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.

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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.

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Dorothy spoke about the No Kid Hungry campaign from her perspective as a mom of five kids and her work reaching out to other First Spouses on our behalf. She shared some of the incredible progress our team has made in Virginia, especially around school breakfast where we’ve added more than 42,000 kids and moved participation from 53% to 61%.

Terry also spoke and 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.  That argument takes our elevator speech one floor higher than the buttons we usually push – not just stopping at the moral case for feeding kids or even the educational arguments, but reaching the even larger audience open to the economic rationale for ending childhood hunger. It connects us more squarely to the larger national conversation and many of the likely themes of the coming 2020 campaigns.

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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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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.”

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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.

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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.

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Elise, whose cooking is inspired by her grandmother Winnie, is a graduate of Gallaudet University, cooked at our DC No Kid Hungry dinner, and had lobbied on Capitol Hill for us. Leslie, who is now executive director of Georgetown University’s Global Social Enterprise Institute discusses her research on common denominators driving recent successful social movements. “Successful movements turn grassroots gold. They invest in and nurture local leaders… It’s the combination of grassroots and organizations that put all the pieces together so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” and cites Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign as an example.

You can listen at Add Passion and Stir or on iTunes. Enjoy!

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That hardship has reasons. Vast distances create isolation that social services struggle to reach and public transportation can’t always overcome. Montana is our fourth largest state geographically, but one of the least populated. The painful history of our government dealings with Native Americans contributes to a living legacy of discrimination and racism.  The reservations in Montana are like too many reservations across the U.S.: staggeringly high rates of unemployment, poverty, infant mortality, alcoholism, and suicide.

One after-school counselor told us: “hunger breaks you down as a person. It breaks you down physically and mentally. You lose your identity. Who are you? I am hungry. That’s my identity.” In Kalispell he noticed a young student not eating her apple and graham cracker snack.. “She was saving it for dinner, and the hardest part of that for me was that she accepted that as normal. It’s not normal of course, but it’s her normal.  That’s not okay. We have to fight for these students and not accept that as normal.”

Elsewhere on the reservation, Lindsey O’Neil runs the top performing WIC clinic in the state, serving more than 400 of 500 eligible moms and their babies. “What was the spark that got you into this work?” I asked. “Well I became a single teen mom when I was still in school.  And I was on WIC. I learned that it didn’t mean my life had come to an end. And so I want to help others understand the same thing. I have a passion for helping all of the moms here but especially the young ones.”

Some of the hardship is tempered by No Kid Hungry strategies that have paid off. During lunch Governor Steve Bullock and First Lady Lisa Bullock shared that we’ve increased participation in school breakfast from 46% of eligible kids to 59%. We have 5200 kids left to go.  Food insecurity has decreased from 20.1% to 17%.

Near day’s end, Bill Novelli, formerly CEO of AARP and now a professor at Georgetown and summer resident of Missoula asserted that the issues we’d seen “are due to socio-economic inequality, a national problem that threatens our democracy. So we’ve got to approach these from the bottom up as you are, but also from the top down.” Governor Bullock emphasized the need for systemic policy change and the civic engagement it demands: “If millennials voted at the same percentage as those 55 and over, millennials would decide every election.”  With November’s mid-term elections 100 days away, it was a compelling reminder that regardless of the issue – hunger, poverty, health care, opioid addiction, etc. – one of the most important things we can do is urge fellow Americans to register and turn out to vote.

The partners and supporters on our journey came away committed to extending the reach of our No Kid Hungry campaign.  Behind every statistic there’s a child just like the children we’d seen and talked with. This what bearing witness is about. Seeing what’s not otherwise easily seen, hearing perspectives diverse and different from one’s own.  And returning to our work not always with new answers but with renewed commitment to finding them.

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Late last week, Washington state Governor Jay Inslee signed a bill to expand breakfast that we and our partners have been working on for three years. Under this new law, as many as 30,000 students in high-need schools will now have the chance to get breakfast as part of the school day. Washington is the 7th state in the nation to pass such a law.

Our next big opportunity is in New York state. Earlier this week, we took a group of chefs and culinary professionals to Albany to ask legislators to support Governor Andrew Cuomo’s breakfast budget proposal that would bring more kids breakfast who need it. If enacted, the proposal will help up to 100,000 kids get breakfast. We and our local partners are optimistic that the proposal will go through.
Beyond New York, a similar bill is moving in Massachusetts, championed by Share Our Strength and a coalition of local partners.

Momentum is growing from coast to coast. And voices like yours make a difference with legislators. If you’d like to get more involved in our efforts in Albany, Massachusetts or elsewhere, let me know and I’ll connect you to our team.

Your support is fueling the success of our No Kid Hungry campaign. Thanks for making this work possible.

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Laura is the executive director of food service for Boston Public School and previously worked with us on breakfast after the bell in the L.A. Unified School District where she served for 10 years. Jill created the Shah Family Foundation with her husband after he co-founded and took public Wayfair, the home furnishing on-line retailer.  Share Our Strength Boston chefs Andy Husbands and Ken Oringer shared their strength by helping to design and supply the school kitchens.  Their story is a great example of everyone having the capacity to share their strength and make a difference on behalf of kids.

