The First White House Convening on Childhood Hunger

             It took climbing over a few plow-packed snow banks, and clearing a number of Secret Service checkpoints to get to the White House conference on childhood hunger at the Old Executive Office Building last week. But folks from all around the country managed to do so because it was the first such conference of its kind with the White House putting some weight behind a commitment made almost 8 years ago by candidate Obama to making ending childhood hunger a priority.

            Such a White House convening on childhood hunger is a milestone for this Administration and for our No Kid Hungry campaign.  The White House announced two ambitious efforts to significantly increase school meal participation and summer feeding.  The President’s chief-of-staff Denis McDonough came to open the event, as a way of signifying the importance that POTUS attached to it.  In his introduction of USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, he mentioned the hardships that Vilsack had overcome, which is a subject Vilsack returned to at the very end of the speech.

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, who oversees all of the child nutrition programs, and is now President Obama’s longest serving cabinet member offered some personal context. He explained that he’d grown up the son of a mom who struggled with alcohol and prescription drug addiction. There were times where I was taking care of her and didn’t have a childhood.  Vilsack said that one of the reasons he’d stayed in the job was “to make sure every kid in America has a childhood, knowing it’s pretty tough to have a childhood if you are hungry.”  He then recalled his initial job interview with President-elect Obama.

Rep. Jim McGovern was the one Member of Congress in attendance. He’s been relentlessly pushing for a White House Conference since before Obama became president.  But this convening, lacking the personal participation of the President, didn’t quite qualify. McGovern smiled and said: “It’s a first step”

Billy

Encouraging news to start the new year: bipartisan ship prevails with National Commission on Hunger

            The National Commission on Hunger created by Congress issued its report this morning and although five of us were appointed by the Democratic leadership of Congress, and five by the Republican leadership, we managed to be unanimous in support of nearly 20 recommendations to help end hunger in the United States.  Such bipartisanship is rare in Washington today. But we wanted to set an example of how people with very different views and political backgrounds could – with time, patience, and good will – come together on behalf of those most vulnerable and voiceless.  One of my Commission colleagues, Jeremy Everett, and I issued a statement that gives more details as to what we achieved @ https://medium.com/@billshore/joint-statement-on-the-new-national-commission-on-hunger-report-29d523292db0#.o227pqgit  And it includes a link to the report itself.  Let’s hope it’s an omen for the year ahead!

 

Language of leadership for the new year

             Welcome back and best wishes for the New Year. I hope you had a wonderful respite with friends and family, made even sweeter by the satisfaction of knowing that last year your support of Share Our Strength made the lives of millions of children better than they were before.

 In this time of ritual, renewal, resolutions, and all kinds of advice, it’s hard to say it better than Pope Francis did in a new year’s message that specifically called out the issue of hunger. The Pope spoke of witnessing “men, women and children fleeing war, hunger and persecution.” He called on people to “overcome the indifference which blocks solidarity, and to leave behind the false neutrality which prevents sharing".

            I tend to follow political leaders more closely that religious leaders.  But I find myself quoting the Pope more often than others because he is one of the few world leaders who not only cares about what we care about, but also uses language we use, talking about hunger, the voiceless, indifference, and sharing. Coverage of the Pope’s remarks can be found @ http://tinyurl.com/jy4z22n

            During 2016 Share Our Strength has the opportunity to turn words into action. We have the talent, team, strategy and resources to succeed. Let’s make every moment count. Again, happy New Year, and welcome back.

Help us scale Chefs Cycle for No Kid Hungry and Feed Thousands More Kids

            Our campaign to end hunger has always relied on creating opportunities for people to share their strength and finding ways to make those opportunities scalable.  Last year saw the creation of Chefs Cycle and this year we are committed to scaling it. Our goal is for 200 riders to help raise more than $1 million during a June 27-29 300 mile ride along the California coast from Carmel to Santa Barbara.

            If riding 300 miles in just 3 days doesn’t sound possible for you, I can assure you that it didn’t for me either when I rode last year from Santa Barbara to San Diego.  But with just 6-8 weeks training, and the support and camaraderie of the other riders, I found it to be one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had in years. 

By sharing your strength in this way, you will help to feed thousands of kids across the country, end up in great shape, and make many new lifelong friendships. You will have a dedicated team at Share Our Strength helping you with training, fundraising ideas, and logistical support.  Check our website @ http://www.chefscycle.org/?platform=hootsuite  and feel free to contact me directly at bshore@strength.org

 

2016: Our forthcoming podcast on sharing your strength!

