Dozens of governors, Democrat and Republican, some newly sworn in and others veteran officeholders, committed to advance our efforts.  Share Our Strength also hosted a panel for First Spouses about activating No Kid Hungry strategies in their states.

We could not have had a warmer reception.  The result will be millions more kids getting the food, nutrition, and the enhanced educational opportunities that go with them. Thanks to the many Share Our Strength supporters whose hard work and generosity creates such opportunities. And special thanks to my colleagues on the Share Our Strength staff who worked so hard before and during the NGA meeting and represent us so well with America’s governors.

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• Coretta Scott King

Share Our Strength and Community Wealth Partners colleagues:

Our family tradition for the past 5 years has been to celebrate the Martin Luther King holiday by participating in the service day of Project 351 in Boston which brings together eighth grade service ambassadors from each of Massachusetts’s 351 towns. The launch of their year of service in Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall always includes remarks from Governor Charlie Baker and various service heroes.  Then everyone fans out to serve at the Greater Boston Food Bank, Cradles and Crayons, and The Pine Street Inn.,

The speakers this Saturday morning included Share Our Strength champion Joanne Chang, and newly elected Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, the first African American woman ever elected to Congress from Massachusetts.  In addition to sharing the Coretta Scott King passage above, Rep. Pressley recounted the story of Coretta’s role after meeting Martin Luther King in Boston in 1952 where they were both studying at the time.

Coretta was a talented soprano studying opera at the New England Conservatory of Music. Martin was doctorate student at Boston University. After they married and their involvement in the civil rights movement deepened Coretta realized she wouldn’t have time for the performing career for which she had prepared.  Instead she raised money for the cause by singing at Freedom Concerts “where I narrated the story of the civil rights movement that we were involved in, and sang freedom songs in between the narrations that told the story of our struggle from Montgomery to Washington at that time.”

Up in the balcony where we were sitting, Rosemary elbowed me in the ribs, a usually reliable signal that she’s caught me daydreaming when I should have been paying attention to something important.

“What?” I whispered.

“She found a way to literally share her strength. Her voice. That was her strength to share.”

And that’s why we always participate in service on MLK Day, and why I always sit next to Rosemary.

Billy

The post “I must remind you that starving a child is violence.” Remembering Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Sister Norma Pimental runs the Catholic Charities respite center. Immigrant families are brought by Border Patrol after long journeys from Honduras or Guatemala, are the lucky ones, released on their own recognizance (some with electronic ankle bracelets) and receiving soup, a shower and assistance buying a bus ticket. We helped serve lunch to families and chatted across language barriers. Sister Pimental prays for the Border Patrol agents and recounted the time one officer, watching immigrant families being fed, told her “Thank you for helping us remember we are human beings.”  She frames the challenge: “We need a secure border and we need to treat people humanely and with dignity. We are a powerful nation and can do both.”

Rich Newman is an unlikely pro bono lawyer for unaccompanied minors and detained immigrants.  Previously a prosecutor supporting ICE enforcement, he explained drug cartel control of the border, raiding smugglers’ stash houses, and that absent a legitimate asylum claim (fear of government persecution counts, fear of gangs does not) virtually no one crossing the border illegally can come and stay here legally. He shared his evolution from prosecutor to advocate: “Immigration is the civil rights issue of our day. If my kids someday ask what I did, I want them to know I tried. Just like the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, progress is first made through the courts. Then, laws slowly change to reflect the arguments being made in court”

Marcella came from Mexico 11 years ago with her husband and son. They gradually built a comfortable home in a colonia while her husband built his mechanics business. She had two more children, American citizens. Her oldest is a Dreamer. She and her husband remain undocumented.  Chickens roam outside their house. The neighbors on each side are in trailers and lean-tos.  I ask whether harsher immigration rhetoric has made their life harder. As everywhere, the answer is “No, not really, we just go about living our lives”.

The Rio Grande Valley knows tears of sadness and tears of joy. The tears this time were different. They were tears for unrealized possibilities. Pat Matamoros, with the Cameron County health department for 25 years choked up while telling of the need for a food pantry. Marisela Cortez, representing Congressman Vela had trouble getting through her welcoming marks. School librarian Selma Ramirez cried when thanking us for coming, and shared that her cousin was the Ice agent killed in 2011. All three are American citizens of Hispanic descent. All three have purchase upon the American Dream. So why the tears? I think because they all know firsthand not only what is but what could be. They know what hard work can achieve if given even the slightest chance. They know how unjust are the half-truths that are told, how unnecessary the suffering, how unworthy of a great nation.

So what can we do? As always, we can build on what works. Each action no matter how small is larger than the small thinking that divides us.  We can ensure the Respite Center has healthy food, that Cameron County gets a food pantry, that the elementary school kids getting breakfast are also getting after school snacks and summer meals. Food nourishes justice.

