Their demeanor denotes serious men. Arms around shoulders suggest a unity of purpose unspoken but unmistakable. If it sounds like risky business, it was. By 1911 Israel Shorski would be on his way to Ellis Island to receive a shorter surname and large dose of freedom.

How different and strange it must have all seemed to a newcomer just off the boat. William Howard Taft was president. Arizona and New Mexico were not yet states. The theft of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa from the Louvre Museum in Paris that month dominated U.S. newspapers for weeks. The Federal Corrupt Practices Act had just been amended to require Senate candidates to disclose their finances for the first time, and to limit campaign spending ($5,000 for the House; $10,000 for the Senate). He could not have foreseen on that voyage to America that his son (my father) would one day work for a Congressman who helped Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Your grandparents and great grandparents likely went to similar lengths to ensure the democratic values they sought for us. The data says we take that for granted. In the previous mid-terms of 2022, 230 million Americans were eligible to vote, but only 107.7 million turned out to vote in House races. 62 million Americans who were eligible to vote had not even registered.

I never miss the chance to vote. But that alone is not enough. Democracy, like any muscle, needs to be exercised or it atrophies. It won’t be healthy on election day if ignored in the weeks and months before. If we treat it as a spectator sport we’re asking for more cage fights on the White House lawn. And we will deserve them. We’ll also be asking for more hunger, inequality, economic disparity, climate change, and chaos abroad.

My take-away, if only for myself, is the need to step up. I’ll be reaching out to neighbors and community organizations where I live and work. Posting on social media. Making calls and knocking on doors. I’ll be donating a little more than I can afford to candidates I trust to unify instead of divide. Also to organizations like those below that reach beyond partisan politics to protect our democratic institutions.

• Brennan Center for Justice —tracking state legislative efforts to protect election systems https://www.brennancenter.org/

• ACLU runs an election-safeguarding program https://www.aclu.org/

• Public Rights Project works with local governments and election officials on legal training and resources, https://www.publicrightsproject.org/

• League of Women Voters combines registration work with litigation defending voting access https://www.lwv.org/

If each of us who votes gets just one person who is not registered to do so, we could go from a too lackluster democracy to one too strong and vibrant for any person or Administration to weaken.

As election day draws closer, there will be moments when politics feels small, mean, and nasty. Politics can be that. But democracy never is. Messy, yes, but mostly energizing, empowering, and still worth crossing an ocean for.

Given the imbalance in funding, long odds, and power of the special interests, my plan may seem naïve at best, at worst, pure folly. But that’s between me and my grandfather.

What Earle was really talking about is a kind of bearing witness born of and demanding, proximity. The kind of bearing witness which leads to learning, teaching, sharing, and perhaps most important, feeling, and caring.

Share Our Strength has invested deeply in opportunities for partners and supporters to accompany us into communities from the Mississippi Delta and Rio Grande border to New York, Arkansas, and California to bear witness to both the challenges and the solutions. Many of them have become our most passionate stakeholders.

I’ve thought about the power of proximity frequently during my experience as a volunteer firefighter in Maine I’ve tried to better understand the “whatever it takes” ethic of firefighters and realized its instilled by their proximity to the need, to the burning building right in front of them. What if society responded to a child trapped in poverty the same way a fire department responds to a child trapped in a burning building?

Proximity changes the moral calculus. A firefighter doesn’t say: Is this my responsibility? What’s the root cause? What will this cost? Is this a sustainable? They see a person in immediate danger and act.

What I had not appreciated was just how universal is proximity’s power. It has been the indispensable element in almost every social change effort. For example:

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative which challenges racial and economic injustice asserts: “Proximity is everything … We begin to care only when we get close enough to know the people affected. All of us have the ability, if we can’t do anything else we all have the ability to get close to someone who is suffering, who is struggling who has fallen down, and wrap our arms around them and affirm their humanity and their dignity…. It all begins with making that choice to connect. What we do to get proximate to those who are disfavored and excluded, what we do to change narratives, what we do to stay hopeful, what we do that is inconvenient and uncomfortable can sometimes be the most meaningful thing we do.”

Dr. Paul Farmer was co-founder of Partners in Health which believes quality health care is a universal human right, and fights injustice around the world by providing care first to those who need it most. Farmer often spoke of the “ministry of showing up” and described the radical, physical, and moral choice to be present for the sick and the marginalized, day after day, regardless of how difficult the circumstances or systemic barriers may be.

Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) has gone so far as to build bearing witness into their mission. Témoignage — French for “bearing witness” — is written into its founding charter. Doctors don’t just treat, they speak publicly about what they see in war zones and famines, precisely because seeing creates an obligation others don’t feel from statistics alone.

Thanks to technology we have never had more awareness and less proximity. We can see virtually every crisis in the world on our phones, but that isn’t the same as witnessing it. We protect what we witness. We rescue what we recognize. We change what we refuse to look away from.

Do you or the organizations you work with value bearing witness? Have you institutionalized and leveraged it for change? Where have you gotten close enough to care? What would change if you got closer?

Ron Briggs started down this path almost 40 years ago when the presidential campaign that both he and I were working on, Senator Gary Hart’s, came to a sudden end in 1987. Ron had already shown the world he could shatter expectations and conventional wisdom when he’d managed Hart’s 1984 victory in the Maine caucuses over the better funded juggernaut of Vice President Walter Mondale. His next aspiration was even greater. While helping a construction firm open offices in Asia, then working with US AID, he recognized that his unparalleled access to handmade crafts not previously seen or available in the U.S. might find a market there. And that by importing and selling them, in a business he would create with his husband Thanh "Albert" Nhan, could help to create sustainable economic opportunity for these villages on the other side of the world. That insight became Wooven.

Wooven has two retail stores in Maine and a wholesale business that has included clients like the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Products include Batik from Hmong villagers of Vietnam and Laos, hand painted stoneware from deaf and artisans in Bát Tràng, an 800-year-old pottery village near Hanoi, and items made from aluminum shell casings and other war debris from unexploded ordinance (UXO) though a Swords into Plowshares project. https://woovensales.com/

A dear friend who travels the world and understands the power of inspirational stories was talking with me on our deck at Goose Rocks beach last week during a brief visit to the state. As we recounted the kind of things Share Our Strength supports and the social entrepreneurs we’ve met, he said “there really are a lot of good people doing good things, in many cases quietly and without fanfare, but they don’t get the same visibility as all the bad news.” He was right and helped me see Ron Briggs’ work in the context of the wider world.

