Now a professor of pediatric medicine at George Washington University, Dr. Kofi Essel uses the analogy of a deadly snake to explain the toxic stress of food insecurity to his students.

He asked his students to imagine the shock of seeing that snake outside of your home, a healthy fear response, but then he described repeatedly seeing the snake and being unable to make it go away.

The healthy and self-preserving fear of the snake becomes permanent and starts wearing on you.

“We all experience stressors,” he explained. “But when it’s unrelenting, it overwhelms the system; it becomes a toxic stress. Food insecurity is a toxic stress that permanently rewires the brains of children.”

The latest installment of the Food Justice Series held hosted by Share Our Strength —the organization behind the No Kid Hungry campaign and Food & Society at the Aspen Institute — focused on the devastating impacts of food insecurity and mental health.

Doctor Cindy Leung, nutrition epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, shared that this conversation was long overdue, while she described some of the many consequences food insecurity can have on kids.

The non-exhaustive list included, lower psycho-social function, lower cognitive development, hyperactivity, aggression and anxiety and difficulty getting along with peers.

Susana Martinez witnesses all of these consequences in her role as chief strategy officer and national director at the Latin American Youth Center in Washington, D.C. Her organization offers comprehensive services to immigrants and other vulnerable families. 

“Food insecurity,” Martinez shared, “is something that will take a little bit of time to expose. The stigma around food insecurity reveals itself in the fact that families don’t want to disclose.”

Martinez shared stories of kids who rejected food because they were embarrassed to say they were hungry and parents who would call feeling offended whenever their kids received free food. She emphasized the importance of looking for behavioral signs in kids and building relationships to meet and understand their needs.

Dr. Essel has encountered the same experience with his patients. He expressed the importance of creating environments in which the stigma doesn’t exist.

“Kids just want to be accepted,” he shared. “One thing we did in D.C. was to offer school breakfast across the board. The idea of allowing all kids to access healthy meals reduces stigma.”

Dr. Leung, Martinez and Dr. Essel wrapped up the conversation discussing practical solutions like the universal breakfast in Washington, DC.

Martinez focused on additional strategies to reduce stigma, addressing food access and changing the conversation around mental health, normalizing the fact that these challenges can affect anybody. She said understanding the cultural background of families was essential to achieving this.

Dr. Essel focused on solutions at the federal level.

“The most important policy by far is SNAP,” he shared, explaining that – according to a USDA report – 90% of families in the U.S. don’t have enough funds to purchase food for their families all month.

The speakers agreed that the pandemic magnified already underlying inequalities that are the root cause of food insecurity and its devastating effects on the mental health of kids.

“The first thing we can do is acknowledge that food insecurity has structural drivers in our communities, like poverty, racism and unequal food distribution,” Leung explained. “Addressing how we can make food more equitable is a good starting point, recognizing that food insecurity correlates with other insecurities.”

Stay tuned for more Conversations on Food Justice. Please email foodjustice@strength.org to share any feedback and ideas of what topics you would like to see.

The post Food Insecurity and Mental Health: The Silent and Devastating Impacts appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Watch recording of conversation here.

The third installment of the Conversations on Food Justice Series – a collaboration between Share Our Strength and Food & Society at the Aspen Institute – focused on the devastating effect of structural racism on the health of the Black community.

Dr. J. Nadine Gracia, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Trust for America’s Health, moderated the conversation between Chef Tamearra Dyson, owner of Souley Vegan LLC, and Dr. Frederick Douglass Opie, professor of history and foodways at Babson College.

Here are three major takeaways from the insightful and stirring event:

We Need to Understand Our History

Both speakers looked at history for lessons and inspiration. 

Dr. Opie explained how lack of access to healthy food had been used as a tool of oppression against the Black community throughout history. 

“It is interesting to think that one of the most offensive things someone could do to you is deny you a place at the table,” he said. 

In particular, he called out how slaves had to worry constantly about accessing food, while slavery in the Americas largely existed because of the demand for sugar. Still today, he said, the sugar industry disproportionately targets Black individuals in their marketing, and diabetes runs rampant in communities of color.

Dr. Opie and Dyson also focused on how food had been an essential tool for the Black community to resist oppression. They pointed out the ingenuity of slaves to grow their own food, the restaurant sit-ins during segregation and the Black Panther Movement creating the model for the National Breakfast Program.

Dyson drew on personal experiences to highlight the impact of structural racism in her health and how she used food as a tool of empowerment. 

Her mom would work hard to bring healthy food to the table, but sometimes there was not enough. As a young girl, Dyson would sneak into the kitchen and eat unhealthy food when she felt stressed out about the economic challenges they faced, which were tied to systemic racism. 

