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just one year with Bloomerang, they doubled their unique donors, improved donor stewardship and raise more funds to listen to the full interview of First Tee of greater Akron visit bloomerang.com/we are for good, or click the link in our show notes. Hey, I'm John. And I'm Becky. And this is the We Are For Good podcast.
Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. Becky, what's happening,
I tell you what, John, I need to I need to start out a little differently with our intro today because you know how proud I am of my Italian heritage. And if there is anything that happens with Italians, it's that we gather around a really big meal, we break bread together. And those are some of the most joyous, happy memories of my life. And I think about if you remove that meal, like the loss of identity, the loss of community, the loss of nutrition, I mean, we are holding court, and we want to create space this season to talk about what is happening with the food crisis here, not just in the United States, but it's happening globally, folks. And so we are so honored today to bring in a complete expert and powerhouse Luis Guardia, who's the president of Food Research and Action Center. And they are working to end hunger in America, we talk about getting to the systemic root of issues so deeply and nonprofit. And today we're going to be diving into food scarcity. But first I want to give you a little bit of background on Luis who has this amazing winding path and nonprofit. But prior to coming to FRAC, I love that acronym, by the way. He served in the top leadership roles in global philanthropy and international development organizations including, you know, little places like global impact, the ONE Campaign, the International Center for Research on Women, thank you for that Luis. And he's had just a beginning career in arts and media with NPR and the Guggenheim Collection. But Luis just really has this heart for improving nutrition, health and well being of people who are just struggling against poverty related hunger in the US. So we're going to be talking about advocacy, we're going to be talking about partnerships. I hope you're buckled up because we want you educated today. And we're going to make sure that we can activate you no matter where you are in your corner of the world. Louise, welcome to your for good podcast for thrilled your hair.
Thank you so much, Becky, it's great to be here. And yeah, a great introduction, you know, the connection of with between people and food and their history, their community. It just, it's one of those universal things that kind of connects all of us, right,
indeed. And I just want to thank our friends, Jeff hair, and Sarah Adelson at the Artemis agency who connected us with your mission. And we just are fascinated by it. And before we dive into what Frank is doing to really disrupt this movement in time, we want to get to know you first. So take us back and like tell us about little Louise, where did he grow up? Why does he care about things like this today? And kind of share your passions with us? Yeah, so
yeah, Becky, it's really quite interesting. You know, people look at my background, and they see International Development, they see the arts and like, holy cow. How did this how does this all weave together? So my entire career has really been in nonprofits and in nonprofits that, like all nonprofits, you know, we're looking to make a change. I started out in museum in the arts, I was an art history major. Yes. For all those parents out there and thinking, Oh, what am I going to do with an art degree? Well, they could end hunger they could do. Are you feeling that?
It was my minor? Yeah. I mean, you could podcast that works.
Exactly. So yeah, I mean, when I started my career in art museums, it was all about connection and get a getting people connected to the artwork. There was connecting school kids with, with important cultural institutions in their communities. And that took me to, to sort of broaden my potential to do different things and go to business school, and the idea was, well, I'll go to business school. We'll and I'll get a management degree and I'll go back and work in museums. And I did so. And then love happened. I went to my first job, my first job after business school, I was working in an art museum and I was headed. I want to say, sorry, interoffice relationship, but if it maybe it was up before I started dating, a colleague, and and she and she said, Look, you know, we're both sort of starting on our careers, this is probably not the best way to start at our careers. You have an MBA, you can go do whatever you want. I'm an artist story. And I was like, wait, I'm sorry, you too. She goes, Yeah, but you have this other degree. So that's when I connected with another former colleague of mine that I knew from nonprofit who happened to be in public broadcasting. And I, you know, you know, who's not a fan of NPR, right, we all live in New York. And when I got to NPR, it was such an exciting environment and US environment, a lot of production going on. And also just that ability to connect listeners to important issues of the day things that they probably have heard a little bit about that the the movement more deeper explanation, or things that they didn't know about, you know, at NPR, we always talked about kind of, you know, shining the light on the shadows of the corners of our society. And that it took me to, to another position in public broadcasting. So that was a little bit more public policy oriented at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, got involved in grant making, and connecting people with, with, with their communities, to their local, Public Radio, public television stations. And one of the one of the amazing things there was learn, that's sort of when I first started learning about a lot of the inequities that exist in our own country, particularly in groups like like native country, I'm fortunate now, to do a little bit of a little bit of work there. And just through kind of more a desire to do more in the social justice area that led me through international development and places like one an IC or W, and then wanted to round out my like, my portfolio with philanthropy and understand that world better. And the opportunity came up. Here at FRAC, an organization that I've known about for a long time, I have huge respect for the media, this is one of the organizations that has really made a huge, huge difference in the lives of millions of people across the country. That not not a whole lot of people know about. So it's sort of again, you know, kind of shining light on a story and, and a group of people that are doing tremendous work, and particularly now at a time when there's so much need,
I mean, what a beautiful story. And I love that you kind of circled back to the NPR mission threading that because when you're explaining it, I'm like, I feel like that's what frack is doing. You know,
we're doing too, and like I just wanted everybody can shine a light in the shadows is a wonderful, very wonderful idea.