Wooven belongs to a broader category of “mission-driven commerce” or “purpose-driven supply chains”—businesses that don’t simply buy from artisans or farmers but deliberately structure their sourcing so that the commercial success of the business translates into greater prosperity for the communities that produce the goods. Equal Exchange’s Fair Trade model is is one good example https://shop.equalexchange.coop/pages/about-us Ten Thousand Villages is another.

https://www.tenthousandvillages.com/

Wooven is more than a bridge to beautiful handmade products. It’s a bridge between an ill-conceived war of the last century and resilience and renewal in 2026. It’s a bridge between indifference and impact, whether by starting a business or supporting and patronizing one.

Wooven offers something more than a model for ethical commerce. It offers a lesson about how change happens.

If a small shop in Maine can create economic empowerment as far away as Southeast Asia, what kind of impact can each of us have in or near our own neighborhoods? It starts with doing what Ron did: Going. Learning. Seeing assets and strength where others saw poverty and despair. Choosing to build a bridge rather than stare across the divide. Sometimes the bridge to a better world begins just ten minutes down the road.

The following summer, when my colleague Chuck Scofield returned to Ethiopia, I gave him a handwritten note to give to Alima, but I didn’t hear from him for weeks. Then one morning, this email: “Dear Billy, I have not called because I have been avoiding sharing bad news that I learned regarding Alima. She died a couple of months ago as a result of TB and cerebral malaria. By the time they got her to the hospital in Addis it was too late.” I was stunned. Lack of sufficient funds had prevented the hospital a short walk from Alima’s classroom from being finished before she contracted malaria.

Chuck’s devastating message evoked the prophetic words of Dr. Martin Luther King: “In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. The ‘tide in the affairs of men’ does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.” The same two words at the end of Chuck’s email.

As Share Our Strength evolved and grew, I never forgot there are consequences between action and inaction, and especially from being too late. The overwhelming majority of our growth has been in response to hunger in America, the focus of our No Kid Hungry campaign. That work is not changing. It is needed now more than ever, and it is accelerating to address the increased challenges that families and communities are facing due to significant cuts in the social safety net. The No Kid Hungry team and our partners ensure more children are being connected to meals, more states are strengthening their school and summer nutrition programs, and we are tackling the root causes of hunger through new programs focused on economic mobility. We could not be more proud of that critically important work, or more committed to the donors, partners, and communities who have built it with us over four decades.

But we have also come full circle. Our strategies for getting meals to school children are in demand around the world. For several years now we have been working in India and supporting organizations effective at ensuring that school kids access government funded meals.

The early results are inspiring and point to what’s possible: In Nagpur, Maharashtra, a kitchen we co-sponsored with Akshaya Patra is busy at work, and by the time schools open, thousands of freshly cooked meals are moving toward classrooms across the district — each one arriving warm, on time, in the hands of a child who might otherwise try to learn on an empty stomach. A few years ago, this kitchen did not exist. Today it can serve up to 20,000 children a day, and we’ve already secured commitments for two additional kitchens, each designed to serve 50,000 children daily. At just $25 dollars per child for a full school year of meals, it is one of the highest-return investments in a child’s future we know of.

Working alongside our program partners, we’ve now helped fund more than 40 million meals to schoolkids and sparked a movement that is growing rapidly. What began in India’s center, Nagpur, is now alive in Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Bangalore— with Goa next.

The desire to share one’s strength is universal. Our efforts have grown so fast that they need their own home, like a college graduate who no longer has enough room in their parents’ house. Accordingly, we are creating Strength Global, a new nonprofit built on the rich learnings from Share Our Strength and to be incubated there for the coming year. Strength Global will officially launch as an independent nonprofit in the spring of 2027, with a mission of ending childhood hunger around the world.

An entrepreneurial start-up mentality together with four decades of experience at Share Our Strength is a powerful combination. So much of this would not be possible without program partners we learn from every day, a terrific team in India led by Rohit Choudhary, and Jeetu Jodphurkar whose vision has been essential in launching this effort. Chuck Scofield will serve as CEO of Strength Global. Debbie Shore will co-chair Strength Global. She initiated the effort 3 years ago when she realized that replicating some of our best practices and innovative fundraising ideas would yield considerably more resources than small annual grants.

The vital work of Share Our Strength is not finished. The life-saving work of Strength Global can’t wait to get started. When children are waiting, urgency is a moral obligation. That belief shapes every decision at Share Our Strength. As does the conviction that feeding a child anywhere helps children everywhere. We look forward to keeping you apprised of the progress we make. As always, we are so grateful for your support.

When we did find it, I focused on the pastries, a minor obsession of mine. As usual, Rosemary was attentive to something more important - the one sign taped to the window:

I love everything about that sign: that it speaks directly to kids (from three nearby schools); that it prioritizes their comfort and dignity, that it strikes a bargain to be kind, and that it is so important it is the only thing in the window.

The chef/owner is Atsuko Fujimoto who came to the U.S. from Japan 25 years ago, learned her trade, and opened the bakery in 2021. Nominated for a James Beard Award three times, she won in 2024 and is one of the most original and innovative chefs in the country. A taste of her yuzu almond melon pan, kouign amann, miso caramel millionaire’s bars, or Matcha Adzuki roll will be all it takes to convince you. Her offerings also include a moral compass.

Share Our Strength works with many of the largest restaurant brands in the United States, from Union Square Café and Fogo de Choa to Jack in the Box, Arby’s and Tropical Smoothie Café. (We have on our board another great chef and baker, Joanne Chang of Flour Bakery. See her upcoming benefit for No Kid Hungry, “Cookies On The Common” at https://ma.to/event/cookies-on-the-common-18-oct-2026) Culinary generosity has raised tens of millions of dollars to fight childhood hunger. But the one small gesture on the part of Atsuko Fujimoto reminded me that philanthropy is not measured only in dollars, but also in the values we choose to display.

At a time when too much of our culture is about looking out for oneself, and getting as much as you can, her sign in the window sends a very different message:

It says you don’t have to be wealthy or start a foundation to be a philanthropist.

It says you don’t need to amass political power to make a difference.

It says immigrants to America don’t take from our community but enrich it.

It says everyone has a strength to share.