I’m so proud of our team’s commitment to the most vulnerable and voiceless. Thanks Chuck, Jennifer, Monica, Sarah, Allison, and Amy. And so grateful for friends like Jeff Swartz, Jonathan Lavine, Ed Shapiro, and Chuck Myers who had the vision and resources to make our trip possible. There are so many places where we do important work – but the isolation of the Valley is palpable. I hope we’ll I always remember to show up on behalf of the forgotten. In the words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks that Chuck shared with me yesterday: “The ironic yet utterly humane lesson of history is that what renders a culture invulnerable is the compassion it shows to the vulnerable.”

The post On the Border: Each action no matter how small is larger than the small thinking that divides us. appeared first on Share Our Strength.

For us, the mass shooting this Saturday morning evoked the interviews we’ve all seen in previously unheard of places where someone is saying “we never thought something like that could happen here.” Now the voices sound eerily like our own, because they are.  What happened was so unimaginable that Rabbi Chuck Diamond, who was my classmate from kindergarten through 12^th grade and now leads the temple down the street from Tree of Life, said they’d never even discussed the risk of something so horrific with his congregation.

The odds of an active shooter on the streets where any of us grew up or live now are small, statistically. But politically and culturally they are growing larger every day thanks to the toxic stew of hate crimes, mental health issues, intolerance, and divisiveness; compounded by the failure of elected officials to advance even the most modest gun safety measures that the vast majority of Americans support.

I wish I could say I know how this will change, but I don’t. But I hope the Share Our Strength family and others engaged in community find some solace, as I do, in the network of good hearts and helping hands they have helped build from one end of our country to the other. While unable to shield innocents from the carnage wrought by a mad man, we can at least know that for each senseless tragedy there are thousands of other children and families whose suffering we have eased; for each round indiscriminately fired, there are thousands we’ve thoughtfully and intentionally protected from pain and struggle. This is something at least to hold onto until the world rights itself, this and the words of the Greek poet Aeschylus:  “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

The post When It Can’t Happen Here, But Does – Growing Up Near The Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Wage improvement is finally beginning to reach those who have been at the bottom of the earnings ladder. According to The Wall Street Journal: “The lowest paid Americans saw weekly earnings grow more than 5% in the second quarter from a year earlier, more than the national median gain of 1.7% for all workers… Workers with less than a high school diploma saw their wages grow almost 6%…”

The eight years of jobs growth coincide with eight years of our No Kid Hungry campaign. We’ve had the benefit of executing our No Kid Hungry strategies in a favorable climate of economic growth rather than constrained by governors facing scarcity. The results are equally dramatic: fewer than 1 in 10 kids going hungry and childhood hunger down to historically low levels, even though 1 in 6 kids still live in homes that experience food insecurity.

I know some who find it difficult to celebrate the economic results given the boasts of President Trump that he is solely responsible for them. But of course the streak began under President Obama and the real issue is not political credit but millions more children benefiting from the best anti-hunger program of all: parents working and able to support them.

That may be why we see participation dropping in public nutrition programs, like school lunch, WIC and SNAP. To the extent it is for these positive reasons (as opposed to the increasing fears of immigrants that participating in such programs could jeopardize their hopes of remaining in the U.S.), we may soon be challenged to deploy our resources in additional important ways to help kids thrive.  Although hunger is diminishing, food insecurity and child poverty remain devastating problems.

The post If You Care About Hungry Kids, Much to Celebrate in Latest Unemployment Report appeared first on Share Our Strength.

If you’ve supported Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign in any way over the past decade, take a bow. Because food insecurity and childhood hunger in the U.S. are now at historic low levels. Our work is not finished but fewer hungry kids in America is an incredible achievement. See my colleague Lisa Davis’s excellent statement on the latest USDA food insecurity data: here.

A couple of the newly published stats are worth highlighting. According to the USDA there are 6.5 million kids in the U.S. who live in households where one or more kids are food insecure, which amounts to 8.9% of all children or less than 1 in 10!  But 17% of kids live in households which experience food insecurity (on the part of the adults living there) which is why we say “1 in 6 kids are living with hunger.”

No child should have to live in a household that struggles with food insecurity. Moving the needle on “1 in 6” will require a commitment to helping kids by helping the adults they live with. That has everything to do with family income, education, housing, health care costs, and employment opportunities.  Complicated stuff, but given what we’ve already accomplished I have no doubt we can bring to bear the same innovation, entrepreneurship, bipartisanship, and bold goals that are the conditions of success.

The post An incredible achievement: historic decrease in childhood hunger appeared first on Share Our Strength.

We came to the border at Harlingen, TX to try to make sense of what we’d seen from afar – family separations, ICE raids, children confined in chain-link fenced detention centers. But up close it is actually even more mystifying. Rather than statistics or news reports we see human beings in all their complexity.