So I'm part of today's combo, we want to take this issue out of the shadows. And I wonder if you kind of do that through the lens of fracks mission and kind of their history. And I know that's a big question, but break down, like what are the programs look like to because somebody listening this, never heard of it? Take us take us through real quick,
right. So you know, it's interesting to elevate this thing. I started here at FRAC right at the beginning of the pandemic, maybe maybe a couple days before we know, people were getting sick, and we weren't quite sure what was going on. And then people in Seattle in the West Coast started getting sick. And then we realized, Oh, this is going to be a big deal. And before but before that became a big deal, and we saw the impact that had on people's lives for the economic crisis, the health crisis and the ensuing hunger crisis. At FRAC, and a lot of other anti hunger organizations were kind of, you know, running up and down the streets, our hair on fire, say, we have a hunger problem, we have a hunger problem. And a lot of folks like, well, I don't know, I you know, my neighbor doesn't seem hungry, or you know, you know, I see them, you know, walking their dog. But we we knew that hunger live, we had a campaign called hunger lives here, because it existed in places where you didn't see it. A great example of this is one of one of our campaigns that we do around college hunger. People don't always associate people going to college and having those opportunities facing food insecurity. It happens. So when the pandemic struck, everybody became aware of it because no, and because people really didn't know about the solutions that were essentially they're hiding in plain sight. Things like the SNAP program, the school meals program, the women infants and children's program that helps up mom and are very and very young children and food programs that provide nutrition for the small neighborhood Mom and Pop daycare centers. It's So many people in this country rely on to take care of their kids and nourish their kids while they go to work and build the lives that they want to build. All these things needed to step up in ways that were that we just not not seen before. Because we saw food pantries and food banks kind of stretched to the limit. It just, we end. And we we've known from prior experiences, we can't food bank or our way out of hunger, we really need big, meaningful, innovative solutions, like the kinds governments can provide. And this is, and this is kind of what we're FRAC was able really, to step in,
I feel like you know, with with topics that are this big and that are complex, and obviously solving them are complex, it points to a trend that we really wanted to dive into this year, because we feel like it's paramount to solving and creating the impact uprising that we talk about on this podcast, is this idea of locking arms for impact, and getting out of our lanes that it's not going to be the nonprofit, it's not going to be just the government. It's not gonna be corporations, but we've got to figure out ways to like, link up syncope? Is that is that been true of what you've seen happened since the pandemic too? I mean, how is it look like trying to get activated and do these big things? You can't just work in one lane, right?
Absolutely. And all the all those institutions that you mentioned, like what's the one thing they have in common, and that is people, people like you, people like me, it's you know, whether whether we volunteer, or whether we donate, or whether we call and write our congressman and say, you know, the, these programs are important to be strong, and, and be accessible. So, you know, all those things, all those institutions that you mentioned, really kind of require folks to be committed. And that's one of the things that we're, that's that's big on our radar is to build a national commitment around ending hunger. And that sort of the first thing is what we were just saying is that it's here it exists, you know, we know that we know there's a problem. And in COVID, only, like a lot of things call me COVID only made it worse, it revealed weaknesses in our, in our public health system, they revealed a lot of weaknesses in people's overall economic security. And, and when it came down to food, the programs really, really did need to step in. And when we, you know, essentially, when I started, we said, you know, what are the key things that we need to do? Well, we need to bolster the SNAP benefits, we need to make sure that the school meal programs can step in, because so many kids relied on school meals for further nutrition. And, and programs that provide specialized nutrition, like WIC and others, needed to become more accessible, because a lot of these programs were, were created at a time when people weren't thinking about a global pandemic, right. And they weren't thinking about an economic crisis that the likes we haven't seen in a generation.