As diligently as I seek delicious pastry treats, I have an even greater appetite for the sometimes hard-to-find leaders in our communities who embody the values we hold dear. When we do find them we need to share and amplify their words, vision, teachings, and even the signs in their windows.

Atsuko Fujimoto’s bakery represents more than a recipe for great pastry. It’s a recipe for a better country.

Read past the iconic phrases we all know well “when in the course of human events,” “we hold these truths to be self-evident,” “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” — and you find a long list of specific grievances. rooted in the frustration of how distant, unseeing, and unknowing were those who governed in relation to those being governed. The lack of proximity created constant clash. The Founders expected and prescribed leadership that knew and served the communities they represented.

As a small-town volunteer firefighter in southern Maine, I’m fascinated that 40 years before helping to draft the Declaration of Independence, Ben Franklin, started the first volunteer fire company in America. The Union Fire Company was established in Philadelphia in 1736. Franklin recruited 30 men to bring buckets and bags to any fire and work together to fight it. He didn’t petition the Crown for better fire protection. He organized his neighbors.

You might think that a Revolutionary War and starting a new nation would leave a Founding Father too busy to fight fires. But actually, that’s the whole point. Throughout his life Franklin emphasized civic responsibility and community cooperation and kept returning to the idea that ordinary people can make a difference in their community without waiting for authority from above. Franklin’s fire department model spread. Many colonial leaders saw firefighting as part of their public duty.

Two and one half centuries later, I see the same ethic in the fellow firefighters with whom I’m privileged to serve: a fierce commitment to their neighbors, a love of community that overcomes politics, a willingness to do whatever it takes when the alarm sounds.

Given my role with Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign, I’m expected to tie the 250^th to a call for freedom from hunger, which of course I support. But I think less about advocating what others should do, and more about assuming responsibility for what we need to do. The Founders weren’t demanding a distant head of state do better; they were building local institutions and taking responsibility for their communities.

That same spirit is at the heart of the unprecedented progress we’ve made on America’s most solvable problem: childhood hunger. Government’s role is indispensable in financing and scaling what works. But so is the role played by parents, teachers, school nutrition teams, faith leaders, corporate executives, and community organizations. The result has been 3 million more kids getting school meals, and the number of kids getting summer meals increasing from 3 million in 2023 to 19 million this summer. That kind of opportunity, and responsibility, extends well beyond childhood hunger. It’s just the version of it I know best — and the version Ben Franklin would recognize.

Enjoy the 4^th, and the celebration of America’s 250^th. And remember that while the truth of our rights may be self-evident, so must be the responsibilities – to our children above all.

The tone dropped at 9:07 a.m. for Fire and EMS. A call for both usually signifies structure fire, car accident, or a type of rescue requiring more manpower than the two medics on the ambulance. In this case it was a 40-year-old visitor from out of state I’ll call Jessie, hiking alone on Vaughn’s Island, one of several surrounding Cape Porpoise Harbor. She fell and badly busted up her knee. She called the two girlfriends she was staying with on her cell phone and when they got to her, they called 911. She thoughtfully had her mishap at low tide, which meant we could probably walk over to her. But a boat needed to be on hand for whatever contingencies arose. At the station, my son Nate, also a firefighter, attached the trailer holding Marine 1 to Brush 35 and I drove it to the end of Turbat’s Creek Road. She was on the far side of the Island, so the first question was how to find her. The second was how to extricate her across rough and rocky terrain in ways safe for her and the rescuers.

Nate and I set out to make our way over, across sand, surf, and rocks. The 30 minutes it took to find her felt like forever. The paramedics who got their ahead of us found that her vitals were stable and she was not in immediate danger. But her knee was the size of a grapefruit. She would not be able to walk out on the wet and slippery rocky path over which we’d clambered.

Another 40 minutes were spent radioing back and forth to gather information about the best path back. There were as many opinions as tide pools to get around, and just as murky. We debated whether to bring in the “mule” a cross between a stretcher and wheelbarrow, but that seemed problematic. Other firefighters eventually brought a Stokes basket which is a specialized metal basket shaped stretcher. After the medic stabilized her leg with pillows and tape, 8 of us began carrying her out, using short, slow steps, and stopping every 50 yards to put the Stokes down, rotate positions, and catch our breath.

By the time we could see the mainland’s shore, it was 90 minutes past low tide. The water was at our knees. We held the Stokes basket higher as we waded across to transfer Jessie to the ambulance.

The main thing Jessie had going for her, in addition to the excellence of the EMT’s, was that we were going to do whatever it takes. We weren’t going to leave it to the next shift. Or come back for her tomorrow. Jessie was coming with us no matter how long it took or how many work-arounds it required.

Also in Jessie’s favor: the ratio of 8 rescuers to one victim. That wasn’t accidental. At one point our dispatcher sent a second tone for more manpower. The idea is to not attempt a rescue with the resources you happen to have on hand, but to ensure you assemble the resources you need to succeed.

When I got home four hours later tired, my attention was diverted to another rescue. This outcome not as successful. My email notifications were pinging like my fire department pager about that morning’s Politico article on 3.5 million Americans who lost their SNAP benefits due to the massive budget cuts in the Administration’s HR 1. https://tinyurl.com/25frh5w4 SNAP is a promise to more than 40 million Americans of a rescue from hunger. But for 3.5 million of them, the promise is no longer being kept.

The Boston Globe recently reported a steep decline in people getting food assistance in Massachusetts. “More than three-quarters of calls concerning SNAP, are being disconnected before a caseworker is free to answer. Callers had their benefits cut off, sometimes for months, because they couldn’t get through. The 80,000-household decrease includes nearly 50,000 children. The volume averaged 20,000 calls a day being answered by 645 SNAP caseworkers”. For emergency food assistance, instead of 8 rescuers for one victim, there’s one overwhelmed caseworker for every 31 families in need.

In the 12 states that breakout SNAP enrollment by age, 776,000 kids have been unenrolled. SNAP, along with the Child Tax Credit enacted during the COVID pandemic, had cut child poverty in half. But only temporarily. Now those children have been abandoned as surely as if the fire department had left Jessie on Vaughn’s Island. Policymakers don’t have the same proximity to SNAP recipients that a small-town fire department has to an injured woman stranded on an island. Thus, not the same urgency, or commitment to do whatever it takes.