After working in the medical field and seeing the effects of unhealthy diets in her community, Dyson took a leap of faith to open a vegan restaurant. She started with no savings or experience, and today she shares healthy affordable and traditionally-rooted food with her community. 

Human Connection Should Become a Priority

Similar to Dyson’s experience as a young child, the speakers highlighted the vicious cycle of economic hardship, stress and health issues.

“I don’t think it’s any revolutionary information to say that, when people are stressed out, they often cope by drinking. They cope by eating,” Dr. Opie said. 

Still, he highlighted how most people of color live in food apartheid, communities with no supermarkets or reliable public transportation to reach them.

Both speakers agreed communities needed to come together to take care of each other. Dr. Opie proposed using the efficient canvassing system — where people go door to door promoting a particular candidate — to offer help to the community.

“We need to check in to make sure our neighbors are okay,” Dyson added.

Education is Essential to Fight Structural Racism

Dyson explained how Black individuals often feel they are undeserving without understanding the systems that maintain them oppressed and the tools that can help them.

“We lack information, therefore we lack access to the solutions,” she said. “You don’t have to be a victim of your circumstance”

Similarly, Dr. Opie made calls for the importance of learning history and becoming food literate to understand how food affects us.

Moderator Dr.Gracia closed the conversation asking participants what made them hopeful. 

The three speakers, who all mentor young students, answered they saw hope in the curiosity and sense of community of new generations. For them, education was the key to uprooting systemic racism.

“What gives me hope is what I see as the growing recognition and the growing sense of ownership that we all have a role to play in creating a more equitable and just society. And that it certainly relates to hunger and food insecurity,” Dr. Opie concluded. 

Stay tuned for more Conversations on Food Justice. Please email foodjustice@strength.org to share any feedback and ideas of what topics you would like to see.

Click here to watch our previous installment in the series, 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.

The post Racism, Hunger and Health 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.

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.

The post Taking Our Elevator Speech One Floor Higher appeared first on Share Our Strength.

– Ron Shaich, founder of Au Bon Pain and Panera Bread

Based on business metrics alone, no one has been more successful in the food world than Ron Shaich, who built Panera to be the highest performing restaurant stock in the nation.  But the metric Ron pays the most attention to is personal: “Am I doing work that I respect?”   In this new episode of Add Passion and Stir, he is in conversation with Food Corps founder and CEO Curt Ellis who explains why “Food is the place where social justice and racial justice meet environmental sustainability and public health.”

We talk business, politics, schools, culture, health, the environment and more at our website and on iTunes. Thanks for listening and sharing.

The post Can the Secret Sauce That Built a $6 Billion Business Save Our Politics? 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.

-Rep. Jim McGovern

On our new and timely episode of Add Passion and Stir, Congressman Jim McGovern offers an impassioned defense of the food and nutrition programs at the heart of our No Kid Hungry strategy, and speculates about what might change should Democrats re-take the House and should be become chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee.  He is joined by Equinox chef Todd Gray who has been part of Share Our Strength since our earliest days.   This episode is a great one to share with our anti-hunger partners across the country.  Listen in at our website or on iTunes.

The post A Congressman Speaks Out Against Our Government’s Cruelty Toward’s Kids 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.

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.

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.

The post The Poverty and the Promise in Our Rural Communities and Tribal Lands appeared first on Share Our Strength.

I can relate to all three, especially the third, but none fully satisfy.  I want to know not only what people say, but also what they are going to do. Make no mistake: silence is as unacceptable now as it has been on other occasions this past year. But words alone are not sufficient.

They must be matched with concrete commitments to more effectively serve, represent, and be the voice of those who are the targets of not only racism but of the escalating assault on poor people of all backgrounds.  We saw this most recently through the proposal to allow states to strip the poor of Medicaid if they are not working, notwithstanding studies showing those on Medicaid are better able to get jobs.  We will see it again in battles over SNAP and other forms of assistance to low income Americans

At Share Our Strength and Community Wealth Partners, we are among the few in the privileged position to not only speak but also act.  Our plan has always been to organize, mobilize, advocate, reform, build, strengthen, motivate, and enlist and enroll those in need in programs that work. And to help those who serve them to do so more effectively. That doesn’t change. But the urgency to strengthen every partnership, whether with donor or local organization or client, increases with the knowledge that we will not only be ending hunger, but standing up for Dr. King’s vision of “the beloved community” that changes not only our laws but our souls.

The post Words, Deeds, and the “Beloved Community” on MLK Day 2018 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.

The post New Report Points American Politics Toward a New and Healing Path appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Hello,
I wanted to reach out to thank you for your incredible program. A little more than 2 years ago I was living in a shelter with my young son, who is now 3. I have always loved to cook, but at that time in my life there were so many unknowns. I was broken and depressed. I was so fearful of my future that I couldn’t take any joy in my day to day interests. And now, I had a baby to care for and nourish.

