The Ingredients of Social Change Movements - on Add Passion and Stir

      Elise Smith from WinniE’s bakery, and Leslie Crutchfield, author of How Change Happens are two of the most interesting and passionate guests we’ve had on Add Passion and Stir. 

 

 

 

      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 http://addpassionandstir.com/how-social-change-happens/ or on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/add-passion-and-stir/id1164624510?mt=2 Enjoy!

Help Us Keep Riding Until There Is No Kid Hungry

Next month in Charlottesville, VA I’ll be getting on my bike for the fifth time in four years for another 3-day, 300-mile Chefs Cycle ride to support our No Kid Hungry campaign. If you’ve ever seen me ride you’ll know it’s not because I’m a natural athlete. No one has ever confused me for that! Rather, I’m riding again because I’ve seen the impact of the millions of dollars we’re raising on the lives of the kids that Share Our Strength serves. Our success in adding 3 million kids to school breakfast programs has transformed their health, educational achievement, and lives in countless ways.


This inaugural east coast ride has been added to meet popular demand among chefs and restaurateurs eager to share their strength. If you already contributed earlier this year to my previous ride in Santa Rosa, thank you and please feel free to ignore this note. If not, please consider supporting me (HERE) or one of the other 150 riders (HERE). Thanks.

 

Mounting Evidence That Progress Is Possible - Especially Locally!

NY Times columnist Tom Friedman argues that American politics still works from the bottom up, “where civic coalitions are succeeding at revitalizing old towns where governmental efforts have failed: https://tinyurl.com/y77h2wku  He point is borne out in the latest Annie E Casey Foundation’s report on infant mortality in Baltimore.  http://www.aecf.org/blog/using-collective-impact-to-reduce-infant-mortality-in-baltimore-city/

A “collective impact” approach known as B’More for Healthy Babies (BHB) that blends public investment with private philanthropic commitments has resulted in a decrease in infant mortality by 35% since 2009 and a decrease in the disparity between African Americans and whites by 64%

We’ve seen the same at Share Our Strength with our No Kid Hungry campaign that operates on a state-by-states basis. 3 million kids have been added to school breakfast over the past 10 years. The number of children experiencing hunger is down at least 30%.

The animosity and divisiveness that characterizes our national politics often subsides at the community level where citizens have a clear line of sight into the needs of their neighbors and solutions that work. Especially on behalf of children. Pragmatism, collaboration, and innovation prevail – and show what might be possible if we put the larger interest over individual special interests.

 

Both Bad and Better

            New data about children from the Annie E. Casey Foundation aligns perfectly with what Bill Gates describes as “one of the best books I’ve ever read.”  He is referring to Factfulness by Hans Robling which makes the case that we (especially journalists and advocates) almost always over-estimate and dramatize how bad things are in the world and under-estimate how much progress has been made.  The central point is that social conditions can be both bad and better. Grounding oneself in fact (not necessarily data, but fact) is essential. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Factfulness#  to creating effective and lasting change.

            Here are the key findings from the Annie E Casey Foundation’s 2018 Kids Count Data Book published last week:

n  The nation’s child poverty rate dropped from a peak of 23% in 2011 to 19% in 2016 resulting in nearly 2.3 million fewer children living in poverty

n  The teen birth rate fell to an all-time low

n  The rate of high school students graduating on time climbed to an all-time high

n  Despite these shifts in the right direction, deep racial and ethnic inequities persist. For nearly all of the measures tracked by Kids Count, African-American, American Indian, Latino, and Southeast Asian children continue to fare worse than their peers.

We have been seeing the same dynamic when it comes to childhood hunger. Thanks to our No Kid Hungry campaign and other efforts, and a growing economy, progress has been unprecedented – reducing the number of hungry kids in the U.S. by more than 30%.  But even one hungry child is unacceptable. So, just as Rosling and Gates suggest, things are bad but better. We need to assert both.

A First For Share Our Strength: Bride and Groom At Our Boston Taste Event

I've been to a lot of Taste of the Nation events for Share Our Strength and Our No Kid Hungry campaign- but this was the first time I've seen a bride and groom and their entire wedding party among our guests.  The bride is a first grade teacher in Boston Public Schools and many of her students live below the poverty line and come to school hungry, which affected her deeply. She’s been to a number of Boston Taste of the Nation events in the past and told her fiancé that the most meaningful thing she could imagine would be having her wedding reception as part of Taste. They brought 125 guests!  Hear it in her their own words from the first time we’ve recorded an episode of Add Passion and Stir live from a Taste event with a variety of chefs and other participants.  At  ow.ly/Dr5l30kGG3a or on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/add-passion-and-stir/id1164624510?mt=2

 

Milestones On The Road to Ending Childhood Hunger (per an amazing rookie Chefs Cycle Rider)

I thought you might be inspired as I was by the insights of our Colorado colleague Jenny Baragary who rode Chefs Cycle for the first time in Santa Rosa last month. In her note below Jenny really nailed what is special about both the ride and our staff, and how it connects to our No Kid Hungry campaign and the broader mission of Share Our Strength.  I’m so grateful to Jenny for riding and for sharing her experience.