Childhood hunger in America is a solvable problem. We have no shortage of food, or of effective food assistance programs. But we have a shortage of political will, and of the firefighter mentality that sees the person behind the statistics, and that commits to doing whatever it takes to reach them, to eradicate every obstacle to a promise being kept. This is the challenge facing policymakers, journalists, governors, mayors, and yes, even anti-hunger advocates, especially anti-hunger advocates, who in this critical time must set the example of leading with even greater urgency and relentless determination.

The magic of a podcast is when it is experienced as a conversation overheard” our producer Paul Woodhull tells each guest on Add Passion and Stir.” While that is true, at Share Our Strength, we also pride ourselves on bringing you conversations underheard: important voices - courageous and compassionate - that don’t get the attention they deserve from traditional media.

Often that’s because what sells is conflict. Sadly, polarization is profitable. So, the talking heads gets louder and meaner, creating heat but not light. Our editorial standard is different: “be civil not silent”.

This week we have an episode about a Democrat and a Republican working at the local level where bipartisanship flourishes in ways that would surprise Washington. (In a recent dinner conversation with political analyst David Axelrod, he reminded me of what he’d learned from my one-time boss and still mentor former Senator Gary Hart: “Washington is always the last to know.”) Our guests are Alexandria, Virginia Mayor Aliya Gaskins, and Columbia, SC Mayor Daniel Rickenmann, exploring why mayors are so effective at dealing with problems close to home ranging from housing and transportation to food assistance and workforce development. Bipartisanship isn’t dead, it’s just moved to Main Street.

On Add Passion and Stir, you will find many such voices, including, just to name a few:

DARREN WALKER, former CEO of the Ford Foundation

CHEF ERIK BRUNER YANG on immigrational policy and restaurants

LAUREN BUSH LAUREN on how moms are ending hunger

NICHOLAS KRISTOF on social justice for Native American communities

MAINE GOVERNOR JANET MILLS on Standing Up to Bullies

NAVYN SALEM, founder of malnutrition fighting EDESIA

MARTIN O’MALLEY, former Maryland Governor and Social Security Administrator Martin O’Malley on how Social Security Lifts Kids Out of Poverty

RUTH REICHL Ruth Reichl on Food and Joy

VERONICA BEARD’S Founders on entrepreneurship

DR JACK SHONKOFF on child development

You can hear them all at https://shareourstrength.org/podcasts/

In 2026 courageous voices have become like rare earth minerals, precious commodities all the more valuable because of the dangers of finding and bringing them to the surface. Whether in government, business, media, too many are afraid to speak up. To honor and support those who have the courage to do so, we have an even great responsibility to ensure their words are heard – to share, amplify, post, podcast, forward, comment, etc. The beauty of it is that it doesn’t take money, political power, or high office to do so. It just takes a willingness to put yourself out there, to reveal your authentic self, perhaps to brave the disapproval of others. Your action may seem like a drop in the ocean, but such drops are how ocean currents build, gather force, and sweep away ignorance, corruption, and despair. As Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová sing in Falling Slowly: “Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice
You’ll make it now.”

About 10 years ago, when my son Nate was in Mr. Horwitz’s fifth grade social studies class I was asked to speak about the work we do at Share Our Strength. I said yes before checking with Nate, not realizing that my very presence in his classroom would make this the most embarrassing day of his school year. But I learned more that day than I taught, because one young fifth grade boy raised his hand and asked “have you found a way to serve children and families without embarrassing them?” Another student asked “Do you see the children and families you serve and do they feel seen or do they feel invisible to you?” These are profound questions at any age. What they were really asking was whether we not only serve food, but the dignity often in even shorter supply.

This was reinforced for me two weeks ago by the unusually large reaction to a Substack column I wrote about my visit to a community food center in Portsmouth, New Hampshire called Gather, “When Dignity Is The First Course on the Menu and There Are No Substitutions Allowed”. https://billyshore.substack.com/p/when-dignity-is-the-first-course

I think the reason I’ve heard from so many is the unprecedented across-the-board assault on dignity and decency that not everyone even has words for yet: Harsh family separations and immigrants fearful to go to work undermines their dignity, and ours…. Homeless initiatives that emphasize criminalization over supportive services undermines their dignity, and ours … Restricting health services for transgender Americans diminishes their dignity, and ours. As Pope Leo has taught, when we judge people only by their economic utility, we diminish their dignity …. and ours.

If we can’t do much about assaults on dignity in all of these areas, we can in at least one: how we feed our kids. School breakfast, summer EBT, SNAP, family economic mobility – all represent a shift from children and families as supplicants, to the dignity of children and families reclaiming their right to access healthy food.

Two of the women who lead Gather, Tania Marino and Anne Hayes, subsequently shared with me: “we never wanted our space to feel transactional; instead for people to walk through our doors and feel welcomed, cared for, respected, and genuinely proud to be here. That belief shaped everything for us from the design of the building, to the quality of the food, to the hospitality and experience we try to create every single day…. We wanted to dream bigger about hunger relief. We wanted to create a space free from stigma: bright, welcoming, and built around choice, hospitality, healthy food, and respect. We also wanted to do more than meet the immediate need for food. We wanted to create pathways toward stability through connection, education, wraparound support, and programs like our Fresh Start Culinary Workforce Training Program.”

Dignity, always important, seems to strike even more of a nerve when in short supply. So as we head into a weekend cage fight on the lawn of the White House, and into the November mid-term elections which may look indistinguishable, as we learn of unprecedented personal enrichment of elected officials, and the continued struggles of our neighbors, let’s be sure that even the most sophisticated food policy agenda includes a dignity agenda that a fifth grader could understand.

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt” (Willam Shakespeare, Measure For Measure, Act 1, Scene 4)

Apparently even Shakespeare appreciated how daunting our 200-mile Chefs Cycle bike ride could be. Over these many months of training, doubt has been living rent free under my riding helmet, but it will not hinder my attempt.

If this feels like one of the more extreme ways to share one’s strength – and it does to me even though I’ll be riding for my ninth time - that’s because the cuts to food assistance programs for children and families have been even more extreme. The times demand we do everything in our power, and then some, to turn things around. And so today I’ll packing for Bend, Oregon where starting this Tuesday we will ride 100 miles a day for two days straight, with climbs as much as 4500 feet. We have already raised $1.1 million for our No Kid Hungry campaign.

What I love most about Chefs Cycle is that it’s not really about the bike at all. Getting to the finish line is less about biking and more about everything our No Kid Hungry campaign and our core values convey: persistence in sharing one’s strength - through ups and downs and triumphs and adversity, building community, knowing it is achievable, and holding oneself accountable for refusing to accept anything short of the finish line.