-A young mother at dinner with other refugees at the La Posada shelter run by Catholic nuns wears a big smile in place of the electronic ankle bracelet removed just hours earlier.

– Before 11 year old Yaritza is called before the judge in Immigration Court, the CEO of the ProBAR legal aid organization explains that all of the kids get a “Know Your Rights” presentation, “but given the trauma they are going through it is like talking to them about college applications while their house is on fire.”

– A region flooded with media now seems to have none at all. In Immigration Court, besides the 30 kids bring processed, and our team, there was no one else there. We’ve become a nation of reality TV watchers even though reality is more compelling. The kids I so often think of as vulnerable and voiceless have become invisible as well.

This issue polarizing American politics is not solely an American issue. UNICEF reports the worst child refugee crisis since World War II. Across the globe, nearly 50 million children have been uprooted, with 28 million fleeing brutal conflict in places like Syria, Iraq, Yemen and South Sudan, and millions more escaping extreme poverty.  As your hard work brings us ever closer to achieving No Kid Hungry we will begin asking whether our knowledge, resources, and talented team positions us to help more kids beyond our own borders.

Aside from the data, legal issues and political arguments, a visit to the border evokes the issue, as Danny Meyer would say, of how it makes you feel: I left feeling America is better than this – not meaning that all of the refugees were good and all of the Customs and Border Patrol personnel were bad. It’s never that black and white. But we can do better than allowing our opinions to form and harden based on whatever political tribe we belong to, without really seeing the human beings impacted on either side. Unless we commit to bearing witness, most will remain as invisible to us as the wind turning the turbines below us as our plane departs.

The post Child Refugees As Invisible As the Wind appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Three hundred such kids cross each week, every week. Most of them immediately and voluntarily turn themselves into Customs and Border Patrol. Then they are placed in detention for an average of 55 days. Apparently, what they are coming from is worse, which is why they keep coming and seeking asylum. Their short-term goal is reunification with a family member or sponsor somewhere in the U.S., and to have their case transferred to that somewhere.

The first four processed are teenage siblings.  Their mother is in Italy. Their fathers can’t be reached.  No one seems to know more than that. For another child who doesn’t speak English or Spanish the judge uses an audio system to dial the number of InterpreTalk which offers interpretation services for whatever language is specified. But they can’t find anyone who speaks K’iche, a Maya language of Guatemala, and put the judge on hold while the notes of romantic jazz piano incongruously fill the courtroom instead.

Chuck, Monica, and I observe from the back row and were doing okay until four year-old Gaudi, in pigtails and with juice box and coloring book is called to walk through the gate to sit before Judge Delia Gonzalez, formerly a Dept. of Justice prosecutor of such cases.

All of the children we saw were treated fairly, respectfully and with due process. All were granted continuances of between 30 to180 days to find a lawyer or be reunified with a sponsor or family member. That is a good thing except for the few who are days away from turning 18 and will be transferred to adult detention facilities instead.

The family separations earlier this summer that affected more than 2000 kids were the most visible and horrific part of the immigration crisis. Equally disturbing is the scale of suffering that is business as usual here. ProBAR is the largest provider of legal services to unaccompanied minors in the country.   Our grant to support their work is another of many which we can be proud.  The long odds faced by these most vulnerable kids are a little less long because of Share Our Strength.

The post Letter from Immigration Court in The Rio Grande Valley appeared first on Share Our Strength.

As firefighters work to contain the blaze, which has sent California into a state of emergency, Share Our Strength – the organization behind the No Kid Hungry campaign – is stepping in to help meet increased demand for food and supplies for families and communities impacted by these fires. Though much of our work takes place in schools, we know that hungry children in a crisis need all the help we can provide.

To support the families and kids impacted by this disaster, Share Our Strength is making a $10,000 grant to Dignity Health Connected Living (DHCL) in Redding, CA.

DHCL serves one of the locations hit hardest by the Carr wildfires in Northern California and, in addition to using its facilities as an evacuation center, is providing emergency food assistance and CalFresh outreach to the community.

While almost half of the displaced families near Redding are now heading home, they’re returning to smoke damaged houses and spoiled food. Share Our Strength funding will ensure that DHCL is able to meet the demand for food and supplies throughout this critical period.

The people of California are in our thoughts and prayers. Share Our Strength stands ready to do what we can to help families rebuild and ensure that their children have enough to eat.

You can help, too. We urge everyone who supports Share Our Strength and the No Kid Hungry campaign to donate what you can to Dignity Health Connected Living to help make their work possible.

The post How Share Our Strength is Helping Kids Impacted by the California Wildfires appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Chuck Scofield, Monica Gonzales, and I will be meeting up later today in Harlingen, TX in the central region of the Rio Grande Valley. We will spend the next two days meeting with families, advocates and lawyers and food policy experts to learn more about the needs of vulnerable children and how we can help. The meetings will include leaders from La Posada Provedencia and the Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, and we hope to attend immigration court in the morning.

