Stuff Parents Need

Easing the chaos in the nest, one find at a time.

Turning the Tables on Hunger Starts with Something Simple: Share a Meal

· by · Leave a Comment

Friends, could I ask for 4 minutes of your time to watch a powerful documentary short? Unilever Project Sunlight has just released it, and it showed me something I REALLY needed to see:

The face of hunger doesn’t always look like what we think, does it? A hungry child might be sitting right next to your own child at school, or might live in the house next door to yours. Hunger is penetrating every city and even every neighborhood. You can never be too sure about what other people might be going through, even if everything seems on the surface to be just fine.

When my family and I make donations to our local food bank, I try to involve my children as much as possible. When my oldest asks why we are giving food away, I explain it like this: everyone on this planet needs some kind of help from other people at some point or another. Maybe the help needed is money or food. Maybe it’s love. Maybe it’s a certain set of skills. Whatever it is, we all have to rely on others somewhere along the way. Right now, it’s our turn to give because we are able to do so. Tomorrow, it might be our turn to ask for help. I want her to understand why giving is so important, and I also want her to understand that the truth is, none of us are very many tragedies away from being in dire need.

I want to encourage you to take a moment to share a meal, in whatever form that might take for you. It might mean calling up your local food pantry and asking what they need donated. It might mean volunteering in a community garden, or even committing to teaching yourself a bit about gardening so that you can grow some of your own food, and also share your harvest with neighbors. It might mean getting involved in a great organization that works to end food deserts in communities, like the Junior League of Chattanooga (I’m so proud to be part of this amazing group of women!). We are partnering with other great organizations to ensure that people all over the city can have fresh produce. You’d be shocked to realize just how many people in most communities cannot get access to fresh fruits and veggies on a regular basis.

Or perhaps you can just commit to getting to know your neighbors a little better in the coming weeks. You may learn about some struggles that you didn’t know were going on, and then you may be better poised to help out in some way.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Unilever. The opinions and text are all mine.

Busy Next Week? Want to Help End Childhood Hunger? Let’s Do It!

· by · 1 Comment

Special thanks to The Motherhood for partnering with me to make this Feed the Children post possible. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own, as always. 

When I was 21 years old and knew everything about how I wanted my future to look, I headed off to graduate school to become a lobbyist for social justice organization. I wanted to work really hard and do REALLY good work that would change lives for the better. 

feed children logo 1

The story of why I don’t do that for a living is a long one (and it actually gets unpacked in an upcoming podcast, so stay tuned!) but suffice to say that I am THRILLED to be showcasing an organization that is working tirelessly to create a better world. Specifically, Feed the Children has a vision that we will live in a world where no child goes to bed hungry. This organization works in all 50 states, as well as in 18 countries to provide healthy food, safe water, education and job training to kids and their families.

Take a moment, if you will, to think about your children. Perhaps some of you have experienced first hand the anguish of not being able to provide basic needs, like adequate food. I do not personally know this pain, but I am in tears at there mere thought of it. And it is a stark reality for hundreds of millions of people across the globe.

Thank God for Feed the Children! What an important mission: to protect childhood by working to eradicate hunger as one of its thieves. Ending childhood hunger may sound completely overwhelming and not realistic, but nothing is impossible when people work together for a greater good.

Feed the Children has fiercely dedicated staff, generous donors and amazing ideals. But that is not enough to eliminate childhood hunger. Better partnerships are the missing link! Partnering with others can be a hugely effective force to help attack the root causes of poverty, and to get beyond providing food, which will nourish only for a day. Feed the Children wants to help empower families just like yours to work for lasting change by bringing together organizations, businesses, community groups and individuals to attack the problem from all angles. Feed the Children would love to work itself out of a job. 

feed the children child

 

How Working Together Works

 

I want to share an example of how Feed the Children is partnering with other groups to make LASTING change. The Oklahoma Summer Food and Education program is a pilot program that has recently launched in Oklahoma City. Over 300,000 children participate in the free and reduced school lunch program, which is not in operation during summer months. That leaves all of these children without a stable source of nutrition. While there is a summer program by the USDA that helps fill that gap, very few agencies in Oklahoma are involved with it. Feed the Children saw this as an opportunity to step in and fill the gap between the resources and the needs. By forming a partnership with the USDA Food and Nutrition Services, more families will have longer term support, and private sources of funding can be directed to these children with need to help with educational resources, backpacks for the next school year, and supplies. Research will also be conducted to identify ways to better solve summer food insecurity in ways that will be more cost-effective and far-reaching. By partnering together with other organizations that are concerned about this issue, serious progress is going to be made in Oklahoma this summer, and thousands upon thousands of children will be getting the food and other relevant resources they would have otherwise gone without.

Let’s Chat More About Feed the Children (on Twitter!)

I want to unpack this issue more, and really investigate how individuals and families can be part of Feed the Children’s important work. Let’s meet up on Twitter for a chat about this very important issue! Will you join me there on Wednesday, July 9th? We’ll be tweeting from 1-2pm ET, and all you need to do is follow the hashtag #HelpKidsBeKids. See you then, friends!