Then, the program I was living in brought in a Cooking Matters class for all the residents. Every week, we would talk about food and nutrition, shopping and budgeting, and the challenges faced by low income mothers to properly feed their families. Then, we would cook. Together. And eat, together. And laugh, together. What an incredible difference this program made in my life! I was building relationships with other women around me. I was sharing my passion for good food and cooking. At times I was even able to teach my peers from my own knowledge. I was able to find my passion again, and use it as a way to rebuild positive quality time with my family.

Fast forward to two years later. My family and I have a wonderful home filled with love and laughter, and of course, home cooking. Not only have I built a better life for myself, my son, and his father (my fiance); but, through my own healing and rebuilding my life, I was able to provide a home for my two teenaged step children when their mother was no longer able to care for them.

How could I break the ice, and make them comfortable in my home? I cooked. I cooked family dinners. I took the kids to the grocery store with me. We ate together. I baked treats and comfort food. I cooked favorite dinners, and new foods that they hadn’t tried before. I got them involved. I watched what they chose for snacks, and gradually added healthier options to the cabinets that would appeal to them.

And amazing things started to happen. My stepson, 17 at the time, would sit in the kitchen with me, and we would talk. Sometimes he would help, more often he wouldn’t. But I was giving him an outlet to talk, just like I had when I attended Cooking Matters class. Then my stepdaughter, 19 at the time, who lost her sight at the age of 6, started asking about cooking. We started talking about technique and how-to’s. We brainstormed a lot of ways that she could cook and what she could make. This was huge for me- because she is blind, she is very limited to what she can grab in the kitchen if no one is there to help.

And lastly, there’s my littlest boy. I am certain that every mother struggles with getting their toddler to try new foods. I relied hard on the advice of the instructors from Cooking Matters. My son always comes to the market with me. We spend A LOT of time in the produce aisle, talking about colors and shapes, and choosing what to buy that week.

My purpose in writing this today is to proudly declare that yes, cooking matters! I’m certain that I would still be eating dinner every night whether I had taken a Cooking Matters course or not. But through this course, I learned so much more than just “how to..” 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!)

So thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for this program, for the wonderful instructors, the fun cookbook, the exciting classes. Thank you for making a difference in my life.

Heidi Alphen

The post “Yes, Cooking matters!” appeared first on Share Our Strength.

Founders Sam Goldstein, age 24 and Sarah Rosencranz, 25 gave us a tour while half a dozen Harvard students scrubbed bathrooms, cleared breakfast tables, and loaded a mountain of dirty laundry – bed sheets and towels – into 3 of the 4 working machines.  Some volunteer as much as 20 hours a week on top of a full course schedule.

About 36% of the guests have previously been in the foster system. 32% have spent a night in jail.  Approximately 30% are LGTBQ who left home once they came out to their parents which today happens at a younger age than before. “Our goal is to help them break the cycle so they don’t become chronically, permanently homeless” says Sarah who explains that 89% of their guests say that they have a concrete plan out of homelessness after their stay at Y2Y. Click here for more information.

From there we went to record a podcast with chef Ming Tsai and Dr. Debbie Frank from the Grow Clinic at the Boston Medical Center. Dr Frank’s patients are mostly under two years of age. She says “public policy is written on the bodies of the babies I see … Some come in with rickets, from lack of vitamin D, which causes a bending and bowing of their legs.”   But not everything lends itself to an “eyeball diagnosis” Dr Frank tells us.  She described an 8 month old whose mother didn’t understand why he was failing to thrive. She’s been feeding him a cornmeal and sugar water mush and he wasn’t complaining but was getting sicker. “They were saving on food costs because they anticipated their landlord evicting them soon – not for failure to pay rent, but because of the need to make space for one of the landlord’s family members.”

Our morning and afternoon conversations had a common thread: the young – from college students to infants and toddlers –  are vulnerable in unique ways most don’t appreciate, and fail to adequately serve.  That’s why children have been our focus at Share Our Strength and why we need to be especially vigilant in the days ahead as those we serve could be impacted by potential changes to Medicaid, SNAP, and other policy shifts.

(Also, because national security advisors are in the news this week, it’s worth noting that former President Bill Clinton’s national security advisor Anthony Lake who is now the Executive Director of UNICEF,  wrote an op-ed called Dark Days For Children about the tremendous suffering on the global scale that made 2016  “one of the worst years for children since World War II.”   He  underscores the need “to harness innovation to expand our capacity to reach children who are cut off from assistance in besieged areas or communities.”)

The post Young and younger, special needs and our special focus appeared first on Share Our Strength.