Stuff Parents Need

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. 

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. 

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!