Taking the Fight Against Hunger Personally

This successful systems analyst had been a teenage bride in North Carolina decades ago, working 16 hours a day at a cotton mill to support herself and her unemployed husband. After their son, Phillip, was born, her husband moved out and never returned. Because of cutbacks at work, Bonham’s hours were slashed and she found herself unable to afford groceries. She wrapped empty boxes and placed them under the Christmas tree, so her friends and neighbors wouldn’t know the depths of her financial struggle.

She applied to the federal WIC program, which gives food to low-income women, infants, and children up to age 5.

“Thirty-five years later I can still tell you what I was able to pick up at the grocery store with that WIC coupon; six gallons of milk, three dozen eggs, four boxes of cereal, four 48 oz. cans of juice and two pounds of cheese,” she says. “We lived off that diet for a year-and-a-half. I felt like a failure. It wasn’t the life I wanted for either of us.”

Eventually, she moved in with her parents and took a clerking job. Five years later she was financially secure enough to move out. She raised her son, worked her way up at Liberty Mutual, and now enjoys a comfortable life in Portsmouth, NH.

Bonham was able to turn her life around, but she knows there are still more than 11 million Americans, including nearly 1 in 4 children, who experience hunger daily. So for the last 30 years, Bonham has worked in places ranging from nutrition programs, to fund-raisers, to soup kitchens, all to ensure that the programs like WIC continue and that fewer parents share her experience.

That is how Bonham found herself at Share Our Strength’s 25th Anniversary Conference of Leaders, where plans to end childhood hunger in America by 2015 were being laid. As a volunteer with the local Share Our Strength Seacoast group, she had come to Washington D.C. to learn, share and strengthen her resolve for this cause. She had no idea the conference would have such an emotional impact on her, and that a twist of fate would turn her low point in the elevator into a cause for celebration.

Share Our Strength is the leading national organization working to make sure no kid in America grows up hungry. For 15 years Bonham has done much of her volunteer work under the auspices of the local chapter, as its corporate sponsor chairperson. Among other things, the group hosts the largest annual hunger-relief fund-raiser, Taste of the Nation Portsmouth, in the area. When that event unfolds this June, Bonham and her fellow volunteers hope to cross the $1-million-earned mark.

“I joke with new potential corporate sponsors who don’t know me. I tell them, ‘I’m Italian, with us, it’s all about food, and so Share Our Strength is a perfect fit.’ But for me, it’s so much more personal,” she says. “I know what it is like to go hungry and to worry about how you are going the find the next meal to feed your child. I know the stigma that goes along with being at risk for hunger. It really is a shame that we live in one of the richest countries of the world, but yet we still have children who are hungry.”

Bonham has worn many hats so consistently for the cause of hunger relief that the following night at that D.C. conference, she found herself on stage. Out of thousands of volunteers from around the country Bonham was chosen as one of eight to receive a national Share Our Strength Community Leader 2009 award.

“Back when I was a young adult, I thought I could change the world,” says Bonham, thinking back on accepting the award. “As I grew older, I realized that perhaps I needed to narrow my focus to that of my community. Being at the Conference of Leaders gave me a light bulb moment. Collectively we are changing the world through all of our efforts working with Share Our Strength.

“I wouldn’t change a thing I went through because it has made me who I am today,” she adds. “Now I’m paying it forward. But I am saddened that 35 years after what I went through, I am still hearing the same stories.”

However, Bonham’s personal story changed the ending of the stories for those 40 single mothers who spoke about hunger in America at that early morning session. The stranger Bonham met in the elevator was Ralph Aguera, a vice president with Brown Forman Beverages, which is a national corporate sponsor for Share Our Strength. Inspired by his conversation with Bonham, he said he would write a check to ensure those 40 struggling mothers and their families would all have presents this year for Christmas.

Before she knew this though, Bonham left that elevator and went to her room to retrieve two gift cards her friends at work had given her and slipped them to the two single mothers who had spoke that day, saying “Please make sure you and your children have gifts this year.

“I told those girls that they should be proud of themselves,” she adds. “I told them I would not have been as brave as them to stand up in front of so many people and tell my story.”

Bonham says she is honored to receive the national award, but awards aren’t what motivate her.

“I stay involved because I see that we can affect the small piece of the world I live in,” she says. “It’s also because of all the people I volunteer with - and that speaks volumes about our board. I am happy to be along for the ride. It’s extremely rewarding and allows me to see that I do make a difference.”