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Harnessing Food Waste to Solve Hunger: Lessons From the Next Generation Feb 21, 2018

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Can we match excess food with need to better help people escape poverty? American University college student Maria Rose Belding, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Matching Excess And Needs for Stability (MEANS), discusses food waste and hunger with celebrity chef David Guas on a special episode of Add Passion and Stir made possible by generous support from the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation. At age 12, Belding imagined a better system for getting excess food to emergency food providers and the people that need it. She founded her nonprofit a few years later. “Food is really the key that unlocks the door to all of these other social services that help people actually leave poverty, but until we deal with the food, we can’t deal with anything else,” she says. Long-time Share Our Strength supporter Guas has always understood the importance of donating leftover food from his restaurants to local organizations. “At Bayou Bakery, since the beginning we work closely with A-SPAN [a homeless services organization and shelter in Arlington, VA]…it’s been a great partnership,” he says. Belding wishes every chef and food organization thought about food waste the same way. “That’s money the shelter doesn’t have to spend on food… and that means they can funnel it into AA or mental health programs,” she notes. A volunteer in food pantries since age six, she recognized very young the instability of food resources at these establishments. Pantries are often in simultaneous feast or famine mode – with way too much of one item they cannot use and not enough of another item they really need. Today, MEANS addresses that problem by connecting thousands of food banks, shelters, soup kitchens and other providers with food donations in real time, and has recovered more than 1.65M pounds of food over the last five years.

Both guests understand that recovering food waste is only one piece of alleviating hunger and poverty. Host Billy Shore asks Belding how much of the hunger problem in the United States could be addressed by food waste? “Mathematically speaking, if you just look at this like a calculus problem, food waste can solve all of it. Hunger is not a calculus problem. Hunger is much more complicated than that,” says Belding. She explains the important role programs such as SNAP and WIC play in solving hunger. Guas recently took to Capitol Hill with two other celebrity chefs to champion these federal food programs. “We just banged down doors, chewed people’s ears and stressed the importance of protecting this [SNAP] program,” he relates.

Be inspired by this impactful conversation among these social activists with real-time solutions to hunger in America.

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Unfit for Service: Food as a Matter of National Security Feb 14, 2018

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In an episode that host Billy Shore calls “one of the most important conversations we’ve had,” U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling and Air Force Master Sergeant Jennifer Medeiros discuss how poor nutrition, lack of fitness, and food insecurity in society at large are impacting our troops and our national security. “77% of America is not fit enough to join the military,” says Lt. General Hertling. “This is a constant fight for the future of our country,” he warns. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was given command of basic training for the entire U.S. Army “When [new recruits] were leaving basic training, many of them were going to war-fighting units and deploying right into combat, so they had to be ready to fight.” he says. However, 40-50% of these recruits couldn’t pass a simple fitness test, their injury rate was continually trending up due to poor nutrition, and 60% needed major dental work in order to be deployable. Master Sergeant Medeiros, who spent a year as a military dental tech, agrees. “I would get the new kids, and some of the worst ones were … non deployable, like root canals and all kinds of things based off their lack of education and [bad] habits,” she says. “When we get new soldiers and airmen in the military, we’ve got to basically take 20 years of bad habits … and reverse it.”

Hertling addressed these issues by instituting the Soldier Athlete Initiative and Fueling the Soldier program, which changed the way the Army purchased, prepared, and served food to the soldiers. It was also a campaign to educate soldiers on how important it is to eat right. “Soldiers want to survive on the battlefield … if you’re going to be in a world-class organization and you’re going to have to perform like an Olympic athlete on the battlefield, you better fuel yourself for performance, not just eat,” he states. Medeiros also sees a different role for food in the military. As an enlisted aide and military chef, her duties include preparing meals for important meetings between domestic and foreign leaders and heads of state. She knows that food is necessary for building relationships and trust with other countries. “Food brings nations together. The only thing in this world that everyone has in common, is food. And food is life,” she says.

Listen to this discussion on why addressing hunger and nutrition in America is critical to ensuring our national security.