Listen to Add Passion and Stir on iTunes

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Statewide advocacy wins like this are at the core of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign strategy. Theycontinue to reinforce that concrete, dramatic and measurable progress is possible, even in the context of a national political environment characterized by division and dysfunction.

Another leader whose accomplishments have been extraordinary is Virginia First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe. This recent Washington Post retrospective on her work includes her efforts on childhood hunger.

We look forward to being back in touch after the first of the year to report on year-end giving. Have a great holiday weekend and New Year.  Thanks as always for your support and friendship, and for all it makes possible.

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Childhood hunger is down by one-third since we began the No Kid Hungry campaign – more kids are getting the school meals they need than ever before – and we are well on our way to achieving our ambitious goal. At a time when Americans are desperate for evidence that our problems can be solved, we have forged the bipartisan public-private partnerships to solve this one. But still, too many kids in this country are struggling with hunger. I’m so grateful that we can count on you to help get us across the finish line.

I hope you will take some joy this holiday season, as I do, from the words of 4th grade teacher Angela Homan who said of our signature program: “Breakfast After the Bell changed the environment of my classroom. My students begin their days ready to learn which is a dream come true for me.”  Or of single mom Heidi Alphen who said of our nutrition education efforts: “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. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart for making a difference in my life.”

Wishing you and your family all the best. Thanks again and have a happy and healthy holiday.

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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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One of the most important things Share Our Strength is doing, in addition to relieving the terrible hardship suffered by hungry kids, is demonstrating, irrefutably, that improvement is actually possible.  Childhood hunger has been reduced by at least 30% since we began the No Kid Hungry campaign.  It is at its lowest level in many years.  Adding more than 3 million kids to school breakfast, high SNAP participation, low unemployment, and economic growth have all played a role.

Last week the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities led by our board member Bob Greenstein reported that child poverty, now at 15.6 percent, is at a record low, half of what it was in 1967. And last month USDA reported that 17.5% of children (1 in 6) live in food insecure households, but only 8.8% of kids (less than 1 in 10) live in a household with at least one food insecure child.

That the American people are “desperate for a sense that improvement is actually possible” underscores the need to emphatically embrace and promote the anti-hunger community’s success.  Organizations like ours often experience a “success paradox” feeling tension between dramatizing the severity of the problem, and showing progress that tells stakeholders the severity has been diminished and they are getting a great return on their investment.  However that is a false choice akin to a winning NFL football team feeling they have to keep the score close or the fans will stop coming to cheer. Just the opposite is the case. Fans cheer victory. Investors invest in success. Besides, the truth is that even though there has been great progress, significant and compelling need remains.

At a time when our nation, battered by tragedy, divided politically, is desperate for good news, we have some: childhood hunger and child poverty rates are dropping, lives are being saved and changed.  And having proven that we can feed kids in record numbers, we earn the opportunity and responsibility to help prevent the next generation from being hungry in the first place.

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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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I took the photo Saturday night in the kitchen of one of our favorite restaurants called Earth at Hidden Pond in Kennebunkport, Maine.  Chef Justin Walker will be riding Chefs Cycle this year for the third time. He opened his restaurant Saturday, a few weeks before the season begins, for this special event to raise money for his ride.  It was completely sold out and earlier in the day we saw his wife Danielle in town driving a pick-up truck around town picking up extra chairs so they could squeeze in a few more guests.

“I spend so much time on my bike because I know it is helping to feed more kids,” Justin told the guests. Maine’s long frigid winters mean a short training season for the May 16-18 ride in California. So Justin keeps two bikes and a trainer in the kitchen on which he can mount his bike while supervising his team and sometimes even prepping food himself. A Chef Cycle rider’s gotta do what a Chefs Cycle rider’s gotta do.

Justin will be one of nearly 250 chefs riding this May in Santa Rosa.  Next year there will no doubt be closer to 400 riders.  Already Chefs Cycle has attracted thousands of new first-time donors.  Bringing a larger audience to our work is one of our key strategic imperatives. It’s the way movements grow, pictures change, and social progress advances.  Not always as quickly as we’d like, but as unmistakably as a kitchen that once contained pots, pans, sinks, trays and now houses a couple of world class road bikes.

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433,000 more children were getting school breakfast last year than the year before, increasing the national average from 44% in 2006 to 56% in 2015-16, a clear majority of eligible kids getting the food they need to succeed.

433,000 kids, in your neighborhood and mine who are getting off to a better start each day. 433,000 kids making America stronger and more competitive thanks to government policies that enjoy bipartisan support and are both compassionate and pragmatic.

The progress described above did not come easily. Nor was it due to any one organization. Just the opposite.  Every time the larger anti-hunger community encountered an obstacle to kids getting breakfast, we worked together to knock it down. Thanks for the hard work and support that enabled our team to play such a meaningful role.

Poverty and food insecurity are still way too high in America. But by virtually every measure childhood hunger is decreasing. Childhood hunger is a solvable problem and the new breakfast scorecard is evidence that public-private partnerships are solving it.

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