Ending Hunger

In my last blog entry, I shared the challenge I made to my staff: to rescue an additional three million pounds of food over the coming year in response to the growing need for food in our city. In response, a volunteer posed a powerful question to me about City Harvest’s mission. As he or she pointed out, our mission is to end hunger: “Is food rescue really an effective means of ending hunger? Or does it just stave off the hunger for one more day?”

I know this question well because I’ve asked it myself. When I joined City Harvest as Senior Director of Program Development in 2004, my role centered around the development of initiatives to address longer term issues that surround hunger. Today, in addition to meeting the immediate needs of hungry New Yorkers with rescued food, we’re also working to ensure that people have regular access to healthy food – which is what it means to end hunger.

Volunteers at City Harvest began rescuing food more than 25 years ago in response to the hunger so many of our neighbors were experiencing. We’re still best known for our work rescuing food. But we’ve also developed programs to increase the availability of affordable, good quality food in targeted low income neighborhoods and courses to teach people to prepare nutritious meals on a budget. Most recently, we launched a buying club in partnership with FreshDirect to bring residents of the South Bronx high quality food at a discount.

I think that the success of programs that address hunger’s root causes also depends on making sure that people have the food they need to be healthy today. That’s where food rescue comes in. Both are key to ending the cycle of hunger, poor health, and poverty.