Yeah, you know, I can reconcile a lot of things in this life, but I can't reconcile a hungry child, especially living in the wealthiest country in the world. And, you know, John, and I were lucky enough to be in a mentoring program for about a decade through our former health care organization. And it was, you know, your classic inner city school 90%, free and reduced lunch. And I saw, we saw firsthand what happens when kids come to school hungry, and what that does to impact every part of their world. And I'm just really curious about the statistics that your research is finding because we truly value science and data. And this and as fundraisers, we need data to be able to inform in everything that we do, and our next steps, and I know you're no different. So educate us on what your research is showing right now. And where are the opportunities for people to plug in or maybe to stop doing certain things?
Yeah. So yeah, the numbers were just astounding. Before prior to the pandemic, there are about 35, and little over 35 million people who are food insecure in this country, about one in 10. This was in 2019. And then in 2020, sort of at the height of the pandemic in December, we saw that increase to one in seven, one in seven people. And, and, and yeah, but and the thing about it is, it's abated, because of the programs and the stuff we've done, but it hasn't abated all that we're still talking about one in nine people is to we're still worse off than we were pre pandemic and that's really, really important because, as I was saying before, pre pandemic we had there was a hunger problem and, and we so we can't, we really can't turn back from what we've been doing to help people get out of it. And on the on I'm on the when you're talking about kids, we know that that the school meal programs, as I said, you know, are central to a lot of kids getting the key nutrition that they need some low income kids, that's the only nutrition that they're gonna get is through school. And so when, when the school systems, and when everything kind of shuttered, we said, we need to find a way we need government to innovate and find a way to get meals to children, when they can access their schools. And that and we really push for a program we've been pushing for, for a long time called pandemic or for an EBT program stands for electronic benefits transfer card, it's kind of like a credit card, where the benefits are loaded, and you can use them at the store to to buy food, it's a lot of the way snap, or what formerly was called Food Stamps rooms now. And it's a great much more dignified way for people to buy food, you know, that they don't have to, like tear off the, the stamps, and they can use the card reader just like Everest like other people use. Use that and, and we had, we needed a similar thing for kids. And so the other thing that we push for is that when schools could provide food meals, we said, we need to have healthy school meals available for all children, all children, regardless of their income level. And people will say, Oh, yeah, that's great. And then people start thinking, Well, you know, what, you're going to feed a wealthy? What are you going to begin to do as you get? Well, first of all, there's not gonna be that many wealthy kids who are probably going to offer this but if there are, you know, that's, that's a great thing is to have, like what you were saying, Becky, at the very beginning, you know, food brings people together. And when we saw people being able to children being able to access healthy school meals at without the barriers that were there before, we saw a tremendous, you know, we heard from from school people tremendous improvement in in attendance, and, and in behavior, and a lot of other key key indicators that they look at. And here's the other thing that we saw. And this is something that seems to be that's a little bit harder to talk about, is certainly the stigma and shame that when that went away, when people had universal access, you know, we would hear horrible stories of kids having their lunch thrown in the trash in front of them when they get to the register, because they can't afford it, or because they might have outstanding school meal. Or they might get their hand or hand stamp. I mean, you know, it's, you know, it's the system that you know, of not being able to have school meals available. So we would hear these, and we didn't hear any of these horrible shame stories during during the time when they were universally available. But that ended back in June, in June, the waivers that USDA allowed to have all schools provide school meals ended. I mean, people could still get school meals, if they qualify for them. Or they might get the reduced price school meal, but the universality of it, and it and we were hearing some of these, these things come back and we're the other thing we're hearing is we're hearing about parents who might have come into the school meal program during COVID. And now they realize, oh, wait, it's not available anymore. And I got to apply for it. How do I apply for it? You know, maybe, maybe English isn't my first language or maybe, you know, I might I might have difficulty navigating the bureaucracy of it or, you know, I just didn't know how this worked before. So it left a lot of people scrambling. The good news of this is you know, even even though that ended we see a lot of states and states like California Colorado just recently passed a ballot initiative of Vermont they've made the commitment to feed their kids full stop and we want to see that continue we were going to continue to push it at the federal level make no no make no bones about it. This needs to be this needs to be everywhere throughout our country. But but but states much to their credit they're kind of taking lead because you know they're they're close with they see it every day.