We’ve made more than $100,000 in grants over the past month to help address issues at the border and we will try to get a sense of the impact they’ve had. Our goal is to listen and learn, and as always to bear witness. I hope we return with a clearer understanding of where our resources, voices, and strengths can make the most difference.

The post En route to The Border at Harlingen, Texas appeared first on Share Our Strength.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about an article in the Washington Post last month reporting that “fewer than 8% of registered voters in Ward 8, home to the poorest and most violent sections of the nation’s capital” voted in the June 19 mayoral primary.

Montana Governor Steve Bullock’s words during our recent visit to Missoula also ring in my ears: “If millennials voted in the same proportions as those 55 and older, millennials would decide every election.”  Wow. Talk about power. In your hands

At a time when our democratic institutions seem especially fragile, nothing can revitalize them as powerfully as strong voter turnout.  Donating money, volunteering, speaking out on social media, as important as they are, pale in comparison to the power you have as a voter, not to mention the responsibility you have as a citizen.

The November midterm elections are 90-some days away. I hope you are planning to vote – for the candidate or party of your choice – or planning to register to vote if you have not already.  There’s not a single issue we care about – from hunger and poverty to health care, education, and climate change, that won’t be affected by who gets elected.  Voting matters, this time, every time. Please encourage others to vote too. Look for opportunities to share why it is important. Votes are power. In your hands.

The post Voting to End Hunger and Strengthen Democracy appeared first on Share Our Strength.

More Americans working means more Americans better able to support themselves – and more fulfilled by the confidence, self-respect and dignity that comes with work. But that won’t be the case for everyone – not all jobs provide that or the living wage necessary, and not all workers are able to stay in the jobs they do find.  Many families will continue to need the kind of assistance that school meals and SNAP provide.  (Jason Furman, was chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and is a new friend whose wisdom I value. Last week he wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on why work requirements for SNAP and Medicaid hurt poor families and won’t work.)

In recent months we’ve seen reduced growth in nutrition assistance program participation. We can expect that to continue. If the result of economic growth, that’s a good thing.  It suggests anti-hunger organizations may need to rethink and recalibrate strategy. A nation with 3.9% unemployment is a very different nation than one with 10% (as in 2010), and one with very different needs.  We can’t stop until all children have the healthy food they deserve. However, we want to make sure that every dollar we work so hard to generate is deployed to help children and families where they need help the most.

The post More Jobs, Less Hunger appeared first on Share Our Strength.

These impressive victories on behalf of the most vulnerable and voiceless are a great example of an often overlooked law of politics: some things are just not possible until they happen.  Failure of imagination is always the greatest risk. Anti-hunger and anti-poverty advocates must do more than defend existing programs and advocate incremental fixes. Rather we must make the case for transformational change – ending hunger, eradicating poverty –  even if it comes with a significant price tag. That the road to such change is long and filled with potholes argues for starting down it sooner rather than later.

We learned that at Share Our Strength when creating the No Kid Hungry campaign. Putting a stake in the ground around ending childhood hunger, as ambitious as it seemed at the time, yielded unprecedented financial and organizational support, which in turn enabled historic results.  We’re not across the finish line yet, but participation in school breakfast meals is at an all-time high, and childhood hunger at a record low.

Successes at the state level point to federal opportunities.  As just one example, look at the role Maryland Meals for Achievement played increasing participation in school breakfast programs.  A national American Meals For Achievement program could provide funds to states to pay for costs and incentives not covered by school meal reimbursements. It could leverage local innovation and public-private partnerships to make school breakfast accessible to every child who needs it, and help No Kid Hungry across the finish line.

Big challenges require big solutions, which in turn require vision, courage, and imagination.. It may not seem practical in our current political climate – but the Omnibus spending bill signed into law reminds us that “politically practical” is overrated. America’s fundamental goodness has not evaporated over the course of a few short years.  Nor has America’s generosity. That they remain untapped is a failure of its leaders, not its people. If the people persist, the leaders will follow.

The post An Overlooked Law of Politics: Some Things are Just Not Possible, Until They Are appeared first on Share Our Strength.

My friend has a vision and a courage that has proven to be often ahead of, and shaping, public opinion. This is what leaders do. His text back to me perfectly captured the dilemma that so many of us face today in not wanting to blend our personal political views with our more ecumenical business dealings, but also believing these are not normal times and we might someday deeply regret not speaking out.

In this time when too many decent men and women are being defamed, too many lines of civil behavior are being crossed, my formula, inspired by my friend, is as follows:
–       Trust your conscience and don’t ever hesitate to speak to affirm one’s values

–       Political speech need not be partisan speech

–       There is no reason not to be civil even in the strongest of disagreements.

