words are just as true today. We are each others’ harvest. Thank you for the work you are doing to end childhood hunger and to make America a nation in which there is No Kid Hungry.

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Poverty in North Carolina is at 17.5%, several points higher than the national average. The article laments: “When President Barack Obama is renominated this week, you can expect much to be said about what he will do for the middle class, much more to be said about the obligations of the upper class. You can expect silence about the needs of the underclass. …With the singular exception of the unfortunate former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, it is difficult, if not impossible, to name a politician who has made poverty a cornerstone issue since Lyndon Johnson spoke out for the Americans who “live on the outskirts of hope. But those days are gone. The poor have disappeared from our political consciousness – and conscience.”

This is just one of the reasons we are seeking to give voice to the voiceless by launching a new weekly radio show to about urgent social issues that do not receive meaningful coverage by the mass media. Join us by watching this brief video on our Indiegogo site @ http://www.indiegogo.com/shareyourstrength

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      At an event a few blocks from the floor of the convention, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell introduced Bridges by saying “I’m proud that I was the first Republican Governor to adopt the No Kid Hungry and that others have followed, and I urge every Governor in this country to get behind the No Kid Hungry campaign.” (Earlier in the day we introduced a special film festival screening of the Food Network’s “Hunger Hits Home” documentary that features both Jeff and Gov. McDonnell.)

     Upon their arrival on Monday the delegates were greeted by a Tampa Bay Times editorial, triggered by our teachers survey of hunger in the classroom, that said: “Leaders of Share Our Strength are wisely building partnerships with local anti-hunger organizations, government agencies, corporations and heads of education and business and political groups. Such partnerships can focus on increasing participation in federal nutrition programs and obtain easier access to federal funds to feed our children. By all indications, this model is succeeding…. A valuable lesson of this collaboration is that earnest people who see themselves as stakeholders can find ways to solve difficult problems for the greater good — perhaps even eliminating childhood hunger.” @ http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/there-should-be-no-hungry-schoolchildren/1247635

     Political conventions are a bit like foreign countries with their own language, traffic patterns, cultural icons, and visa requirements. My first Republican convention fit that bill, especially as a lifelong Democrat. But there were many friendly faces in the crowd, and as both Gov. McDonnell and the editorial above made clear, a sense that ending childhood hunger may be one of the few issues on which both parties can agree.

     But it was also clear that efforts like these to reach a larger audience, broaden our base, and to intersect with the national conversation are critical to our success and critical to our efforts to be a voice for the voiceless. That’s the principal reason we are creating a pilot for a new public radio show talk show and crowdfunding it through Indiegogo @ www.indiegogo.com/shareyourstrength  For social entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and engaged philanthropists it will be a place to share your strength. Check it out.

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That’s what came to mind in listening to Bill Moyers most recent commentary in which he begins “It’s just astonishing how long this campaign has gone on with no discussion of what’s happening to poor people.” Moyers remains one of the few journalists committed to speaking truth to power about the failure to seriously address poverty in the United States. His commentary can be seen @ http://billmoyers.com/2012/08/24/invisible-americans-get-the-silent-treatment/#.UDjUDVtQc84.twitter

With 46 million Americans on food stamps for the first time in the history of the country, just a symptom of the crushing poverty that is afflicting so many, not to mention record levels of 22% child poverty, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have shown the slightest inclination to take this issue head-on. Even more remarkably, there has been very little pressure on them to do so.

Why? Because the historic economic inequality that characterizes and divides America in 2012 has been both consequence and cause of increased political inequality. The voiceless are even more so. Extraordinarily wealthy donors have greater influence on the agenda of the campaign. And journalism, under extraordinary financial pressure in a rapidly evolving industry, is more sensitive to ratings and the desires of advertisers than ever before.

What can be done about all this? Not clear. But as Moyers points out, everyone who can speak out should speak out. And if enough of us do maybe politicians will begin to lead instead of follow. Maybe our fellow citizens will see themselves as part of a whole, rather than just a precious, narrow interest. Maybe the body politic will give voice to the children who can’t give to SuperPacs or hire lobbyists, to need as well as to privilege, to the least heard among us who just happen to be our future.