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Well, I mean, we ran across an interview of Christie, who's a high schooler in California, that was part of the healthy school meals for all campaign and I just, I loved her quote. So I want to lift that and maybe be a jumping off point. But she said, having free school meals for all in California has definitely contributed to my sense of community at school. And so community is not only just one of our core values, we just know it's intrinsically so important to thriving as an individual, especially the students. Can you talk about that? I mean, share about how the program and the impact that it's taking shape in California and maybe other states?
Yeah, absolutely. So we're hearing a lot of a lot of great things we're hearing, it's really kind of a win win win across the board. It's a win for, for the school administrators, because there's less hassle, there is less paperwork, it's a win for teachers, because they have children that are better, better nursed and ready to learn. It's, it's better for kids and parents of overall mental health and physical health, right? Because they're getting the nutrition there, there was less worry about how it was it was all going to kind of work out. And, and we're in we're hearing just just much like what we were saying at the beginning, you know, people can you know, what a wonderful thing it is when people can come together, share a meal, and have that be, you know, not have lunchtime not have cafeteria be an anxiety producing part of the kid's day. Yes, that's I mean, that goes a tremendous way in terms of building community and just building a much more positive experience for our kids.
And I love that the voice of Gen Z is in this because they're so hardwired, and they're so prone to like want to support causes in any way that they can so want to give Christy a big shout out for like hitching her wagon to that. And I just think we need so many Christy's, across the board who are leaning into this, and I want to share a quick story of something that I saw happen that I think really in my community that really underscores why I think community has got to be the underpinning of this, and I just want to support your comments, had a friend on Facebook, who sits on a very in a very small town on their school board. And the school board was wrestling with what to do with all of this outstanding debt with their lunch program, and what are they going to do with it? And as the school board is wrestling with this, do we forgive it? Do we pay it? Do we ask for the parents to come in and pay it? Someone socialize this and there was such an outcry from the town that said, we don't care what the circumstances, we want our kids to be fed. And so before they can even make a judgement about it, the community stepped in and individual stepped in and completely erased all of that debt themselves. Because they had a belief that we don't want kids in our town hungry. And it doesn't matter where the burden is, we just want the burden to go away. And we want the kids to get fed. And so I really celebrate like that small town here in Oklahoma who would rise and understand that because I think it's so basic. And I think it's so innate. And I would just love to talk about how you're casting that ripple. Louise like one of our big trends that John mentioned is we're really exploring this locking arms for impact and how you can gather like minded friends, partners, corporations, what however they show up and build a bigger impact together. So talk to us a little bit. Talk to us a little bit about what you've learned throughout your career in philanthropy. And in this current role as it relates to partnerships and collaborations that deepen the impact and help you run faster and further.