In recent years we have become a food obsessed culture, with chefs emerging as celebrities, cooking competitions dominating TV ratings, and restaurants becoming travel destinations in their own right. But as much as food has become a source of great pleasure and celebration, we are also learning more about how intertwined it is with our health, environment, educational achievement, sustainability, and quality of life. 

            In 2016 I’ll be launching a podcast based on a series of three-way conversations that explore the connections between food and so many other matters important to our lives.

Each of the conversations will include a social change agent and someone from the culinary world – a chef, restaurateur, or food entrepreneur -  and affords an opportunity to think in an even more expansive way about the role food plays in in social change. Why did Jose Andres end up working with the UN Foundation in Haiti?  Why is James Beard award nominee Bryan Voltaggio spending time not only in the kitchen but in elementary schools, and testifying before the state legislature?

Today, more than ever, the salad you eat, or the steak you carve, may have broader implications for your hometown or reaching halfway around the globe.  If you want to understand that better, if you want to do something about it, look for our forthcoming conversations.  

Recording With Mike McCurry and Seth Goldman

Paris, the day after

 

Dear Share Our Strength and Community Wealth Partners colleagues

When we left the office Friday afternoon, wishing one another a good weekend, Paris was the way it had been for most of our lives, and almost even before we got home it was another, and will be for much of the rest of our lives. 

There are no words equal to what happened in Paris, but there are actions equal to it – actions of hope, commitment, faith, and love.  You commit such acts every day.  As heavy as my heart is for the people of France, it is heavy for you too because the Paris attacks were an assault on the idealism you embrace and embody, on the belief that doing good matters.  That belief today, in the face of inexplicable evil, is even more important than before.

As you know, restaurants were targeted for many of the attacks. 30 years ago Share Our Strength singled out restaurants as a new source of support for alleviating hunger, poverty and despair – places of joy where those engaged in the culinary community could contribute in a positive way, literally sharing their strength.  As our values are tested, threatened and challenged, the spirit of sharing strength – here at home and around the world -  will be called for again and again.

Shortly after the attacks, my dear friend Carolyn Casey sent me a 1968 speech given by Sargent Shriver, John Kennedy’s brother-in-law who ran the Peace Corps as well as the War on Poverty for President Johnson. @ http://tinyurl.com/q4bcgkx I found some solace his words:  “Peace is like war: If enough men want it, enough men can cause it. They can cause peace to happen in a leper ward in Asia, in a health center in Alabama, on a lonely island in Alaska, in the Bowery of New York. Each of us has the power to bring peace not only to the world, but to our hearts.  Is peace an impossible goal? A lot of people tell me it is. But I am reminded of what Unamuno (Spanish philosopher) once said: "Unless you strive after the impossible, the possible you achieve will be scarcely worth the effort.”

Billy

One Step Forward (Science), Two Steps Back (Politics)

Last weekend, the Financial Times published a column called “How To Invest in Babies” @  http://tinyurl.com/ocv76yo  It conveyed the excitement of discovering what others have long known: investing early in children, in the form of good nutrition, early education, language development, and a nurturing environment favorably impacts their brain development and well-being, and yields a great return.

The article references correlations between child development and family income. The bottom line, not surprisingly, is that rich kids fare better.

But the article misses a more important point: Advances in science and technology have made more information available to us than at any time in human history about the consequences of how we invest or fail to invest in young children, but we have a larger gap than ever before between what we know and what we do about it. That gap, our “full potential gap,” weakens America’s schools, health care, economy, competitiveness and national security.  

Magnetic resonance imaging, genome mapping, and sophisticated monitoring open windows into the chemistry and biology of child development that could not even be imagined a few years ago. For the first time we know about brain development at the cellular level, about nutrition, about the role of parents in the development of language, about the benefits of other forms of stimulation. 

Imagine the outrage that would exist in other areas of society if we failed to act on what we know.  If there were a cure for breast cancer but inertia stalled its delivery… if research about the safety value of seatbelts, air bags or bike helmets had been read and put aside. But because poor children are invisible to most of us and voiceless, we are less quick to act, if we act at all. The powerful economic interests that pervert campaign financing and shape the legislative agenda focus more on perpetuating inequality than on investing in kids. And so the gap grows.

When running for president in 1960, one of John Kennedy’s most powerful campaign lines was: “We are facing a gap on which we are gambling with our survival …” He was referring to our competition with the Soviet Union over deployment of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The “missile gap” became a potent campaign issue. The same words are true today  applied to our full potential gap. We are facing a gap on which we are gambling with our survival…  Our politics need to catch up with our science if we are to ever close it.