No one gets across that finish line by themselves – whether it’s riders drafting behind each other or a team of riders called Team Tailwind who hang back and help other riders up the hills, sometimes with just a hand on the small of your back, not really pushing you, but the encouragement does the trick.

Here at Share Our Strength we don’t get across the finish line on our own either. We need your help, especially now. Be assured that when it comes to challenge of expanding school breakfast and summer meals, protecting SNAP, and insisting on the dignity of every child and family, we will not “lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”

H.G. Wells once said “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.” Thanks to Chefs Cycle, I feel the same. This ride is the essence of sharing strength and getting to the finish line. As is the case with ending childhood hunger, it will take everything we’ve got. And will prove that we are all capable of more than we think we are.

I’m almost to my $50,000 goal. Deep gratitude to the many friends who have already supported the ride. If you haven’t and want to learn more, see: https://p2p.onecause.com/chefscycle26/william-shore Thanks!

Billy

When Dignity Is The First Course On The Menu And There Are No Substitutions Allowed.

That was my impression last week from a morning at Gather, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, bearing witness to one of the most impressive community organizations I’ve seen yet. This “Community Food Center” represents a new model for addressing hunger, by both “serving the line, and shortening the line.” From a beautiful pantry, and 40 mobile meals sites, to culinary workforce training designed to launch careers in food service, more than 120 towns are served.

Thanks to CEO Anne Hayes and her colleague Tania Marino and the entire Gather team for opening all of our eyes to what is possible in the food assistance space. They’ve prevailed over the greatest obstacle of all – not money, time, talent, or strategy – but the failure of imagination that keeps most organizations constrained by the scarcity mentality that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hayes explained what makes Gather so special when it’s new expanded facility opened at the end of last year: “Gather’s new Community Food Center will enable us to both serve the line, by feeding more people, and shorten the line, by bringing in wrap-around support and offering education and workforce training to build skills and confidence. The expansion is the next chapter in Gather’s mission to nourish, educate and empower individuals and families across the Seacoast region.”

It’s all based on a philosophical commitment to try to meet people where they are. As Hayes told New Hampshire Public Radio: “We try to be a really low barrier to people because there’s so many things that require them to jump through so many hoops. We’re trying to make life easier for people who are living on that edge.”

In a recent keynote to a Blue Meridian Partners convening, filmmaker and founder of ARRAY Ana Duvernay said: “Some moments can’t be met with the tools we know. Not every moment bends to what we’ve used before. There are moments that ask us to reach into the corners of our own capacity – toward new ways and ideas waiting to be discovered.” She could have been speaking about GATHER.

Like many food assistance orgs Gather measures guests served (90,000 in 2025) and pounds of food distributed (1.6 million lbs). But it’s that ounce of dignity that goes the farthest.

If we’re being honest, dignity doesn’t come cheap. It means a commitment to the highest quality nutritious foods, the warmest and most welcoming hospitality, the lighting, cleanliness, efficiency, convenience and comfort that go into the best customer service experience. And its worth every penny. Hunger and poverty organizations around the country, take note: “new ways and ideas waiting to be discovered.”

You can find my weekly Substack column at

Billy Bearing Witness

My personal Substack

By Billy Shore

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Mother’s Day celebrations are behind us but the challenges facing moms – around the world and here at home – are not.

Nick Kristof of the NY Times reports this month that the Trump Administration’s most lethal policy will be the 71 percent cut in humanitarian aid from 2024 to 2025 estimated to cost 9.4 million lives by 2030, including 2.5 million children under the age of 5. https://tinyurl.com/ydjaja27 In a separate article the Times reports that cuts to Medicaid will exacerbate the crisis of fewer rural labor and delivery clinics. In Maine’s Aroostook County, half of the obstetrics departments have closed in the past 10 years. https://tinyurl.com/4m8euf8j

The world’s hardships can feel overwhelming at times, especially when manmade. But I’ve adopted the mantra shared by my wise friend David Miller, CEO of the Barton Institute For Community Action in Denver, Colorado: “When they go low, we go local.” As I travel the country, I keep finding inspiring examples close to home of just what David means.

This week I am just back from Hope on Haven Hill, an amazing organization in Rochester, New Hampshire that serves pregnant women and new moms battling substance use disorders. The root cause is often severe trauma and abuse. My wife Rosemary and I spent the morning with founder Kerry Norton who had a 30-year career as an OB/GYN nurse before learning that her adult son was struggling with addiction issues. At the same time, she was bearing witness to more young women in her practice who were several months pregnant and suffering from substance use disorder.

When Kerry realized there was a dearth of programs for such patients, she started her own in 2016: a residential treatment center for pregnant and post-partum women that offered a nurturing environment where women could secure easy access to and be supported through treatment and recovery. Today, Hope on Haven Hill offers a full continuum of services including residential and outpatient treatment including counseling, housing, food, medical, employment training, and operates a recovery house for women who have completed treatment and are not ready to re-enter the community without additional support. Rosemary commented that within the one organization, Kerry is actually running numerous nonprofits at the same time.

https://www.hopeonhavenhill.org/

Hope on Haven Hill is less than an hour from our home in Maine, but I learned of it only recently thanks to Liz Torrance the social responsibility director at Kennebunk Savings Bank who is masterful at connecting problem solvers and community needs. While Hope on Haven Hill is one of a kind, at least for now, I’m willing to bet you’ll find similar gems near wherever you live and work. If there is a silver lining in challenging times, its that they have a way of catalyzing, nurturing and incubating social entrepreneurs whose passion for change can be contagious. I search them out each day the way prospectors pan for gold. As I find them, I will continue to share with you. But you can find them too because whether the focus is substance use, hunger, health care, climate change, etc. - they are always closer than you think.

Mother’s Day celebrations are behind us but the challenges facing moms – around the world and here at home – are not.

Nick Kristof of the NY Times reports this month that the Trump Administration’s most lethal policy will be the 71 percent cut in humanitarian aid from 2024 to 2025 estimated to cost 9.4 million lives by 2030, including 2.5 million children under the age of 5. https://tinyurl.com/ydjaja27 In a separate article the Times reports that cuts to Medicaid will exacerbate the crisis of fewer rural labor and delivery clinics. In Maine’s Aroostook County, half of the obstetrics departments have closed in the past 10 years. https://tinyurl.com/4m8euf8j

The world’s hardships can feel overwhelming at times, especially when manmade. But I’ve adopted the mantra shared by my wise friend David Miller, CEO of the Barton Institute For Community Action in Denver, Colorado: “When they go low, we go local.” As I travel the country, I keep finding inspiring examples close to home of just what David means.

