Champions in Our Communities

It takes people and resources in our neighborhoods and communities to reach hungry kids. In schools, concerned teachers and administrators make sure kids in need get school breakfast and lunch. After school at boys and girls clubs, dedicated staff members make sure kids get nutritious snacks. During the summer, local heroes make sure that kids don’t go hungry when school is out. Many people volunteer their time in food banks, resource centers, and nutrition education programs making sure families in need get emergency food, know how to enroll in SNAP (food stamps), or learn how to cook and eat more healthily.

To recognize this vital work and raise awareness of hunger in America, Share Our Strength teamed up with the Con Agra Foods Foundation on the Champions Against Child Hunger project. Five finalists have been selected to be the Champion.

Charlie Kozlesky*of Columbus, Ohio oversees statewide Nutrition Programs for the Children’s Hunger Alliance. In the last year, Charlie helped make sure another 14,000 children receive school lunch and 23,486 more children have school breakfast. Charlie also helped establish an additional 128 summer meal sites for at-risk children.

In 2006 New Mexico had the highest rate of food insecurity in the United States. Nancy Pope of Albuquerque left her job in state government to focus full-time on developing the New Mexico Collaboration to End Hunger. Today, there are 67 public and private partners in the Collaboration, and during this past summer, Collaboration partners fed 7,000 children.

Tom Ramsey of Austin, Texas, founded Celebration of Love, which started as a simple Christmas outreach program. It has evolved into multiple annual events and includes the Reaching-Out Center, a food pantry that opened in 2006 and now feeds more than 200 families each Friday.

Eileen Rasnick of Omaha, Nebraska runs the largest Summer Feeding Program site in the State of Nebraska. Over the past 10 years, Eileen has provided more than 238,296 breakfast and lunch meals to children that would not have otherwise had the opportunity to eat these meals. She feeds an average of 375 children per week between May and August.

Diane Reeder, Kingston, New York, is founder and executive director of the Queens Galley, a soup kitchen that is open for three meals a day, 365 days a year, and serves more than 9,000 meals a month. Diane also brought Share Our Strength’s Operation Frontline® to the Hudson Valley through the Queens Galley, and supports programs that show people how to make nutritional and flavorful meals on a limited budget.

You have one more week to cast your vote for the person you think should be the champion. For each vote cast, $1 will be donated to Share Our Strength’s efforts to end childhood hunger in America by 2015 (up to $80,000). You can vote once a day between now and March 19 when the contest ends.