Absolutely. Well. The short answer is I think most people in any kind of philanthropic endeavor. No, you can't do it alone. You simply just can't do it alone. You need to do it through partnerships and FRAC isn't an interesting place because we have a network of hundreds of state and local, anti hung groups across the country. So, you know, at FRAC, we have a small but mighty team here in Washington DC advocating at the national level. And we're and through through modern technology tools, we're able to provide technical assistance and support for all of our state and local partners across in their in every state in the country, in some places, more than others. But we're, but we are everywhere, because Because hunger, unfortunately, still is everywhere. And these these folks are, they're doing an amazing job. A lot of them are organizations model very much like FRAC. Like we have partners in Maryland and DC, Maryland Hunger Solutions, DC Hunger Solutions in Oklahoma we have we have an organization as well there that does tremendous work. And all these are and they're and sometimes they're, they're slightly different. Sometimes they're the food bank, or they're, they might be another organization, but they all have this connection to community that is so important. And that gives them the knowledge of what's happening in people's lives. And they can take that and they can articulate that to local leaders, as you're talking about the local school boards, you know, a lot of stuff happens at the local level. And then we can take that through organizations like FRAC, and then we can help build an awareness at the federal level. So people in Congress know about it. So the White House knows about it. So people at USDA Department of Education or whatever, whoever else needs to know about it, we rely on that network of, of folks who are working with community. And I'm really proud to say that we, you know, we've been, we've also been working a lot with people of community have lived expertise in poverty, hunger, and training, and lifting up their voices. Because, you know, we, we sit here in DC Yeah, we work at the numbers, and we know that folks in Congress, we can talk to them. But, but much as much like you were saying, you know, it's those voices and people having access to those stories and understanding what's, what's happened in people's lives, that's going to make a difference. And yes, and we and even the advocacy of the philanthropic community, the corporate community, everybody has a role to play in this because, you know, we, food comes through the commercial process. We even like we have a saying, for example, the SNAP program, snap is one of the one of the beauties of it is it rides on the regular rails of commerce. And so a uses the infrastructure that already exists, and uses the distribution systems to food stores that existed that. And we think that's so important, not just for accessibility, but also for dignity. Because, you know, we work so closely with, with the communities of people who lived expertise in poverty, hunger and other low income communities, we hear a lot about the importance of dignity and just, you know, wanting to be treated like everybody.
Thank you for saying so many of those things that resonate with how we really want to encourage organizations listening to show up and how you center your local community and Youth Center proximity at your mission at every level. So people listening I wonder Luis, like how can we get involved like how can local organizations get involved with the work you're doing at FRAC and they'll do so much I just the research aspects, and obviously the lobbying and just connecting with people in Washington aspects to what does it look like to get involved from an organizational level with you?
Well, for folks who are listening, we have a fantastic we have fantastic resources on our website, FRAC fr ac dot o RG. We have connections there to something we call the FRAC action network that we will routinely activate when we need to make sure that policymakers hear from their local communities. For example, if there if there is something like an upcoming drop in SNAP benefits, like we might be seeing this spring, unfortunately, that might lead to a hunger quit, people need to know that those things are going to impact their, their communities or the the inability, inability of having the level of access to school meals that people had before. People, if people can Can, can become part of that community. Through the FRAC website, we have links to all of our other state and local partners. And we have we have abilities for people to contribute and donate. And this is really, really important because one of the things because, you know, as we talked about earlier, I did a lot of I've been in a lot of different parts of filling Anthropy and one of the things that I have seen time and time again, is that, unfortunately, a lot of the some of the most impactful things in, in our, in our society are groups like like fracking in our state and local groups that are working to change policy. And, you know, it's not always as sexy as, as some direct service goes. But in terms of the value that people are getting in terms of the of the impact that can be made through advocacy is tremendously important. And so sometimes, Oregon, these kinds of organizations, they kind of get lost in the sauce know that, oh, it's a it's a think tank, it might be a foundation or whatever, no, we're, we're a community of people and, and are experts and are providing important services, an important education up and down the chain of of policymaking and to enter into people who, who need to hear this message. So, so I would, I would encourage people when you know, when you're thinking about ending hunger, you know, you know, think about your local advocacy or say, think about FRAC these. You know, we know that as I was saying, Before, you know, people learned early on, we can't Food Bank our weekend, at a hunger charity alone can't do it, we often cite a figure that for every one meal provided by a food bank, snap provides nine. So we're almost talking about a 10x level of difference. And that's just on the SNAP program where you can add in some of the other programs that I mentioned earlier. And it's, it's might even be more impressive. But it's important that, that these organizations get the support from their local communities and from people both in terms of their their philanthropy, but also their engagement because, you know, they need, they need the support to run the programs that they need. But they also need the voice, to be able to, to say to people in positions of authority and power, hey, this stuff is important, we need to end hunger now hungry, people can't wait. They can't
wait. And the thing that I hear you saying is, everybody has a role to play in this. And if you have nothing to give beyond your voice and your advocacy, that's enough. And I'd love to just throw a challenge out to everybody who's listening right now. Find a local hunger organization, and go volunteer an hour or two there, I will tell you, my family. And I did this back in November, and we took our kids and we went with the church group. And so there was like 20 of us. And I will tell you, the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma did an unbelievable job of not making it a transit transactional experience for us. When we came in, they did frontline education, first of all, Bravo Regional Food Bank, because you captured all my information and had a kiosk for me to be able to put my credit card in and make a gift or do certain things. And now I get regular feedback. So it's communications person, I love that. But honestly, they educated me and my children, about what's happening in our community, kids that were standing next to, you know, in certain public places. And then we went and worked for two hours. And then they didn't send us home, they sent us back into the big room. And they said, here's the impact of what every group here did today. Here's how many pounds we loaded. Here's how many people that's going to translate to. And now we want you to tell your friends what you were able to do to feed people in your community, and it had a profound effect on my kids. I just think there is something to be learned in gratitude of what we have, and sharing generously what we have with others that don't. So thank you for lifting that, Louise and I just think this is a conversation that everyone can relate to. Because y'all we love good food, and everyone deserves to know what it feels like to have good food in their bellies. So we've told a lot of stories, at least I have on this episode. But we really value the story that connects us and philanthropy. And I wonder if there's a story, Louise of philanthropy that has moved in your life that has stuck with you and wondered if you would share it with us today?