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Lessons From The Bully Pulpit: Showing the Face of Hunger Feb 07, 2018

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How can we create a groundswell of support to end childhood hunger in America? On this episode of Add Passion & Stir, No Kid Hungry champion Dorothy McAuliffe shares her insights on what became her signature issue as the First Lady of Virginia. She talks with chef Jason Alley about building awareness and tackling the issue of childhood hunger in Virginia and beyond. “As a first spouse, I learned pretty early that you do have an opportunity with this bully pulpit to raise awareness and to elevate the work,” she says. Chef Alley works hard to bring attention to child hunger in Richmond, VA - in part because he grew up experiencing food insecurity himself. “Food insecurity leaves a lasting impression,” he shares. “It’s inexcusable that we have hungry people in a country that’s this wealthy and produces this much food. That we have 13M hungry children… is embarrassing. It’s a travesty. And it’s entirely fixable.” McAuliffe agrees. “Even one child on one day experiencing hunger and food insecurity in our commonwealth or our country is one too many,” she believes.

McAuliffe’s commitment to the No Kid Hungry campaign has had tremendous impact on Virginia’s kids. When host Billy Shore asks her what worked, McAuliffe says that her experience proves that although child hunger is not a partisan issue, advocates still need to do their homework and connect hunger with educational and economic outcomes to help people see that it’s an investment in our country not a “government handout.” She cites improving test scores, creating a more prepared future work force, and boosting local economies as ways we can make the case. Chef Alley takes a more personal approach in using his own bully pulpit to raise awareness. Each year, he hosts a dinner for chefs from all over the country to raise money for the Feed More Food Bank in Richmond. “When I talk about my story… there’s a level of sometimes confusion, sometimes shock on people’s faces when they realize that I’m the face of hunger,” he notes. “It’s not exclusively the people in low-income housing projects, or [specific areas], it’s everywhere. The face of hunger is looking in the mirror sometimes,” he shares. He thinks bringing attention to the face of hunger is the most powerful thing he can do. “We can’t give $100K to the food bank twice a year, but what we can do is use our platform to do good work and bring attention to these issues.”

Learn from this inspiring and practical conversation about how to create real change in your community.

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Stronger Together: Learning From and Inspiring Each Other Jan 31, 2018

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How does collective impact save ives? In this episode of Add Passion and Stir, philanthropist Karen Ansara talks with chef Michael Serpa about the transformative power of learning and doing within a group setting. Ansara and her husband founded New England International Donors in 2008 to create a network of donors, grant-makers, social investors, and advisors focused on ending global poverty.“How do you address poverty? It’s more than handing out food. Do people have livelihoods, safe communities, healthcare?,” she says. Serpa believes that you need to understand the problems better by exposure to different cultures. “If you work with Haitians and there’s a big disaster in Haiti, they’re going to be affected by that because everyone has family there. Getting exposed … really opens your eyes to what’s going on around the world,” he says. Both guests have experience with Haiti. In 2010, the Ansaras started a fund and issued a challenge grant in response to the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti. They were sure to include Boston’s Haitian community - the third largest in the country – in the effort. “We knew almost nothing about Haiti, but they did. And they had a stake in what was going to happen in Haiti. We knew they needed to be in leadership to make sure that Haiti was going to be rebuilt in ways that were fruitful and just for the Haitian people,” she explains. “One of the reasons we created New England International Donors is it’s really hard to get training in philanthropy and it’s hard to find mentors, so we created this network so that we would learn from each other,” she says.

A dedicated No Kid Hungry supporter, Serpa shares the frustration he feels when thinking about childhood hunger in America. “This is stupid, why are kids in school in Massachusetts not getting food. Why are they hungry? It doesn’t make sense in the United States that kids are going hungry,” he says. An avid cyclist, he participates in Chefs Cycle where participants ride 300 miles in 3 days to raise money for No Kid Hungry. “With hyper-competitive chefs and restaurant people…it’s fun because it’s a challenge,” he says. Ansara sees a different aspect. “I would imagine the camaraderie — the shared pain and the shared meals together — are a big part of what motivates people to do it because you know you can have more of an impact when you’ve got a great team,” she concludes.