That’s one of the reasons we are launching a new public radio show to shine a spotlight on issues and solutions too often ignored by the mainstream media. Join us today @ http://www.indiegogo.com/shareyourstrength

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The Maine coastline shows how nature has evolved to protect those least able to protect themselves. The lowly moon snail builds a “sand collar” made of mucus and sand, almost identical to the color of the ocean floor, to cover and camouflage its eggs. When a Piping Plover senses a predator threatening her chicks, she walks away dragging one wing on the ground, feigning it is broken, to divert interest and tempt the predator to follow her instead. A mother and father duck bob watchfully in front of and behind their dozen ducklings learning to swim.

Generational protectiveness is nature’s oldest and most fundamental law. Somehow our political and economic society has evolved to violate it. We aggressively protect the strong, but fail to acknowledge the vulnerable that need protection the most.

Last week the Children’s Defense Fund released their State of America’s Children report. It explains “there are 16.4 million poor children in rich America, 7.4 million living in extreme poverty. Children under five are the poorest age group in America and one in four infants, toddlers and preschoolers are poor during the years of greatest brain development.” The report’s sobering statistics include: more than 1 in 4 children in the U.S. are on SNAP; 39.1 percent of black children were born poor in 2010. Only 3% of eligible infants and toddlers secure spots in Head Start due to funding constraints.

What’s more shocking than the statistics (the full report is @ http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/soac-2012-handbook.pdf) is how little attention the report received. Scanning the web for reaction or response, what I found instead were examples of how protective society can be, just not of vulnerable kids:

 Financial regulators in Washington responded immediately when errors at Knight Capital undermined confidence in the stock market.

 Apple spent $647 million in advertising to protect its investment in the iPhone.

 The Obama campaign has spent more cash more quickly – $400 million so far – than any incumbent in recent history to protect his lead, and SuperPacs for both parties will spend hundreds of millions of dollars more.

There is of course a rational for each of these actions. But what’s the rationale for only acting on behalf of the strong but not the weak?
In the forward to the Children’s Defense Fund report Marian Wright Edelman wrote:

“Millions of children are living hopeless, poverty and violence stricken lives in the war zones of our cities; in the educational deserts of our rural areas; in the moral deserts of our corrosive culture that saturates them with violent, materialistic, and individualistic messages; and in the leadership deserts of our political and economic life where greed and self interest trump the common good over and over. … child hunger and child suffering have become normalized in the richest nation on earth. It’s time to reset our moral compass and redefine how we measure success.” ….
Her prescription for change pointed to the kind of work we do at Share Our Strength: “A transforming nonviolent movement is needed to create a just America. It must start in our homes, communities, parent and civic associations, and faith congregations across the nation. It will not come from Washington or state capitols or with politicians. Every single person can and must make a difference if our voiceless, voteless children are to be prepared to lead America forward. Now is the time to close our action and courage gaps, reclaim our nation’s ideals of freedom and justice, and ensure every child the chance to survive and thrive.”
At Goose Rocks Beach one can bear witness to nature’s extraordinary efforts to protect those who need protection the most. In doing so you realize it is not just tragic that we allow 20% of America’s children to struggle with poverty and hunger, it’s unnatural. Moral leadership might be enhanced if our nation’s leaders spent a day at the beach.

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The goal of the Institute, whose work will begin in Ghana and Kenya, is to provide management, entrepreneurial and educational support to advance that kind of economic growth that can alleviate poverty. As a Silicon Valley investor who had been involved in the growth of start-ups ranging from Intel to Oracle, Bob had for more than 50 years been hosting international students in their home, at the urging of Dottie. They developed a passion for the developing world, but especially for people, seeing each and every one as good, talented, and worthy, though perhaps not as lucky as they themselves had been. And as a businessman, Bob has a passion for results, strategy, and return on investment. “To be a good steward, you’ve got to have results.”