Yeah, absolutely. I have been privileged to have seen several in, in the various parts of my career that we talked about before, but the one that really kind of sticks with me is, you know, before when I was working International Development, one of the things I was really passionate about in that line of work, which relates to this line of work is is agriculture and food security. And we visited a site where, through through a US program USA ID program. smallholder farmers were able to learn how to improve their farming techniques. But here's the Everything also, they were also able to learn how to monetize it, how to maximize the their income for this and that is super, super important because as most people know, in business, those middle parts of the value chain, that's where a lot of value is created. And in the illustration of this was so amazing. We talked to this woman, she she shared with us her story, and then she she was so proud of her home, she wanted to show us her home. Oh, yeah, that's great. That's good home. And so when we enter the serger, one, and we enter through a, what you can call almost sort of like an outdoor utility space, it was kind of kind of twig walls in in sort of a corrugated tin roof. And you said, and I was like, Is this your house, she goes, Well, this is part of my she goes, this is my first home. And then this is kind of what I first started to the program when I first started learning about how how to improve my life. And then she took us to it to a second part of her house, which had cinderblock walls. So it's a little bit better than the there was still a dirt floor. And in each part of the room, each part of the house is where she used to, like store various elements of her of her food business that she didn't, that she had created into this is my second home. And then she took us to our third part of our home, which was like this, you know, nice plaster wall, she had a sofa, TV, a stereo, one of her one of one of our children was playing a, you know, a video game that was there. And she said, you know, this, this, she says, this represents my journey, this was my journey to being able to provide more for my family, and being able to, and being a being able to feed them and feed my community. And I was like, oh, gosh, just like, we, the cool thing was we literally walked through that each stage of her life, and we got a sense of how each stage of her life was. And and I think even even though that happened, you know, 1000s of miles away in Tanzania, we I still see that here, I still see that parts here where people are like, yes, you know, I'm trying to build a better life for my kids and for my family. And I want to have the economic agency and the resiliency that that you have, and other people have. Because and and that's that's where these programs are so important, because that's what they're doing. They're driving economic growth, and they're ultimately driving people to build a better life for themselves.
Man, what a story. And I mean, what an experience, I can understand why that is stuck with you. We get to be witness to a lot of stories of a man that when is really like walking through someone's life and right in front of you play out literally walking through it. Yeah, literally amazing. Well, I mean, as we start to round out this conversation, you've given us so much, I think for anybody that's looking to build partnerships to this listening that's wanting to plug in locally in their community to be part of this change. Like, we asked all of our guests to give us a one good thing, and we define that as it could be a secret to your success or a habit, or a piece of advice that maybe relates to what we talked about today, what would you leave us with today?
You know, I would say, having a really clear understanding, you know, because so much of what I'm what I'm what I'm thinking about is kind of shaped by the sort of the crucible that was COVID. Right, you know, so many things happening in an intense way really, really fast. And, and none of us had a playbook for you know, most last time you lived through a global
Thank you 17.