This week I am just back from Hope on Haven Hill, an amazing organization in Rochester, New Hampshire that serves pregnant women and new moms battling substance use disorders. The root cause is often severe trauma and abuse. My wife Rosemary and I spent the morning with founder Kerry Norton who had a 30-year career as an OB/GYN nurse before learning that her adult son was struggling with addiction issues. At the same time, she was bearing witness to more young women in her practice who were several months pregnant and suffering from substance use disorder.

When Kerry realized there was a dearth of programs for such patients, she started her own in 2016: a residential treatment center for pregnant and post-partum women that offered a nurturing environment where women could secure easy access to and be supported through treatment and recovery. Today, Hope on Haven Hill offers a full continuum of services including residential and outpatient treatment including counseling, housing, food, medical, employment training, and operates a recovery house for women who have completed treatment and are not ready to re-enter the community without additional support. Rosemary commented that within the one organization, Kerry is actually running numerous nonprofits at the same time. https://www.hopeonhavenhill.org/

Hope on Haven Hill is less than an hour from our home in Maine, but I learned of it only recently thanks to Liz Torrance the social responsibility director at Kennebunk Savings Bank who is masterful at connecting problem solvers and community needs. While Hope on Haven Hill is one of a kind, at least for now, I’m willing to bet you’ll find similar gems near wherever you live and work. If there is a silver lining in challenging times, its that they have a way of catalyzing, nurturing and incubating social entrepreneurs whose passion for change can be contagious. I search them out each day the way prospectors pan for gold. As I find them, I will continue to share with you. But you can find them too because whether the focus is substance use, hunger, health care, climate change, etc. - they are always closer than you think.

Conventional wisdom says we’re not able to work together this way. Our politics are supposed to be so polarized and paralyzed that progress is no longer possible. But Share Our Strength is demonstrating it is feasible to get big things done when working at the state and local level and more focused on results than on scoring political points.

The ingredients of our success may be a useful playbook for others. They include testimony before legislators, arranging site visits, collaborating with others whose issues are related e.g. literacy and education organizations, strategic placement of op-eds, a diverse network of chefs, mayors, business leaders and advocates, and especially the discipline to not tack right or left but instead do whatever it takes to move forward while keeping the focus on children. Hopefully children are an area of common ground that fosters the kind of shared purpose that has otherwise been so elusive in America today.

The twin crises of rising prices and a decimated social safety net are making hunger a kitchen-table issue for more and more Americans - including many who have not had to worry about their weekly grocery bill before. Millions will go hungry as a result. Families can’t afford to wait.

Thanks to Civil Eats for helping to shine a light on the opportunity for state and local leaders to step up to make sure children do not fall through the cracks—by expanding access to meals, building partnerships, and making food assistance work better for families. While federal support is crucial, state and local leaders can take actions to reduce hunger. The question now is whether more leaders will treat this crisis with the urgency it deserves. https://civileats.com/2026/04/29/op-ed-facing-federal-cuts-to-food-relief-states-and-cities-must-step-up/

(On February 14 at 1:21 p.m., the first baby was born at the MCOE via C-section. Photo by Caitlin Kleiboer / PIH)

Last week in Washington, DC, when I wandered into my favorite bookstore, Politics and Prose, I was stunned to find the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen there: hundreds of former USAID employees who came to hear Nicholas Enrich the whistleblower who leaked memos of the destruction caused by Elon Musk. His book is called Into The Wood Chipper. Even though many are still unemployed, the event was more celebratory than somber, as if by sticking together after the demise of USAID they were at least able to keep the spirit alive.

In his foreword to the book, Atul Guwande writes: “what you encounter in his account of this tragedy is a Shakespearean range of human behavior and emotion: deceit, indifference to harm, bloodlust, thirst for power, incompetence, fear, accommodation, self-delusion, and, at all too few moments, courage.” Enrich quotes Andrew Bakaj, from the legal team at Whistleblower AID, as saying “Courage is contagious.” To that I add that courage takes many forms. Whistleblowing is one. But so is organizing, advocating, speaking, writing, reporting, healing, teaching, and building.

For example, good friends in Boston named Jim and Karen Ansara created Build Health International which recently built a hospital in Sierra Leone called The Maternal Center Of Excellence. Civil war during the 1990s combined with the Ebola outbreak from 2014 to 2016 left Sierra Leone with the highest infant mortality ratio in the world. In 2020, 1 in 52 women died during pregnancy or childbirth, according to Partners In Health. The United States had a mortality rate of 1 in 3,800. The United Kingdom had 1 in 5,200.

The Maternal Center Of Excellence opened on February 14, 2026. On that day 13 healthy babies were born there. Since then, hundreds more. Learning that filled me with joy. With so much death and destruction and darkness in the world right now, the promise and potential of new life given a new chance, seems especially encouraging. As does knowing that even until USAID comes back (and it will) change will find a way. https://tinyurl.com/53d3bcs8

Build Health International was formally founded in 2014 to increase equitable healthcare for the most marginalized populations. Over the past decade, it has completed more than 200 projects in Haiti, Latin America, and Africa. Imagine the obstacles that had to be overcome – financial, political, regulatory, logistical – in many of the world’s hardest places.

While private and nonprofit efforts can’t make up for the loss of institutions like USAID, they can still make progress that saves and transforms lives. Waiting in despair for the political winds to change is not an option. Building anew is, no matter the barriers and challenges.

Courage is contagious, but it is also expensive which keeps it in short supply. It often comes at great cost – to career, family, friends, finances. For Build Health International even one healthy baby makes it worth the price. Hundreds of healthy newborns make that price a bargain. (You can learn more and donate at https://buildhealthinternational.org/)

“I’ll rise up
Rise like the day
I’ll rise up
In spite of the ache
I will rise a thousand times again
And we’ll rise up
High like the waves
We’ll rise up
In spite of the ache
We’ll rise up
And we’ll do it a thousand times again”

Grammy Award winner Andra Day wrote these words years ago as a hopeful prayer, and hearing her sing it was such a moving and timely close to our annual No Kid Hungry dinner in Los Angeles on Saturday night. It was icing on the cake to connect with her backstage and share that my son Nate, who is an EMT, and his ambulance crew play Rise Up before and after every call – a kind of anthem to lift the spirits of those who see hard things. She in turn was moved that through her music she had shared strength in a way she had not imagined.