–       If your words reach even one heart or one mind, they are worth it
In times of crisis, citizens of a democracy have a responsibility to do more than just vote. We have a responsibility to engage, persuade, protect and defend on behalf of the values we hold dear.

The post My Rules of the Road on When To Speak Out Politically appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Being able to “bear it only a little at a time” resonates with me. As a father, grandfather and uncle I find myself changing the channel away from the carnage.   But this was more than “time and chance” happening. Time and chance at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were compounded by a sickness and evil whose deadly consequence was politically enabled, and can only be stopped by political courage.

Everyone who works with or on behalf of kids – whether in hunger, health, education, sports  – has a responsibility to protect the work they do and the kids they serve, by standing up for common sense gun safety laws that the majority of Americans say they support. In fact, we have an even greater responsibility than others.

One man may be responsible for the slaughter of innocents. All of us are responsible for stopping it.

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The men and women of our armed services deserve our deepest gratitude and respect. Even more, they deserve our willingness to match their selfless service with service of our own.  The show of force we ought to project is one that features our teachers, childcare providers, doctors, technology innovators, coaches, volunteers, nonprofits and public servants.

This is what will enable is to keep our economy strong and our military equipped, trained, and ready. This is what we should celebrate and aspire for the rest of the world to see.

The post Parading Our Values appeared first on Share Our Strength.

I found it to be illustrative, inspiring and instructional for us and for many colleague organizations in our sector. It’s an example of the moral imperative of re-prioritizing – and having the humility to re-examine cherished beliefs and carefully crafted strategic plans.  This is especially true when political, economic and social conditions have changed as dramatically as they have in the past year.  Success is rarely about building the plan or sticking to it so much as adapting the plan to new realities. It’s worth reading what Walker has written below, and contemplating what it might mean for our work and yours

The post The Moral Imperative of Re-Prioritizing Justice in the Age of Trump appeared first on Share Our Strength.

At a minimum every social services nonprofit should be preparing and sharing an analysis of the impact that such actions would have on those they serve.  The contemplated legislative and regulatory changes are so sweeping that they could undo the hard-earned gains of many great nonprofits and social entrepreneurs.

Although opposition to such changes can be expected and will be essential. But it will not, by itself, be enough.  Advocates have to do more than say what they are against. They must also put forth a compelling vision of what they are for – and of how investments in children and families will improve our national health, education, and strengthen our economy.

While nonprofit tax status precludes partisan activity, nothing precludes nonprofits from educating the public and policymakers alike as to how so-called “reforms” will impact those they serve.  Nonprofits that remain silent on these issues fail to meet their full responsibility.

The post With Social Safety Net At Risk, Nonprofits Have an Obligation to Speak Out Loud and Clear appeared first on Share Our Strength.

One conclusion of the report is about the opportunity to “go beyond the ‘identity politics’ versus ‘economic populism’ debate to create a genuine cross-racial, cross-class coalition that supports economic opportunity, good jobs, and decent social provisions for all people and makes specific steps to improve the conditions of people of color, many of whom continue to suffer from the legacy of historical and institutional racism.

The full report can be found here. There is an excellent summary by John Cassidy in The New Yorker here.

For decades, neither Democrats nor Republicans have had much of an appetite for talking about anything other than the middle class, which by all means needs to be expanded and strengthened. But the “cross-class coalition” referenced above goes beyond that, and if the report’s analysis gives future candidates for office the courage to really tackle inequality and social justice issues, it might point American politics toward a new and healing path.

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(1)  “Nothing we do inside the school building will stick in a child’s brain until their basic needs have been met.”  Pam Davis, principal of Highland View Elementary School in Bristol, Virginia, speaking at a Share Our Strength all-staff meeting on why breakfast after the bell is so important.

(2)  “Cooking Matters gave me my confidence back when I was at the lowest point in my life. It encouraged me to go back to work in the food industry, which in turn provided  myself and my family with so many opportunities. And it gave me a whole new outlook on healthy eating (newsflash: you don’t have to be rich to eat nutritious foods!)” – Heidi Alphen letter circulated by Leigh Ann Edwards Hall

(3)  “Little more than nine months in, we’ve surrendered any expectation of honesty.” – NYT columnist Frank Bruni on White House Press office 

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It’s not often that Congress is associated with exceptional political courage and moral clarity. That’s one reason why the evening newscasts led with the “profile in courage” moment of Arizona Senator Jeff Flake’s speech on the Senate floor yesterday.

“Reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as ‘telling it like it is,’ when it is actually just reckless, outrageous, and undignified,” Flake said on the Senate floor. “And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else: It is dangerous to a democracy. Such behavior does not project strength—because our strength comes from our values. It instead projects a corruption of the spirit, and weakness.”