Billy

From: Baragary, Jennifer
Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2018 10:33 AM
To: Shore, Billy <bshore@strength.org>; Nelson, Tom <tnelson@strength.org>
Subject: Chefs Cycle Thoughts!

Hi Billy and Tom,

It’s taken me over month to process what I experienced at Chefs Cycle. When people ask me about it, I light up, a huge smile comes across my face, and I say, “It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done…but I had an awesome time!” And it’s true, the ride was really hard. There were several moments when I didn’t think I would finish and even more moments when I question why I can’t be content just running a 5K.

Now that I’ve had time to recover, I wanted to share some thoughts on what made the ride so amazing for me:

·       It’s an Equalizer: Upon arriving, it was immediately clear that I was a rookie. Chefs had bikes worth more than my car and more muscle in a single calf than I have in my entire body. Needless to say, I was nervous heading into Day 1. What if I was last to finish? What if I didn’t finish at all? At breakfast before Day 1, my roommate and I sat with members of the Hot Wheels team. They graciously answered our newbie questions and prepared us for the day ahead. I ate breakfast with this group every day (that was the only time I could keep pace with them). Each morning, we discussed the highs and lows of the previous day and what to expect on the ride ahead. There was something really inspiring knowing that even though they were significantly more seasoned, we were all experiencing the same ride.

·       It’s about Milestones: Someone told me once that running a marathon is the easiest and hardest thing you’ll ever do – all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other, but you have to do it for 26.2 miles. All you have to do in Chefs Cycle is peddle. By the third day that was a tall order. My goal for Day 3 was to just get to the next rest stop. By the second rest stop, I started to believe I just might finish. That’s when the real connection to our work became clear to me. Ending childhood hunger won’t happen overnight. It’s going to take achieving a series of milestones. Sometimes those milestones come quick and easy like the Day 1 rest stops…sometimes just getting to the next rest stop is going to take longer than anticipated and require significantly more willpower than expected, much like the last 25 miles of Day 2 (Note: Day 2 was a killer for me).

·       Our Staff is Exceptional, Amazing & Unbelievable: I’ve always known the folks that work for Share Our Strength are special. Across the board, it’s an organization full of people who are kind, thoughtful and generous. However, the Chefs Cycle team and staff volunteers took this to another level. As I pulled into every rest stop, there was at least one fellow staff member asking how I was feeling, what I needed and how they could help. And when I pulled out to head to the next rest stop, there was someone there saying they couldn’t wait to see me back at the hotel. I know they did this for everyone. However, I know I received a little extra love. It was so incredibly motivating and heartwarming.

On a personal level, it proved to me that I’m much stronger than I ever knew!  I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to participate.

Our $100,000 grant to support kids on the border generates more funding

Our decision to grant $100,000 to support children on the border has had an incredible response from our board, staff and donors. An additional $20,000 has already come in, unsolicited. More is expected and will be allocated the same way.

I'm grateful to the Share Our Strength staff and community of stakeholders for the critical role they played. By early last week it was clear from numerous informal communications with colleagues that the plight of children at the border was weighing heavy on the heart. Such emotion grounded in genuine empathy for the most vulnerable families among us is impossible to ignore. It stands in glaring contrast to the cynical calculations of political Washington. 

Most decisions we make at Share Our Strength fit neatly into our long-term strategic plan. But the instincts and impulses of our team and supporters are an equal and sometimes even more reliable compass.  Our organization’s leadership trusts those instincts and impulses. You should too.  When you believe an emerging issue merits a response from Share Our Strength, please raise it. Consider this an invitation. Finite resources won’t allow us to respond as often as we’d like to. But the only rules that constrain us are the rules we’ve written together and can re-write. The hallmark of moral leadership is fidelity to values even above strategy and budgets. Those values don’t come from a plan or mission statement. They come from you.

The crisis for children at the border is far from over. And because the vulnerable and voiceless are so often exploited for political gain, it won’t be the only such crisis to be addressed. If you remain vigilant and outspoken, we will remain vigilant and outspoken. Thank you.