SNAP (food stamps) one of our most effective childhood hunger programs

Earlier this week we met with Bob Greenstein from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He is also a long time member of the Share Our Strength board. Bob’s focus is poverty and hunger. He knows that are even more narrowly focused on childhood hunger. And he wanted to be sure that we understood that the most effective childhood hunger program in the country is SNAP (food stamps). Three-quarters of SNAP recipients are families with children. 93% of SNAP benefits go to families with incomes below the poverty line (about $22,000 a year for a family of four.)


SNAP is also the program at greatest risk from budget cuts. The child nutrition programs such as school breakfast and summer meals are not expected to come under attack. But there has always been a political mythology about SNAP, especially that it is subject to fraud and abuse and can therefore afford to be cut. At one time that was true. But Democrats and Republicans came together and reformed the program. Today benefits average less than $1.25 per person per meal. So to cut SNAP could compromise the basic health and well being of more than 20 million low income households.

Whether SNAP makes for good political fodder may be debatable. The facts are not. In 2009 SNAP lifted 1.7 million children above the poverty line. Any serious effort to address the record levels of poverty recently reported must protect SNAP.

Four questions nonprofits must ask in light of dramatic rise in poverty

Last week the Census Bureau released a new survey showing a record 46 million Americans living in poverty below the poverty line, and more than 20 million living in deep poverty (below less than 50% of the poverty line) The sheer magnitude of the problem – greater than any time in the 52 years since such records have been kept – makes it likely that the work of virtually every nonprofit and social service organization will be impacted by heightened need. Most if not all will be asked to do more with less.


There are at least four questions that community leaders and nonprofit executives should be asking in light of this crisis level of poverty:

First, anticipating greater need, are we investing internally in building capacity to meet it?

Second, is it possible to do more with less or must we find ways to not only redistribute wealth but to also create a new kind of wealth called community wealth?

Third, will we go about doing business as usual, or can we reorganize to serve those most vulnerable and voiceless in our society?

Fourth, are our programs and services designed to yield incremental change or to achieve the transformational results necessary?

These are many of the questions we’ve wrestled with over the past 2 years at Share Our Strength and at Community Wealth Ventures. Share Our Strength has grown from revenues of about $14 million in 2008 to about $36 million today. The result is that we and others in the anti-hunger community been able to alleviate a significant percentage of hunger even as poverty has increased.

Community Wealth Ventures is working hard to tease out these lessons of success, and the ingredients of other transformational efforts, and to make them available to other nonprofits and community leaders. To see if they can help go to http://www.communitywealth.com/

Increase in Poverty Not Surprising, But Lack of Bold Response Is

The government’s newly released statistics showing a record 46 million Americans living in poverty were shocking but not surprising. The dismal economic trends of the past few years made a surge in poverty predictable. But the sheer magnitude of the problem – greater than any time in the 52 years since such records have been kept – cannot fail to shock the conscience of the nation.


But it unfortunately has failed to shock the conscience of politicians and policymakers. Perhaps most surprising of all is the tepid response and the utter failure of the President or any other national political leader to come forward with a set of bold proposals designed to reverse this devastating descent into despair for so many of our fellow Americans. Most failed to even muster expressions of sympathy. The media’s front page coverage was met by sounds of silence.

Jobs creation is of course a critical piece of what is needed. And there has been a belated focus on that. But even in periods of robust economic growth, and much better employment rates, such as during the Clinton Administration in the 1990’s, we’ve had more than 30 million Americans stuck below poverty and little effort made to reach them.

There’s a callousness settling into our political system that is deeper and more disturbing than the kind that is reflected in the political infighting and cheap shots that have become par for the course under the Capitol dome. It’s a callousness toward the suffering of other human beings who have nothing to do with politics or one’s political adversaries, but simply have the misfortune to be vulnerable and voiceless. There are 46 million of them now and they need someone in Washington with the courage to speak out on their behalf.

A nation indifferent to the fate of 15 percent of its own citizens has worse shocks ahead.

bearing witness to famine in Horn of Africa

Yesterday’s New York Times published a rare first person account of what it feels like to be hungry in the midst of famine. @ http://tinyurl.com/3zcc27l


The tragedy in Somalia and the Horn of Africa continues to unfold in the face of man-made logistical obstacles that make meaningful relief problematic. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do everything we can to continue to bear witness and fuel our own commitment to make a difference.

One of the lessons from the colossal suffering the world seems unable to stop, is that by the time a famine reaches this level, we have almost certainly missed the window of opportunity to intervene on a scale commensurate with the scope of the horror. The numbers are overwhelming and the political and security situation that prevents aid from being delivered, cannot be overcome merely with humanitarian best intentions and good will.

That is why long-range international development efforts, that do not lend themselves to dramatic film footage on the evening news, and which get so much less attention, are all the more important for us to support. One of the things we’ve always done best at Share Our Strength is to find creative ways to help people see needs of which they may not have been aware, and how they can share their own strengths to meet those needs.

As much as all of us naturally have the impulse to do something immediate for Somalia – and we have made an emergency grant and can hopefully do more - our greatest impact will come from developing a strategy, as we’ve done with No Kid Hungry here at home, that builds a larger and long-term constituency of supporters for efforts to ensure that those in famine struck regions can ultimately support themselves. That’s the kind of work that takes not only years but decades. It requires a kind of compassion and commitment that can be sustained long after this immediate crisis has passed.