What I found most inspirational and hopeful was not the amount of the gift, or the scale of Bob and Dottie’s expansive vision of reaching 200 million people, but something even more rare and precious: the humility they bring to it. Both are people of deep faith. Bob made a point of saying that they didn’t need to be thanked for their gift because it was the NGO’s that “do what we can’t do, so we should be the ones thanking them.” And while Bob and Dottie host CEO’s, prime ministers, university presidents, and other world leaders when in Palo Alto, they were happy to give up an evening to speak to a small group of about 70 of us in Maine because they really believe that every person counts.

Given the entrepreneurial spirit and philosophy that has always been core to Share Our Strength, and our focus on partnerships with business to create new kinds of “community wealth” I’m sure there will be much we can learn from the new Institute’s work, and perhaps some learnings of our own that we can share as well. In any case, keep your eye on it and on Bob and Dottie. There aren’t many like ‘em in Goose Rocks, or anywhere for that matter.

The post Using Entrepreneurship to Address Extreme Poverty appeared first on Share Our Strength.

“In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,

By the relief office, I seen my people;

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking

Is this land made for you and me?”

Guthrie, born in Oklahoma, had lived in the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression and for the rest of his life wrote and sang bearing witness to poverty, inequality, and those who were the most vulnerable and voiceless. His words gave unforgettable voice to these issues. And while those words were sharply political at times, by tying them to music he was able to reach a larger audience than many political statements are able to reach. It’s a testament to their power, and to how much work we have yet to do, that his words still resonate today.

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There were also more dignitaries than I expected. Former Mayor David Dinkins, and current New York Senator Chuck Schumer also both spoke. As did the Chancellor of the City University of New York Matt Goldstein. As we were waiting to begin someone told of a favorite commencement speech by a children’s book author who told a ghost story which “was terrific because after all no one really ever remembers a word of the commencement speech.”

On a glorious sun drenched morning we looked out on 900 graduates and more than 5000 members of their families. The graduating class was about 60% Latino and 35% African American. Many if not most are the first in their families to attend college. Several spoke of eloquently of the steep challenges they’d faced as a result of poverty, single parent homes, poor health care, lack of quality education, and sometimes their own bad choices.

As is custom at such ceremonies, my job as commencement speaker was to impart wisdom and provide inspiration. But the challenge I faced was to not be redundant. There was nothing I could say as inspirational as the lives they’d lived, the obstacles they’d overcome, and the achievements represented by their diploma. Unlike students at more elite colleges, they don’t necessarily have new jobs waiting for them as a reward for all of their hard work. But still they could not have been more excited or proud.

I don’t know if they left inspired. But I did.

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But we did arrive to one wonderful surprise. Each year the game warden cordons off a few spots by the nearby river to protect the eggs of an endangered species of small birds called Piping Plovers. This year, for the first time, a round circular fenced enclosure had also been put up in front of our house. In the middle, in a small depression scraped in the sand, sit four speckled small eggs; perfectly round, and breathtakingly beautiful.

The eggs had been discovered by a neighbor whose call to the Fish and Wildlife Department set the machinery of protection in motion. The fencing, to keep out predators like foxes and gulls, will be up for a month before the eggs hatch and then another 28 days until the chicks can fly. Warning signs are posted, and a leaflet was hand delivered to surrounding homes with instructions about not disturbing the eggs. The enclosures are numbered and the birds monitored. The community, oblivious to and undeterred by the diversity of political views within, pulls out all the stops to ensure the future of these birds through this investment in the earliest possible intervention.

It’s good to be feathered I guess. There are children within the same region of the Fish and Wildlife Service whose struggle to survive and thrive is almost as great as the Plovers. Their predators will be hunger and poverty. These kids are endangered but because their species is not, we don’t marshal resources on their behalf in the same way. Instead we wait, and debate, or make excuses until the damage is done, sometimes irreversibly. One legacy of No Kid Hungry for which we must strive, is not just increased enrollment in programs like summer meals and school breakfast, or even the end to childhood hunger, but creating a culture of nurture and protection that rallies the entire community around each and every child.

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Edelman’s formative experience was working for Bobby Kennedy in the 1960’s and developing many of the anti-hunger and anti-poverty policies that Kennedy promoted. He went on to work in the Clinton Administration, from which he resigned in protest over welfare reform, and is now a Georgetown Law Professor. His unique vantage point enables him to make valuable distinctions between genuine innovations in social policy and mere re-inventions of the wheel.