The speech was widely seen as a challenge to other Republicans to speak out against the excesses of the Trump White House.  But a political analysis of Flake’s speech is too narrow a lens. It is a challenge to all of us whether in the political arena, or in business, the nonprofit sector, philanthropy, the arts, or any other field.  One lesson of history that repeats over and over again it is that silence serves the powerful, but never the public interest.

Have you spoken truth to power?

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“Well thanks for giving me so much advance notice to think about it” I teased, knowing I probably wouldn’t deliver enough political red meat to satisfy his appetite.  As a nonprofit, Share Our Strength must remain nonpartisan. And that’s enabled us to get governors of both parties to enroll more kids in school meals programs.

But, the more I thought about my friend’s comment, the more I appreciated his plea. With so many fundamental American values and progressive policies under assault, a political response is warranted. But we can “get more political” without being partisan. Such politics, with a small “p”, means at least three things:

First, we make every effort to honor the philanthropic investments of generous supporters by ensuring that the efforts they invested in get to scale. That means educating politicians and policymakers about policies, like school meals and SNAP (food stamps) in our case, to do that.

Second, those who care about kids, and issues that affect them, must be their political proxy since kids can’t vote, lobby, or make campaign contributions. From school board to White House every election matters. Urging our stakeholders to be more involved – as volunteers, donors, on social media, etc. is essential to counter special interests that too often set the political agenda.

Third, we all have a role in demanding that our politics return to at least a modicum of civility. We can’t permit our leaders to demean others, tolerate racism, lie without consequence, or distract us from the real challenges at hand.

If politics means bashing a party or elected official with whom we disagree, then don’t look to us.  But, if getting more political means finding opportunities to engage people in their community, to help them to roll up their sleeves and share their strength, then yes we are getting more political. If getting more political means saying often and out loud that racism is wrong, that punishing the poor punishes all of us, that betraying the vulnerable and voiceless betrays those who fight to preserve our values of opportunity and equality, then yes, we are getting more political.

In so doing we can not only end childhood hunger, we can prevent the next generation of kids from becoming hungry in the first place, and  ensure we have the strong kids needed for a strong America.

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I want to piggyback this brief note onto Chuck’s email yesterday (about our $50,000 grant to the Houston Food Bank in the wake of Hurricane Harvey’s devastation)  because I am so proud he and his team acted quickly in response to the need in Houston and because it was not only the right thing to do but also represents an often overlooked dimension of strategy.

An event like Hurricane Harvey often poses a dilemma about whether we can respond without distracting or diverting ourselves from our strategy.  But that can be a false choice and a misunderstanding of where strategy’s power lies. Strategy should allocate and align an organization’s resources against its top priorities – in our case, our No Kid Hungry campaign.  But strategy should also reflect and reinforce the values of an organization and its team. Those two definitions can be at tension if you let them be, but for great organizations strategy is both. It always will be for us, and that’s why we responded and will continue to respond to the unfolding situation in Texas and Louisiana.

Effective strategy can’t be formulaic. It must adapt to changing circumstances while remaining on course toward goal. And it must reflect and express the values of those implementing it – values of compassion, community and generosity.   So it is incumbent on each of us to not only stay focused on our priorities but to look up from what we are doing and connect it to what is going on in the world.

We’ve had an incredibly positive response to our grant to the Houston Food Bank from some of our most valued stakeholders.  And it comes shortly after grants we made to Save The Children and others to save lives in Syria and Somalia and deliver school meals in Haiti.  Such grants are only a small fraction of our budget, but a large part of the values we embody.  That makes them strategic too.

Billy

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When I went to Charlottesville for Share Our Strength at the end of April, having lunch outdoors on the pedestrian mall dotted with bookstores, restaurants and shops, I couldn’t help but think how civilized and gentle a community it was. It will be again someday soon but in the near term our memory of it will be marred by the ugliness we witnessed Saturday.

Our work at Share Our Strength focuses on ensuring that kids grow up healthy, strong and ready and able to contribute to society.  Implicit in that is that the society they will be joining is worth getting them ready for in the first place. When racism, bigotry, hate and discrimination encroach on that society, the focus of our efforts must expand to address it. Otherwise, really, what’s the point?

It doesn’t erode our commitment to nonpartisanship and bipartisanship to assert that the President’s failure to condemn racism for what it is, is a deeply disappointing affront to every American who loves our country and the values it represents. Thankfully many Republican and Democratic leaders were united yesterday in their explicit denunciation of the white supremacists who converged on Charlottesville and who in no way represent the good people who live there.

