Shared Strengths, Shared Stories on Walk to End Childhood Hunger
Posted by Pat Nicklin on Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Managing Director Pat Nicklin walked in New York City on Mother’s Day as part of O Magazine’s Live Your Best Life Walk. She helped lead Share Our Strength’s Team No Kid Hungry and helped raise more than $60,000.
America’s two sides appeared to me today as I stood on a pier in 40 mile winds on the west side of New York, with a sign in my hands that read “No Kid Hungry,” and walked to raise funds to help end childhood hunger in America. On one side was Oprah, and her energy, her power. She appeared magically, in an instant with 6,000 women who hang on her every word.
There is another side, one that is real, and hard, and sobering like the harsh wind. As I stood with my orange “No Kid Hungry” sign, a woman found me. She said, “You sent me an email, thanking me for walking. I was the one whose parents died, who left me when I was 15. I was hungry almost all the time. We must make this cause real.”
Then there was another walker, a small woman who saw my sign, came upon me and said, “I’ve been looking for you.” She’s been a volunteer for Special Olympics for 30 years, works every week at a soup kitchen, and was a teacher for 30 years and saw lots of hungry children. We shared stories about Title IX, which allowed both of us to play full-court basketball in the 70s when only boys could. If you looked at us, you might imagine that we had nothing in common: a 65-year-old black woman from Queens and a 51- year-old white woman from Richmond, Va. We met online, when she sent me $100 to support Share Our Strength. While I walked next to her, on a cold, blustery day in New York, I realized we had a lot in common: we share a passion for change, a desire to give back, and a love of people, which we didn’t know until we walked and talked.
These experiences were a lot more real than celebrity, or TV shows, or a morning doing a walk with celebrities. Our shared experience, as different as we are as individuals, is going to feed a lot of hungry children. And that’s all we needed to share.
May 11, 2010 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: childhood hunger, no kid hungry, oprah
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