Listen to these two dedicated change-makers describe how camaraderie and teamwork can make giving back greater than the sum of its parts.

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Making an Impact: How Chefs and Hospitals Use Food as Medicine. Jan 24, 2018

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What is the distinction between helping individuals and helping entire communities? In this episode of Add Passion and Stir, Debbie Shore talks to Michellene Davis, Esq., Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer for RWJBarnabas Health, and celebrity chef Rahman "Rock" Harper about hunger, healthcare, and the vicious cycle of poverty. Both guests see the importance of thinking outside traditional provision of service. Davis works to make structural changes to healthcare delivery in America. “It is not just about the patients and the families that we treat in our hospitals, it’s also about the communities that we serve and vulnerable populations within those communities,” she says. Chef Harper served on the Board of DC Central Kitchen, which provides culinary job training programs along with meals to the community. Harper notes that the 80% job placement and greatly reduced rate of recidivism in their trainees begins to break the cycle of poverty. “It’s fulfilling work, because … when you see the breakthrough, the liberation, that’s when you feel great…to know you can affect another human being’s life and in turn they can affect yours. We can change the world if we apply that viewpoint,” says Harper.

Davis is helping to transform the way RWJBarnabas – a major health care system located in New Jersey - thinks about health outside of just healthcare. “[Healthcare] such a small component of a person’s experience. What about the places where people work, live, play, age? Are we ensuring that folks are living in environments that are sustainable and healthy?,” she asks. She highlights some of the programs and commitments her organization is making to ensure healthy communities. For example, they had an urban greenhouse initiative coupled with a community wellness center that was not immediately successful. After analyzing the situation, they realized the initiative was in a community that relies on the SNAP program but did not accept SNAP vouchers. “That’s like placing it in the heart of their home but saying ‘don’t touch this,’” she says. As a result, not only did they became the first hospital-affiliated greenhouse in the country to accept the vouchers but they worked with policy-makers to set up a system where urban greenhouses and farmers markets would automatically enroll people in WIC and SNAP. “This is a platform issue for us because it affects the health outcomes of these children for generations to come.” Chef Harper is impressed with RWJBarnabas’ approach. “When an organization can ask themselves these tough questions or be 100% objective, that’s extremely valuable,” he says.

Hear about the powerful personal stories of these two change-makers, as well as their ideas about working at the intersection of helping individuals and strengthening communities to help them succeed.

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Connecting The Dots: Using Grassroots To Inform Systems Change Jan 17, 2018

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To change systems that perpetuate poverty and hunger, where do we start? Erin McAleer, President and

CEO of Project Bread in Boston, discusses eradicating hunger with Bob Luz, president and CEO of the

Massachusetts Restaurant Association (MRA) on this episode of Add Passion and Stir. McAleer

describes a multi-level approach that uses on-the- ground learning to drive a wider systems-level change.

“We’re in community health centers, we’re in schools, we’ve got this hotline, but we take that information

that we’re seeing on the ground and pivot quickly to larger scale systems change,” she says. She cites a

successful program they piloted where children enrolled in SNAP (food stamps) would automatically be

enrolled in school breakfast programs. Luz sees a similar effect on systems in his industry. One out of

every 10 jobs in America is related to the restaurant industry and almost 50% of the businesses are

minority owned and 40% are women owned. Many workers come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and

when they succeed, they want to provide opportunities to other people. “It’s heart-breaking to see initially

and then heart-warming [later] to see as people excel in our industry,” he says. “I don’t think you’re ever

going to see a more philanthropic group of people who believe in being a good neighbor.”