Another chapter in The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men

I get the question all of the time. “How does the story end?” After reading through 300 pages of my new book “The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men” it’s a fair question. Indeed one of the challenges in finishing the book was knowing that the story of developing the first vaccine that might prevent malaria probably wouldn’t and couldn’t have an ending for another 10-20 years. That is partly the nature of science and it partly represents the almost insurmountable obstacles that scientists have faced over hundreds of years in trying to combat malaria. (The book can be found @ http://www.amazon.com/Imaginations-Unreasonable-Men-Inspiration-Purpose/dp/1586487647/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303909402&sr=1-1)


But that is one of the central points of the book, following the wild rollercoaster ride of Steve Hoffman in particular, from the beginning of his penniless lab in a strip mall to the infusion of more than $30 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which enables Hoffman to build a world class vaccine manufacturing facility. It takes certain qualities of character and specific entrepreneurial strategies to solve problems that affect people so vulnerable and voiceless that there are no markets for solving them.

Now, on the heels of a deeply disappointing clinical trial, Hoffman is back with a newly published paper in the journal Science with vaccine results that he describes as “staggering.” As any entrepreneur would, he took failure not as an end in itself but as another lesson learned along the continuum, and proposed the never before used innovation of introducing a vaccine intravenously. When tried on animals, the results were protection of between 71% and 100%, compared to protection of only 2 out of 44 when tried on humans via injection into the skin. (see summary of Science article @ http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/new-hope-for-crazy-malaria-vacci.html )

“It was an ‘aha’ moment “ said Robert Seder at the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Its classic entrepreneurship: try something, and if it doesn’t work, try something else. It is the twist-and-turn lineage of most great achievements, moreso than a straight line. The initial results left Hoffman disappointed but undeterred. And now he has taken a huge step forward, fully aware that further complications lie ahead, especially how to overcome the practical and logistical challenges of wide-scale distribution intravenously. “Our goal has always been to show that this vaccine is highly effective. Once we have done that. We’ll figure out how to make it practical”, he told Science Now. Just the sentiments that made Hoffman the central figure in The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men.

Two Books Give Voice to the Voiceless Suffering from Malaria

Is the global campaign against malaria reinventing international aid? That’s the thesis of an important new book, Lifeblood, by Time’s Africa bureau chief Alex Perry. @ http://www.trust.org/alertnet/blogs/alertnet-aidwatch/the-business-case-for-beating-malaria-one-bug-at-a-time

The book, whose pub date is today, makes the case that former businessman and now UN Special Envoy for Malaria Ray Chambers approaches charity like a business. Having known Ray for many years, that is definitely one of the many strength’s he brings to the task.

In my recent book about the quest to end malaria, The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men, @ http://www.amazon.com/Imaginations-Unreasonable-Men-Inspiration-Purpose/dp/1586487647/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303909402&sr=1-1 I try to look at the challenge from the other end of the telescope, not just using business strategies and tactics, but looking at the strategies and qualities of character demanded by the toughest problems to solve, which are those that affect people so vulnerable and voiceless that there are no markets for solving them.

The two books make a good pair: Perry’s looking at the distribution of insecticide treated bed nets to prevent malaria infections, and mine looking at the quest for a vaccine to eradicate the disease completely. Thanks to our publisher Public Affairs for giving voice where there was none!

Labor Day comments on link between jobs and hunger

On Wednesday of this week the USDA releases its latest food insecurity numbers, and on Thursday, President Obama addresses a joint session of Congress about jobs. The press coverage will be unlikely to draw any connection between the two events, but it is essential for us to understand, act, and speak out on just how intimately these two issues are tied together.

Getting Americans back to work is a central ingredient to the long-term success of virtually every social program including the anti-hunger programs we champion. Record levels of poverty and unemployment make it extraordinarily difficult to reduce economic inequity and win battles to end hunger, ensure equal educational opportunities, and create a more just society. Those of us working toward those goals will come up short unless we take a larger and longer term view that includes economic growth and job creation as a priority. We must make our voices heard on those issues as surely as we will on the USDA hunger statistics.

The president’s jobs package is likely to be imperfect, and include compromises that reflect political reality. But it is critical to elevating the human catastrophe of millions of unemployed Americans as a priority on the national agenda. (As is typically the case, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities led by Share Our Strength board member Bob Greenstein, has an insightful analysis of the August jobs numbers @ http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3571 )

Until now the political will in Congress has been insufficient to achieve progress on jobs. It will remain so unless more of us speak out and specifically underscore the connection between our missions and the need for bold measures to address the jobs crisis. Part of our leadership responsibility at both Share Our Strength and Community Wealth Ventures is to encourage others in our sector to look beyond their specific silo, focus on the bigger picture, and raise their voices as well.

Nonprofit and advocacy organizations focused on human services need to reach out this week – to their supporters, donors, stakeholders and all of those they serve – and explain how and why concerted, bipartisan action on jobs is directly related to the mission of their organization.

In the case of our No Kid Hungry strategy, our challenge not only would be more manageable if more families had meaningful work and less need for public food assistance, but our efforts also can actually help create jobs. States have left more than $7 billion on the table in Washington because of the number of children and families who are eligible but not participating in school breakfast, summer meals, and the SNAP program. If that $7 billion were being spent locally to buy and deliver more food products it would create additional jobs at virtually every level of the supply chain. By itself it would not be a large enough number of jobs solve the unemployment crisis, but when there are as many American families suffering as there are today, every job counts and our efforts would be a net positive contribution to that solution.

It’s fairly obvious that when more Americans are working, they are less likely to need food assistance. But what’s less obvious is that enrolling more children in food programs as we do through our No Kid Hungry campaigns can also help create jobs. The national conversation this week and next will be focused almost exclusively on ideas to create jobs. If we want to be heard, we must find ways to talk about what we do in that context. And the large numbers of hungry children in America need us to be heard if they are to have a voice in that national conversation too.