In circumstances like these, the question is always “what can I do?” My friend Jonathan Greenblatt, who led the Social Innovation Fund in the Obama White House and is now CEO of the Anti-Defamation League has made a number of suggestions over the past 24 hours about what government officials should do, but has also written: “We should not wait for government: businesses and nonprofits, CEO’s, clergy and citizens.  It’s up to all of us to take a stand against hate. You can tweet, march, donate, mobilize, vote. Action can take many forms,. It isn’t bounded by politics. Only limit is your creativity. Ultimately this is not about political resistance. It’s about moral renewal and recommitting to the American idea.” You can follow him at @JGreenblattADL

My only advice for now: don’t be silent.

Billy

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Granted that feeding hungry kids is more popular and less complicated than tackling health care. But it’s still dependent on legislation, government funding, and the commitment of state and local officials to executive efficiently and effectively.  For the past 10 years we have won the support of Democrats and Republicans alike making arguments that have bipartisan appeal:

–          That childhood hunger is a solvable problem

–          That children are the most vulnerable and least responsible for the situation they are in

–          That the return on investing in children pays dividends and saves taxpayers money in the long run.

Most important of all, we have resisted the temptation to attack those with whom we disagree. And the battles we’ve fought have been for the purpose of feeding kids, not for the purpose of strengthening our own political prospects.

As I said, that can sound naïve in today’s political culture. But the results speak for themselves: 3 million kids added to the school breakfast program, a majority of eligible kids participating in school meals rather than a minority, and childhood hunger at its lowest level in more than a decade.

It’s a sad commentary that in the health care debate, bipartisanship is considered only as a last resort. But at this point there is no other option.  And as we’ve seen in the effort to achieve No Kid Hungry, that can a be a good thing.

The post When All Else Fails, Give Bipartisanship A Try appeared first on Share Our Strength.

The paragraph is worth recalling because of how courageously different it is from virtually any other  political leader who has followed. Four months before his Inauguration Day call to “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, candidate Kennedy foreshadowed that message with this passage:  “The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises–it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook–it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.”

Most political consultants working today, Democrat or Republican, would consider that heresy bordering on political malpractice. Campaign speeches promise tax cuts, entitlement programs, small business incentives, more benefits for the middle class.  “The promise of more sacrifice.”?  Have you ever heard such a thing?

More than half a century later, it takes a nearly cosmic leap of imagination to envision such sentiment in our political culture. But this belief in the capacity of our neighbors and fellow citizens to give of themselves remains alive in the DNA of Share Our Strength and goes to the heart of what’s made us successful – challenging people to share their strength, and as we’ve seen most recently via Chefs Cycle, the greater the challenge the better.

Deep down most of us know that what Kennedy said was right and necessary then, and now. There are no easy answers. No solutions that can succeed without more from us. Whatever you believe about the size and role of government, citizen engagement, in a democracy like ours, is essential to make it work.

You can read JFK’s words at the link above, or watch and listen here. They need no further interpretation from me. But I do have an accompanying plea: that you incorporate the spirit of asking more of yourself, each other, and all to whom we reach out, of setting the bar higher, into all that we do.

The post “The promise of more sacrifice instead of more security” – remembering a more inspiring politics appeared first on Share Our Strength.

For example, Jared Bernstein, who works with our board member Bob Greenstein at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities writes in the Washington Post: “please don’t lose sight of what’s going on here: a massive transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars that are now being used to help vulnerable families and moderate-income households to the wealthiest households. The Senate bill solves the problem that the poor in America have too much, and the rich have too little. In fact, it solves that problem even better than the House did.

But the most important lens for our purposes is the impact on children. For a better understanding of that, take a look at this statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics.   “The bill fails children by dismantling the Medicaid program, capping its funding, ending its expansion and allowing its benefits to be scaled back. The bill fails all children by leaving more families uninsured, or without insurance they can afford or that meets their basic needs. This bill fails children living in or near poverty, children in foster care and children with complex health care needs whose parents have private insurance – all of these children depend on Medicaid, and if this bill passes, Medicaid will no longer be there for them.”

It’s hard to believe that both parties put party loyalty so far ahead of what’s best for kids – that out of 100 Senators there aren’t even five or ten who could cross the aisle to work with each other on a less draconian, more compassionate alternative.  I hope that when we succeed in ending childhood hunger, we are in a position to teach them what bipartisanship can do.

The post When Both Parties Put Party Loyalty Ahead of What’s Best For Kids appeared first on Share Our Strength.

There’s been much commentary over the past 24 hours about political adversaries coming together in sorrow and in unity – from the well of the House chamber to the hallways of the Medstar Washington Hospital Center. An aspect of that is undeniably heartwarming and encouraging.  But it’s tethered to a deeper sadness that this is the best we can do – that this is what it takes to remind a diverse group of basically good human beings to act human.  Still, after years of relentless political warfare, even the briefest of respites is welcome.  Especially if it creates some muscle memory so that in the days ahead there’s a reflex to put caring ahead of accusing, kindness ahead of counting votes.