Both guests talk about formative experiences that affected their own attitudes toward hunger and giving

back. For McAleer, it was experiencing food insecurity growing up as one of three children with a single

mother. She remembers going to bed with her “mom on the phone saying ‘how am I going to feed these

kids?’” For Luz, it was one of his first jobs with the 99 Restaurant Group, where the owner’s passion for

giving back was built into the business. This experience laid the foundation for his own attitudes about

philanthropy which he brought to the MRA board and mission. The MRA holds restaurant dinners where

the team donates their time, suppliers donate food and beverage, and all the money goes to a cause,

including the No Kid Hungry campaign. They did five dinners the first year, eight dinners last year, and

will do 12 this year. “We think we can take this across the entire state,” he predicts.

Learn about how channeling resources, knowledge, and compassion can create systems change that can

end hunger.

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You’ve Got to Measure the Hum: Why Kids In Boston Love School Meals Jan 10, 2018

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Where does the food come from that we feed our kids in schools? Laura Benavidez, Executive Director of

Food and Nutrition Services for the Boston Public Schools, discusses a program she’s spearheading

aimed at transforming how food is sourced, prepared, and served throughout Boston’s public schools.

Currently, most of the food is prepared in New Jersey, frozen, and transported to Boston. “We’re going to

revolutionize how we feed kids,” says Benavidez. Jill Shah, serial entrepreneur and president of the Shah

Family Foundation, is providing the funding to build school kitchens in the 75% of schools who do not

have them so that meals can be prepared on-site with fresh ingredients. Eventually the program, which

has the support of the Mayor, will be expanded throughout the district and impact 57,000 kids. The

ultimate goal is to create a blueprint for other school districts to replicate its success. “We’re more than

happy to share [what we’ve learned] throughout the country,” says Shah.

The ultimate judges of that success are the kids who are thriving on the fresh food prepared in the new

kitchens. Students are given a choice from a menu of healthy options. “Kids are choosing what they eat

and they’re going to eat what they choose,” says Benavidez. The kids are even embracing vegetables.

Shah relates a story about walking into the cafeteria at one of the schools in the program. “There was this

quiet hum, and every kid was leaned over a tray eating, happily. That’s not how a lunch room in a public

school usually is!,” she exclaimed. In addition to this overwhelming anecdotal success, they are funding a

study to gather data on how the program is affecting educational outcomes. This ongoing research will

inform continuing improvement of the program. “Some of it is important to measure with studies, but some

of it is just a vibe that you feel when you walk in to a place,” concludes Shah.

Listen and learn about an innovative program that is transforming the way kids interact with healthy food

at school.

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Living on $2 a Day: Poverty and Food Equity in America Jan 03, 2018

Show notes

To start the new year, we are revisiting one our most important episodes of Add Passion and Stir when we spoke with sociologist, poverty expert and author Kathy Edin ($2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America) and Washington, DC area social entrepreneur Tom McDougall of 4P Foods have a powerful and timely discussion with Share Our Strength founders Billy and Debbie Shore about poverty in America. Kathy and Tom illustrate how our current systems - political, social, economic, geographic - keep poor people from succeeding. They argue for more equity in our social programs and a more dignified way of serving the poor. Kathy shares stunning statistics and touching anecdotes of the impoverished families with whom she has worked. When she asked one young girl what it was like to be hungry, her response was, "It feels like you want to be dead, because it’s peaceful when you’re dead." Tom believes, "We can't talk about fixing the food system unless we talk about money and politics... subsidies... institutional racism... the history of farming. … If we move the needle just a tad on food equity, it means we're moving a lot of other needles along the way." In Kathy’s work, she found that, "When it comes down to it, what people seem to want more than anything else is dignity. ... but a lot of our social policies deny people that.” Hear their recommendations on what we can do as individuals and as a nation to improve these dire circumstances for the poor in America.