I was able to read the book over the weekend. In it Peter reflects on his time with Bobby Kennedy in the Mississippi Delta, and the legislative remedies to hunger it inspired. He describes RFK as “a man who – arguably unlike anybody at that level since- was deeply committed to doing something very serious about poverty in this country and the intersection of poverty and race.” Most of the book is a well documented analysis of the ups and downs in the fight against poverty. It employs compelling facts and statistics to balance sobering realism with hope, optimism, and keen political insight.

His key points include:

 “The idea that ‘nothing works’ in the fight against poverty is a canard. The policy gains outweigh the policy losses… The problem is that the policy gains have been nullified by economic trends.”

 The 21st century began with the nation in the best position in poverty in 30 years, 11.3% at end of Clinton Administration, just above the 1973 low point of 11.1%. 15 million were added to ranks of the poor between 2000-2010, now equaling 15.1% of the population.

 Three forces – all unforeseen in large measure in 1968 – account for the course of American poverty over the past 40 years. (1) good-paying, low-skill jobs went overseas and gave way to automation, and low-wage work became ubiquitous; (2) the substantial increase in the number of families headed by a single parent, usually a woman; (3) the fact that race and gender still matter a good deal as to who is poor and who is not.

 An astonishing 20.5 million people lived in extreme poverty (less than $9000 for a family of three) in 2010, up by nearly 8 million in just ten years. 6 million had no income other than food stamps.

 Half the jobs in America pay less than $34,000 a year and almost a quarter pay below the poverty line for a family of four ($22,000 a year).

 One estimate is that we are losing at least $500 billion per year just due to the costs of child poverty.

 “The unwillingness of our national leadership to engage the nation in a straightforward discussion of American poverty is corrosive.”

Edelman concludes with a call to action that should resonate with all of us in nonprofit or advocacy work: “We have to be at it steadily all the time. This means both electoral politics and outside advocacy and organizing. We tend to lurch back and forth. My take on the Obama election in 2008 is that we put all our eggs in the electoral basket and then figured he would do it all and we could go about our business. There were two problems with that. One, he needed our help to get things done, and two, he needed to hear our voice about what he was not doing that he should have been doing and what he was doing that was wrong. You can’t just vote and then disappear for four years. … one lesson, which we seem to learn and then forget over and over again, is that we have to work both the inside and the outside – in the electoral world and from the outside to keep elected officials honest and make them better than they would otherwise appear to be.”

Book events are Politics and Prose on June 9 at 6, Center For American Progress on June 11 at 10:30, National Women’s Democratic Club on June 12 at noon, and Busboys and Poets on June 21 at 6:30.

The post “So Rich, So Poor” Important New Book on Poverty in America appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Ironically most nonprofits working in human services, health care, education, hunger and poverty will be expected, but unable to pick up the slack if cutbacks in SNAP, housing assistance, Pell grants for tuition assistance, and Medicaid go into effect.

The Ryan budget represents a radical restructuring of government and the responsibilities we share as a society. If philanthropic leaders aren’t speaking out on this, what are they speaking out on? In fairness, they make themselves heard often by releasing reports, conducting research, and sharing best practices. But they tend not to weigh in on, or intersect with, the on-going national conversation, thus self-marginalizing at just the time they most need to be heard.

While the House considered the Ryan bill, most nonprofits large and small went about business as usual, focusing on the “trees” – writing grants, holding fundraising events, preparing for board meetings – and utterly failing to see the forest. Because the House passed budget, though unlikely to go very far in the Senate, is anything but business as usual. For antiquated reasons this is just what the public wants and expects. We like our nonprofits to be seen but not heard.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t take specific steps to better prepare themselves. Every organization has both a right and an obligation to let its stakeholders know how their work will be affected by changes in public policy.

There is an alternative to silence, neither partisan nor political. It begins with four questions every nonprofit should ask:

 Have we prepared and shared an analysis of the impact of such budget cuts on the issues on which our mission is focused?