Andra not only shared her strength, but also our conviction that childhood hunger in America is a solvable problem, pledging to remain engaged and supportive until we’ve solved it. In an interview with Variety on why she supports No Kid Hungry you can hear the authenticity of her commitment: “Making sure that kids have food and making sure that they can sustain themselves and families can sustain right now is of the utmost importance … I love that they organize events like this and they make sure that children are fed. I like that they work in all realms of culture and society and government to help people understand the importance of making sure that kids have access to food.” https://lnkd.in/etctW2fb

As I showed my All Access pass to Security to go backstage afterward, I wondered why we don’t create an All Access pass for every American child, treating them as the VIP’s they are, and ensuring access to every resource for which they are eligible – school meals, SNAP, child care, and quality education, so that they can go wherever their dreams take them. Too many children today have access in theory but not in practice, given all of the bureaucratic, logistical and political obstacles put in their way. It would be reason enough to fix because children are vulnerable and dependent. But we’d actually be doing it for all of us because our economic growth, national security and future peace and prosperity depend on them. As James Baldwin once said “These are all our children, and we shall either profit by or pay for whatever they become.”

It will take reimagining how we embrace and invest in our children. It will take committing to go beyond the incremental progress of individually siloed programs, to a new moral imperative of doing whatever it takes. My wise friend Kevin Taylor wrote me that “the idea of an “All Access pass” shifts the conversation from charity to design, from helping children navigate systems to ensuring systems are built around them; that distinction is where real change begins.” And it is long overdue.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that ICE plans to spend $38.3 billion in acquiring warehouses to convert to detention centers in cities and towns across the country. https://tinyurl.com/y6awtp7x In Kittery, Maine, an innovative new “social services collective” called Mainspring made their neighborhood safer, more beautiful, and more welcoming for $6 million. You decide….

At Mainspring, the Lindt chocolates are what give it away. A small bowl at the reception desk makes a big statement the minute you walk in the door. If hospitality means conveying “we are on your side”, as my friend Danny Meyer defines it for his famed restaurant company, it’s nowhere more important than when aspiring to serve vulnerable people on a day they are seeking shelter, food assistance, health care, or legal services.

If you’ve ever been in such a position, you know life is less a bowl of cherries - or chocolates - than an endless series of appointments, applications, bus rides, makeshift day care arrangements, etc. Mainspring is the opposite – one-stop shopping convenient for the individual, strategic for the community. Those chocolates say “we do things differently here and get different results … not incremental progress, but transformative outcomes.”

The Holy Grail of holistic social services makes common-sense but is stubbornly difficult to achieve. Stars must align for location, funding, collaboration, and local leadership. The most important ingredient, often the most elusive, is determination to escape the strong gravitational pull of business-as-usual, of working in familiar silos, doing things the way they’ve always been done.

Mainspring came together when Emily Flinkstrom, the executive director of Fair Tide, an affordable housing organization, connected with Megan Shapiro-Ross, the executive director of Footprints food pantry. (Both pictured above) Megan remembers that when first starting at Footprints a woman came in who had experienced domestic violence. “My first thought was I can’t just serve food and do this the same way it’s always been done.”

In 2019 the town manager pulled together local social service providers. Collaboration was discussed. Social service agencies were spread all-over town. Emily recalls: “We were both looking for space and when we got this property, we said there is no sense to use this space just for us. Then Covid happened and American Rescue Plan funding. We were sort of the natural agency to pick this up. But we couldn’t just do this the same way. It’s bigger than Footprints and Fair Tide. It’s about how we care for the community.”

There were obstacles to surmount. Having to convince their respective boards. Others in the community were resistant to change. “We were bringing into question the way we’d all been doing this work.” It’s still early days for quantifying impact. Some gets counted, as in 2700 households served, and 60 new cases coming in every month. Some manifest in a different way of talking about poverty, more prevention of homelessness and substance use, and even becoming a resource to the public schools.

In a time of partisan divide, government dysfunction, and economic challenges, the nonprofits we rely on to fill the gap are often held back by inadequate funding, unreasonably low salaries which constrain talent, and uneven public policy execution, But the most debilitating of all, ironically, is the one most in their control; a mentality of business-as-usual.

Much of Share Our Strength’s success has come when escaping business-as-usual’s gravitation pull, whether in moving school breakfast from the cafeteria where it had always been served, to the classroom; or innovating an additional grocery benefit when schools are closed in the summer, increasing the number of kids served from 3 million to 19 million. I’m always searching for other organizations that do the same. They are mostly larger national or international organizations. But Mainspring proves they don’t have to be, that the community-based organizations closer to home and that we know best, can fit the bill.

Certain specific ingredients are necessary: imagination, courage, a strategic sense for leveraging small victories into bigger wins, luck, and above all a determination to do whatever it takes. Megan and Emily brought these qualities to Mainspring along with a willingness to leave ego behind, compromise, have hard conversations, and persist. They made one plus one yield a sum greater than its parts. The result is a community on the way to being born anew. You can learn more and/or donate at https://www.mainspringcollective.org/

Not surprisingly, Mainspring is fielding requests from around the country for information on how to replicate what they’ve built. More requests than ICE gets for new detention centers. Two very different versions of what America can look like. You decide…

Sometimes the brilliance and bravery of our armed forces, for whom I remain grateful every day, obscures the true cost of war – from the suffering of innocent children, to the sacrifices of American families losing SNAP food assistance, HeadStart, and child care, while $200 billion more is requested for combat in Iran on top of the billion dollars a day already spent.

You can’t stand inside a crowded food pantry in rural Maine as I did last Friday and watch everyone from seniors to young moms with kids in tow searching through donated food and feel like we are putting Americans first. Not to mention higher gas prices, long lines at airports, reduced funding for medical research, rising food prices, and steep job losses. (Photo by Troy R. Bennett for The Maine Monitor)

Americans struggling with affordability before the war in Iran at least had the expectation their government would work to address it. Now the focus has shifted, and they must feel as exasperated as one talking about something important, even as the one they were talking to has left the room. Polls suggest they will have more to say about it in November’s mid-term elections. Voters prioritizing affordability are not just voting their own interests. They are voting the interests of the disabled veteran, the 3^rd grader who depends on school breakfast, the small businesses and corner stores who depend on customers with at least some discretionary income. The interests, in other words, of all of us.