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Form and Function: Creating Buildings That Heal Dec 20, 2017

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Architecture and design affect your attitude, your health, and even your life. Architect Michael Murphy, executive director of MASS Design Group, and Ken Oringer, one of Boston’s most notable chefs and restaurateurs, talk to Billy Shore about how good design can drive systems change. “We see architecture as a crucial piece … of our daily lives and as a systems approach to how we live either more productive or less productive lives,” says Murphy. Oringer knows the importance of design in his restaurants. “We work 16-hour days, and you have to create an environment that can make everybody happy … and inspire creativity,” he says. Murphy describes a hospital his group designed for a village in Rwanda that had to address tuberculosis. Because TB spreads through the air, they had to mitigate risk by designing better ventilation, creating outdoor waiting areas, and eliminating hallways. “A hospital is an incredible system… but it’s only successful if we’ve designed it well enough to influence medical policy on how we’re designing hospitals in the future,” Murphy says. Chef Oringer faced a similar challenge redesigning 3 school kitchens in the Boston public school system. “If we create spaces where the kids get excited to eat, that’s the start of getting kids to be motivated by [good] food,” he observes. He is currently talking to the Mayor about redesigning 30 to 50 more Boston school kitchens next year and eventually all of them. Murphy is inspired by this plan. “If we can solve it one place, can it affect an entire system?,” he asks.

Oringer - a long-time supporter of the No Kid Hungry campaign - believes chefs need to be leaders because food is the common denominator in our world. “Chefs have the DNA to take care of people,” he says. Murphy believes there are similarities in his field. “Architects don’t become architects for the paychecks. It’s a passion industry,” he explains. He and his partners set up the non-profit MASS (which stands for Model of Architecture that Serves Society) to bring great design to organizations and communities that would not be able to afford it otherwise. Part of its mission is to build a pipeline of projects and partners around the world to change the system. “I want to work with innovators or thought leaders or organizations who are doing real big systems change work,” he concludes.

Listen to gain a deeper understanding of how the built environment affects our lives and can be used to drive systems-level change.

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Psychological Change: Bringing Dignity to Poor Communities Dec 13, 2017

Show notes

How can we move poor communities from hopelessness to hopefulness? In this fascinating episode of

Add Passion and Stir, Pierre Ferrari, President and CEO of Heifer International, and Matt Bell, chef and

owner of South on Main restaurant in Little Rock, share insights about creating value in poor communities

with hosts Debbie and Billy Shore. Ferrari speaks about the success Heifer International has had in poor

agricultural communities throughout the world by driving social psychological change before anything

else. “We work with communities that could almost be described as clinically depressed...the despair is so

deep…they feel condemned to this situation,” he says. Heifer uses value-based training to demonstrate to

people their own ability and capacity to make change. “Without that psychological shift, nothing we do, no

animal, no training will actually catch,” he notes. Bell has first-hand knowledge of the success of this

model in Arkansas. He sources his chickens from Grassroots Farm Cooperative, a cooperative of 10

formerly struggling small farms in Little Rock that was formed with the help of Heifer International to meet

the demand of the growing market. “My understanding of Heifer at the time was you buy a cow and

someone somewhere gets a cow. I didn’t understand this small business component. I didn’t understand

it could happen in Arkansas,” says Bell.

Heifer International provides resources, capital, and knowledge to help enable small farmers to generate

sustainable income, which gets cycled back into their communities creating opportunities for building

schools, creating agricultural cooperatives, forming community savings and funding small businesses.

Ferrari describes a program with female farmers in Nepal which is creating a goat meat value-chain by

working with banks to fund this system. There are now 150,000 women organized into small self-help

groups, which organize into larger co-ops and then an even larger union. “They are now feeling the

dignity of being economically self-reliant,” he concludes. Heifer International measures success by giving

people a ‘living income,’ which is a carefully calculated value that is “very complicated…but basically lets

farmers live a life of dignity,” says Ferrari. Bell recalls his childhood when parents in his community

created an informal system to ensure one little boy growing up in poverty always had food. “A group of

moms would take turns packing and extra lunch for Daniel, and they would say, ‘Make sure you give this

to Daniel before you get to class, so there’s no stigma,’” he remembers. Growing up on a cattle ranch

also gave him a unique perspective on the food chain. “An understanding of that gives us more empathy

into how we tackle hunger issues worldwide and locally.” Bell’s values led him to become a passionate

supporter of the No Kid Hungry campaign.

Get inspired by this sincere discussion about ending hunger and poverty.

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