 Have we prepared contingencies for generating alternative revenues sufficient to enable us to meet increased demand?

 Have we built a capacity to inform and/or shape public policy to the extent consistent with our mission and permitted by law?

 Have we sought to collaborate with others to ensure the collective impact necessary to mitigate impact?

Speaking in a very different context recently, about the impact of SuperPacs, the President’s strategist David Axelrod said “you can’t play touch if they play tackle.” The same could be said for nonprofits today when it comes to potentially radical shifts in public policy. It’s not too late to speak out. But when will they?

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A report issued this week warned that America’s national security and economic prosperity are at risk if schools do not improve, asserting that “The dominant power of the 21st century will depend on human capital. The failure to produce that capital will undermine American security.” See @ http://www.cfr.org/education/global-test-us-schools/p27678
The report may not have specifically focused on hunger, but it could not have been more focused on the kinds of schools No Kid Hungry knows firsthand: Parker Elementary in Chicago where we launched No Kid Hungry last week; the Robert Morehead School in Pine Bluff, Arkansas where we shot the school breakfast video; Principal’s Mac’s Old Mill Middle School North in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.

Joel Klein, former Chancellor of New York City’s Department of Education and one of the 30 commissioners responsible for the report explained: “One statistic that blew members of this task force away is that three out of four kids today in America are simply ineligible for military service. It’s unbelievable. We’re drawing our national security forces from a very small segment of the population. And a lot of the problem is they simply don’t have the intellectual wherewithal to serve in the military.”

Commission members included former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Teach For America’s Wendy Kopp, Craig Barrett, ex-CEO of Intel, and others including Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a vocal advocate for school children being well fed so that teachers are able to teach effectively.

Make no mistake: any discussion of America’s dependence on human capital must include a discussion of whether our school children are fed, fit, and ready to learn.

As we continue to strategically broaden the base of support for No Kid Hungry, we need to join the conversation where it is happening, right now, and in the context of the stakes being higher than ever for our national and economic security. We need to embrace but go beyond the great work and partnerships of state anti-hunger commissions, food banks, nutrition educators, and even pediatricians. We also need business, military, and education leaders like those behind the Council on Foreign Relations report. We couldn’t be off to a better start, but we still have a long way to go and we can only get there with a broader coalition of national leaders.

To learn more about the campaign visit NoKidHungry.org

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Mario’s summary of two reports below, from Bridgespan and the Alliance for Children and Families concludes that “the fiscal crisis facing nonprofits is anything but a passing phenomenon” and that “every nonprofit will need to rethink, redesign, and reinvent for this era of scarcity”.

In many ways this has been our mantra at Community Wealth Ventures well before the current fiscal crisis, since it has long been clear that there simply aren’t sufficient charitable dollars, even for organizations that excel at getting more than their fair share, to solve many of our social problems on the scale that they exist. And so we have been a proponent of creating community wealth by leveraging assets into revenue generating opportunities; investing in capacities that support scale and sustainability, and more recently focusing on collaborative and systemic efforts, including intersecting with public policy, to create transformative change. As we’ve taken lessons from, and contributed to, Share Our Strength’s success scaling the No Kid Hungry campaign, we’ve seen the indispensible need to focus on measurable outcomes as Mario prescribes.

Mario’s message is an important reminder that many good and important organizations will be fighting simply to survive and maintain current levels of services. It points to the need for us to be helping them with the fundamentals of strategy and sustainability at the same time we help them aspire to transformation.

Excerpts from Mario’s recent letter follow below.

Billy

Mario Morino: First off, I want to commend two outstanding—and sobering—accounts from Daniel Stid and colleagues at Bridgespan: the report The View from the Cliff and the article “Five Ways to Navigate the Fiscal Crisis.” Stid et al. have done a much better job than I to assemble facts to back up one of Leap’s core premises—that the fiscal crisis is anything but a passing phenomenon, and it will force nonprofits and their boards to be more rigorous in how they pursue and assess performance. Here are just a few of the many valuable insights from the Bridgespan works:

• “The long-term outlook for human services funding is bleak. The federal government is facing record budget deficits and interest payments to service its rapidly accumulating debt, the rising cost of health care, and the demographic challenge of paying for entitlement benefits for retiring baby boomers.”