Spanish, I missed that one. But here, but here's the thing, in organization, we talked a lot about our values. And if you if you have a really kind of clear understanding of your values, a lot of other things kind of start to fall into place. And and here's Thank you. But it's also important to be brutally honest about what those values are, it's also important that they have have the sort of the self awareness to be in this. And I think this sort of talks about us as individuals as well, step outside yourself and be aware of how other people value you, you know, you might have, you might say, Well, I think I'm really, really good at this. And people are like, well, maybe I don't see that part of you and thinking about that. So when you know, when we were trying to figure out the role we were going to play in getting more support to people. And where we're going to focus our attention. We relied on our values. And we also had to say okay, where where does FRAC fit in, we know what the emergency food distribution people are doing. We know what this groups are doing. You know, let's figure out how we can make sure we can we can have the federal programs do as much as possible. So that that kind of awareness is is is really super important.
And I love that your one good thing was about abundance, because that's really what we're working toward is having abundance of food so that people can go out and live their lives. When you're well fed, you have more energy, your your head is clear. You have joy, there's less worry. I just think about the mental health benefits, not just the physical. So found out Absolutely. So Louise, tell people how they can connect with you. How can they connect with frat give us? Where are you hanging out on socials in any way they can come and even make a gift and where that gift would be most needed at your organization? Well, we
have a set of great programs on on our website. So if you get a frac.org, there'll be links there for donations, and you can learn more, learn more about the programs, we have, we have a tremendously important year coming up. And we can really use people's support. There's a farm bill coming up. The Farm Bill is the big piece of monster federal legislation that governs not just farmers and farm credit and all that other stuff. But it also governs the nutrition programs as well, it's all part of the same thing. And so we want to make sure that that we can learn from the lessons of COVID. And we're doing a lot of outreach to our state and local groups. And we want to make sure that there's a robust, a robust set of information that policymakers know about what worked and what didn't work, in terms of of making that change. So it's good to frack dot o RG fr ac dot o RG make a contribution to frack that's going to help us do what we need to do to make sure we can continue putting food on the table of people in need. We also have a amazing campaign we talked about earlier to make school meals available for all kids, regardless of their income across the country. It's a healthy school meals for all campaign, that there's a lot of a lot of hard work from the team that's going into that. And we're also wanting to build awareness of all this stuff. And so all that it takes, it takes partnership, it takes commitment, it also takes resources. And that's that's where we can really use us people's help. So so we would be tremendously grateful. And we would love to invite people to join us in the fight to end hunger in this country, where, you know, we were getting really, really, really close. But, but still a lot of people in need. And in, you know, these kinds of moments that come once every 100 years, or once every generation where the focus and the pain just becomes So, so apparent that that people really, really can't ignore it. So yeah, this is this is the moment this moment, and we really need people's help to get it over the finish line. Now is the time. Absolutely.
Yeah. I mean, immense gratitude to you and your team that are pouring into this work in such a hardwired way. This has been an awesome conversation and just feel buoyed to know that you're doing your thing in the world and Lincoln arms with all these incredible organizations on the frontlines all across the country. So thank you. Yeah,
yeah, and I forgot to mention and follow us on Twitter, FRAC tweets.
The best handle ever. Yeah. Priming, you have a great acronym. Let's be clear. The acronyms really. And
it's seven letters to remember the web address. It's frac.org it's just easy.
Thanks. Yeah, no, we, we, you know, sometimes when people are like, Oh, well, what part of the food cycle or what part of the food processor Do you work on? But, but there's a tremendous amount of information there. And I met Frank pres PrPSc. On Twitter, I'm also pretty, I'm also pretty active on LinkedIn. So people can find me Luis Cordia. On on LinkedIn, and we'd love to, we'd love to connect with more people and in find more ways to partner with with folks who are listening.
Well, you are a bright light in the world, Louise, I just want to send my appreciation to you to your team, and to the way that you get the information out. And if friends if this resonated with you, if this is striking you as something that is really connected to your heart, do a 1% shift this year, find a way to do one thing to get involved to lend your voice, lend your time, lend your dollars if you have them, but we need people to be fed. It's a basic necessity in the richest country in the world in wherever you are in the world. So please lean in and be a part of this movement. Thank you, Luis.
Thank you. Thanks so much for the opportunity, and thanks for everything you guys are doing for all the great colleges out there.
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