By late in the evening some of the usual cable news combatants were already retreating to their corners, tentatively testing whether the appetite had returned for using the day’s events to taint their adversaries. But it was only some – and that’s progress.

The post From a Disturbed and Disturbing Nation’s Capital appeared first on Share Our Strength.

At its core, this legislation would make it harder and more expensive for low-income families to get the care they need. Our No Kid Hungry work focuses on ensuring that children get the food they need to grow up strong; the projected impact of the House action profoundly undermines this work. Feedings kids improves their health and educational potential, but cutting their access to treatment for ailments like asthma, ear infections, obesity, dental needs or diabetes is like putting gas in a car but denying access to the mechanics and garages necessary to keep it running.

We also know that millions of parents in this nation are struggling financially, forced to make unthinkable tradeoffs each month between medicine or rent, paying the electricity bill or buying enough groceries. Making it harder for these families to afford health care, either preventative or in case of serious illnesses, will put more families in jeopardy, making them sicker, hungrier, and less secure.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We will fight against policies that hurt children and support policies that give them a more level playing field, making sure they get the basic food, care and skills they desperately need. These are our values, and Congress must reject this legislation.

Worth reading: two opinion pieces with analysis of the impact of last week’s effort to end the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.  The first by our longtime friend and ally Dr. Irwin Redliner, CEO of the Children’s Health Fund focuses on the impact on children whose health care coverage is threatened by the House action.

The second by our board colleague Bob Greenstein asserts “I have been in Washington, D.C. for 45 years.  But I have never seen members of Congress vote to so deeply hurt so many of their own constituents.  If enacted, this bill will stand as the biggest assault on ordinary Americans — and the largest Robin-Hood-in-reverse transfer of income up the income scale, from low- and middle-income families to those at the top — in our country’s modern history.

The post Why The American Health Care Act Would Be Devastating for Children appeared first on Share Our Strength.

The Academy said: “Federal authorities must exercise caution to ensure that the emotional and physical stress children experience as they seek refuge in the United States is not exacerbated by the additional trauma of being separated from their siblings, parents or other relatives and caregivers. Proposals to separate children from their families as a tool of law enforcement to deter immigration are harsh and counterproductive.  We urge policymakers to always be mindful that these are vulnerable, scared children.”

It’s easy to imagine pediatricians staying focused on more immediate issues like health care, Medicaid, or even childhood hunger and nutrition. But fortunately they also see the connection between their work and the reckless immigration policy changes now underway.  Even though they are not an immigration advocacy organization per se, the American Academy of Pediatrics is willing to stick out their necks when too few others have.

For every service and advocacy nonprofit whose mission is to serve the underserved and the most vulnerable and voiceless, whether or not their organization focuses specifically on immigration, this is a great example of how to speak up and speak out in ways most relevant to the times in which we find ourselves. It would be even better if such organizations committed to expanding programming toward those being persecuted, and especially in “sanctuary cities” that are at risk of losing government funding as the price for their political and moral courage.

Most important of all is a commitment to backing up words with actions.  Blog posts and Facebook messages are not enough. The forces behind this inexcusable cruelty expect our complaints, but also expect we will soon return to business as usual. The most important thing of all to resist is our own complacency and unintended complicity.

The post Resisting Our Own Complacency and Complicity appeared first on Share Our Strength.

The two stories below speak of inexcusable cruelty in the way our nation’s immigration and deportation policies are now being executed.  Our government’s actions fly in the face of family values, safeguarding children, not to mention just and moral behavior.

References:

CBS News
Laist 

The post Inexcusable Cruelty appeared first on Share Our Strength.

With the Secretary of Agriculture being one of the last remaining cabinet positions for President-Elect Trump to fill, one can only hope that a similar conversation is taking place.  But amid all of the talk about dealmakers, and conflicts of interest, and the importance of who “looks the part”, it’s a bit hard to imagine.

Not much has been heard about vulnerable children from the parade of office seekers coming and going from Trump Tower and Mar-A-Lago.  That’s a shame because America’s children are hurting with nearly 20% of them living below the poverty line. When our kids are compromised in terms of their nutrition, health and educational achievement, our economic competitiveness and national security are compromised as well.

President Obama set the bar high with his appointments. Secretary Vilsack and the team he assembled remained faithful to the charge of protecting the most vulnerable. In my 30 years in Washington, Tom Vilsack strikes me as a rare public servant who combines compassion with competence, and empathy with effective executive leadership.  Child poverty rates improved during his tenure and the percentage of children living in households with the kinds of very low food security that means missed meals, fell to one of the lowest levels recorded.

But there is still a long way to go. We can only hope that someone senior in the new Administration will have a story similar to Secretary Vilsack’s about a new president urging him to put children’s interests ahead of the special interests.  If not, the rest of us must.

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