If we were truly “America First” we would not have 1.2 million veterans on SNAP food assistance, rank 54^th in infant mortality, last among 11 high income countries in health care access, 31^st out of 34 in child poverty among Organization for Economic and Community Development nations, or be 22^nd out of 24 for seniors in the Global Retirement Index.

Many of America’s problems are solvable if we can find common purpose and build political will. That is especially true for the one I know best – childhood hunger. We have no shortage of food or effective food assistance programs. New research by Share Our Strength shows 90% of Americans expect their political leaders to address hunger in a bipartisan fashion. While we’ve made historic progress reducing childhood hunger, we are not done yet.

Just to bring this full circle, the National School Lunch program was created when American generals and admirals came back from World War II and told Congress that by the end of the war our troops were not as well-nourished as they needed to be to fight effectively. Of potential recruits who were rejected, for about 50% it was because of poor childhood nutrition. The military’s advocacy contributed to passage of the National School Lunch Act, signed by Harry S. Truman in 1946 which explicitly linked school lunches to national security, stating it was: “a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation’s children.”

It’s yet one more reason for the enduring respect I have for our military. And for my belief that the best way to honor them is to honor the Constitution and American values they defend and protect. To be civil not silent. To sacrifice and serve as they do, here in American communities where needs are great and growing. Whether that means donating, volunteering, organizing, voting, and even supporting tax increases that would ensure every American has food, health care, affordable housing, and a good job.

Any reliable road to America First must intersect with America Affordable, America Fair, and America Faithful to its founding principles. As we pray for peace, so must we protect the values that make America worth praying for.

“My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas in a small Mexican-American school. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry… Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see the scars on the hopeful face of a young child…. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students. But now I do have that chance - and I’ll let you in on a secret – I mean to use it …I want to be the president who helped to feed the hungry.”

• President Lyndon Johnson’s message to Congress, March 15, 1965 to urge passage of voting rights legislation

When historian Jon Meacham was asked what was the single best speech ever given by a United States president, he chose LBJ’s post-Selma message to Congress “I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy” and from which comes the still relevant excerpt above, delivered 61 years ago this very day.

Much has changed since then, including presidential priorities. But not our conviction that childhood hunger is solvable, nor our commitment to solving it. If anything, that commitment is stronger than ever, informed by history’s teachings that this hard and complex work, will require the best of us, and will require time.

Even though the world seems on fire most days, as it did during much of the 1960’s, Share Our Strength continues to be blessed with incredible opportunities – and resources - to do what everyone I know is more eager than ever to do: make a difference at a time like this. The progress already made has been incredible. To put it in context, when our No Kid Hungry campaign began, only a minority of kids eligible for school breakfast, about 40%, were getting it. Today a majority of the eligible kids get school breakfast, about 58%. Similarly, 10 years ago, only 3 million kids, about 13% of those eligible, where getting summer meals. This past summer it was 19 million, an overwhelming majority of those eligible. For the first time in the history of the program. We won’t stop until we ensure every child gets every nutritional resource for which they are eligible.

To learn more about how we get such results, go behind the scenes with three of our state directors – Rachel Sabella in New York, Kathy Saile in California, and Stacie Sanchez Hare in Texas in this podcast conversation about our bipartisan efforts at the state and local level. https://shareourstrength.org/podcast/behind-the-scenes-with-the-state-directors-of-no-kid-hungry/ It’s a masterclass in political savvy, effective advocacy, public policy, and community organizing in service of ensuring that kids get three nutritious meals a day.

We’re nowhere near done yet. But we do have proof of concept, not just about breakfast in the classroom or Summer EBT, but proof of concept on working in partnership with state and local governments to knock down every barrier that stands between a hungry child and a healthy meal. We know how to do it, we have the support to do it, and now we can do it even more robustly, more comprehensively, more relentlessly, bringing a whatever it takes mentality to the task.

Hunger is not mentioned once in this front-page Wall Street Journal article about steep job losses. Conversely few hunger organizations talk about employment or job creation. But historically there has been no stronger correlation than that between food insecurity and unemployment. If you don’t see hungry kids when you look at these stats, you’re not fully understanding what they mean. https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/february-jobs-report-unemployment-1d7d1a9b

This underscores the ambitious task that Share Our Strength has undertaken: to think holistically about the challenges children and families face. It takes more than food to fight hunger. It also takes childcare, affordable housing, quality education. Doing our work in silos results in stronger silo’s but not a stronger system to create opportunity and economic mobility for those in need.

Nothing puts the crisis in “affordability crisis” like being out of a job. Then almost nothing is affordable. The loss of 92,000 jobs this past month and the increase in overall unemployment to 4.4% obscures black unemployment at 7.7%. If that were the case for white unemployment, there would be a political as well as an affordability crisis. At 5.2%, Hispanic unemployment is also unacceptably high.

Barely a word is heard from policymakers about these issues today. The focus has shifted to Venezuela, Iran, and the Middle East – all above my paygrade. What I do know is that the burden on civil society, nonprofits, and community organizations, already heavy, is certain to grow. If we don’t have the power to influence international affairs – and I’ve spoken to three United States Senators in the past week who despair that given the current political dynamic we don’t - we must redouble our efforts to strengthen community at home. Hunger is as damaging to the future of our children as anything a foreign power can inflict. It is also solvable if we have the will.

When economic and political markets fail, and leave many struggling Americans falling between the cracks, the nonprofit sector is left to mitigate the damage. Some of that requires raising and spending more money. Much of it means raising our voices on behalf of voices not heard. At Reverand Jess Jackson’s funeral last week, former President Obama acknowledged that it’s hard to hope in those moments and that it may be tempting “for even for good people to maybe just put your head down and wait for the storm to pass.”

But that storm doesn’t pass for hungry kids. Nor for their parents or caregivers. It only passes if we act, speak, donate, volunteer, vote, serve, organize. Thus Obama’s plea to step up, “Wherever we have a chance to make an impact, whether it’s in our school or our workplaces or our neighborhoods or our cities, not for fame, not for glory, or because success is guaranteed, but because it gives our life purpose, because it aligns with what our faith tells us God demands, and because if we don’t step up, no one else will.”