• “Given that roughly one quarter of state government funding and one third of local government funding come from Washington, D.C., the federal budget squeeze in turn will impinge on human services budgets at these levels.”

• “Moreover, state and local governments have their own demographic time bomb to address, in the form of an estimated $1 trillion to $3 trillion in unfunded pension and retirement liabilities for current employees and retirees.”

• “As one former state government [CFO] told us, echoing a common view among the … officials we have talked with, ‘All levels of government are facing steeper costs on health care and pensions, where the relentless demographics are just grinding down on all other items in the budget.’”

• The Hillside Family of Agencies CEO Dennis Richardson: “We started focusing more on measuring our outcomes as a result of our organizational curiosity—What are we doing that actually works? We also have come to believe—looking ahead to the future—that if we couldn’t answer that question, our funding would go to someone who could.”

I was equally impressed with the Alliance for Children and Families’ recent report Disruptive Forces: Driving a Human Services Revolution, inspired by the forward-looking IBM Global CEO Study and intended “to push [leaders] to think outside of their comfort zone.” Here are a few of the many good insights in that report:

• “Funders and communities will expect greater impact at a lower cost. The Hyundai-style approach of providing functional attributes in design and quality at a low cost has taken hold; competition will be cost based.”

• “The number of individuals with the same social ills we face today will increase…. Government will significantly reduce its funding of the sector. Foundations will hone their focus to the few proven, impact-generating organizations.”

• “Successful, high-performing networks of human services organizations will embrace technology, employing sophisticated and integrated systems to manage clients, operations, and advocacy … form innovative partnerships that deliver via multiple sectors … view the sector as a system, where all parts are interconnected and impacts are collectively measured … be comfortable with increased complexity.”

The bottom line is clear: With tight money and growing needs, every nonprofit will need to rethink, redesign, and reinvent for this era of scarcity. Even if you’re not the direct beneficiary of public funding, please don’t assume that you don’t need to think about these cuts. The competition for foundation grants, major gifts, and fee-based contracts will skyrocket as those whose public monies are cut look to other funding sources—like yours. Performance is the best way to protect your organization and meet the growing demands that are coming your way.

Back in the 1980s, an authority in the field of change management shared his view that dramatic personal change doesn’t happen until what you had stops or is taken away. Our fiscal realities—coupled with seismic demographic and social shifts—are likely to be this kind of turning point for the nonprofit sector, and possibly for the public sector as well.

My fervent hope is that this moment produces a true movement—a movement of public, private, and nonprofit leaders committed to tap the potential of, encourage, and support those leaders who have the courage to leap high in pursuit of performance for those they serve.

– Mario Morino

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Establishment Washington – at least the part old enough to know and remember Harry, turned out in force: former Senate Majority Leaders George Mitchell and Tom Daschle, former Senators Chris Dodd and Harris Wofford, Secretary of State Madeline Albright, journalists Al Hunt and Mark Shields, and hundreds more.

From his beginnings as counsel to Lyndon Johnson, during the turmoil of Vietnam, civil rights and the Great Society that was the defining period of his life, Harry went on to serve every president from Nixon through Clinton. There were many references by the eulogists to his patriotism, civility, and a seemingly long ago time “when government actually worked.” There were remembrances of his love of books, poetry, and literature, and his own wonderful memoir, A Political Education. Mostly there was admiration for his intellectual curiosity, love of adventure, humor, and fully lived life as father and friend.

Harry’s son Sam who interned at Share Our Strength gave a eulogy as did historian David McCullough. McCullough summarized Harry’s credo with one line from essayist Alexander Pope: “Act well your part, there all the honour lies.” It was the kind of timeless wisdom most of us aspire to and Harry lived.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was surprised, and honored on behalf of all of us, when seeing on the back of the program that the family had asked that charitable contributions be made in Harry’s memory to Share Our Strength and two other organizations.

The last of three hymns was America the Beautiful. The entire audience rose and sang it as one.

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