Childhood Hunger

Bill Shore’s Letters

Dear Reader,

It is the strengths of tens of thousands of talented and caring people that are responsible for all that Share Our Strength has been able to accomplish in leading the fight to end hunger. It has often been my good fortune to see those accomplishments first hand, to witness how they have impacted the lives of fellow human beings, and to ascertain how much work still remains to be done. Continue reading...

In exchange for the opportunity to travel the country and the world on behalf of Share Our Strength, and for the privilege of being invited into people’s homes, schools, restaurants, factories, union halls, food banks, hospitals, and offices, I have tried to share what I’ve learned with all of those who made such experiences possible. From the Pentagon to the Phillips Collection, from Palm Springs, California, to Paterson, New Jersey, from Ethiopia to East Harlem, I’ve tried to report back as much factual information as possible, about how people live, struggle, innovate, endure, and triumph, all the while minding the advice of my friend Jeff Swartz, CEO of Timberland, not to communicate the “what,” but the “so what.”

My first duty has been to my colleagues here at Share Our Strength who work so hard every day to raise the money and recruit the leaders necessary to end hunger. Because they can’t all have the vantage point I’ve had, I try to be their eyes and ears. I want them to see what I see, hear what I hear, and, most important of all, feel what I feel. Bearing witness sparks action, and deeply felt emotion sustains commitment.

So for more than a decade now I have been writing letters to the Share Our Strength staff from the road, just as I would to a dear friend or relative who I’d want to visualize and experience what I’ve visualized and experienced. Some long, some short, I’ve written them on airplanes, late at night in hotel rooms, at Starbucks on the way to or from work, and at my kitchen table. Mostly I’ve wanted my colleagues to meet the people I’ve met, ordinary individuals in extraordinary situations, acting in ways that both heal and inspire.

Letters are an imperfect means of communicating. They capture only a moment in time. They may lack the balance and perspective that comes with more distance and rigorous editing. But they compensates for such drawbacks in the immediacy, intimacy, and the urgency that first-hand accounts can convey. And over time, they add up. Virtually every chapter of the three books I’ve had published over the last ten years (Revolution of the Heart, The Cathedral Within, and The Light of Conscience), found its beginnings as a letter, from really wanting to tell someone something, and then grew from there.

Virginia Wolff once said “I don’t enjoy writing, but I enjoy having written.” I think I know what she meant because getting words down right can be a formidable challenge, but the satisfaction of having done so makes it more than worthwhile. At their best, when they provoke a response, letters are part of what becomes an ongoing conversation. It is only in such dialogues that solutions are found, and progress is made.

For me writing is less expository than it is revelatory. It is not how I teach, but how I learn. The reflection it requires, and the ideas it triggers, makes it an almost psychotherapeutic process. Each time a memory or idea is peeled off and transferred to the page, another that could not have been anticipated, rises to the surface to take its place. Most important of all, trying to capture and convey an experience in writing requires one to pay attention, to be fully present, to remain open and alive to all possibilities.

Writing is also an act of enormous faith. The painstaking task of composing words into sentences and paragraphs represents the faith that someone will read them, and that when they do they will feel as you felt, care as you cared, will want to act as you wanted to act. I hope these letters will have that impact on you, and that you’ll find between each line, if not in each word, the deep conviction that people are good, that they want to make a difference, and that working together, we can.

Billy Shore's signature

Acts of Conscience Can Change the World Tell me more...

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Op-Ed on Acts of Conscience May 2004
Originally published as "An army of one: As Spc. Darby showed, an act of conscience can change the world" in the Saturday, May 22, 2004 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Army Spc. Joseph Darby's decision to report the abuses at...
Letter Celebrating a Birthday and an Award November 2003
Dear Friend, Usually awards are given to those who delight and please us: Oscars go to movie stars, Pulitzers to writers. But occasionally an award is bestowed to those who irritate, agitate, provoke, and unsettle. Just such an award is...
Letter for Hector Robles July 2001
Dear Friend, I'm inviting you to journey with us once again. Yesterday Chuck Scofield and I drove to Paterson, New Jersey, to meet with the Chief Assistant Prosecutor for Homicide Investigations, who we called after reading the following last week...

Everyone Has a Strength to Share Tell me more...

Letter from a Culinary School With the Recipe for Ending Childhood Hunger January 2008
Dear Friend If you ever have one of those days when you ask yourself if it’s worth it — perhaps a Taste organizer has resigned, or a corporate sponsor did not renew, or a colleagues hasn’t given you the information...
Letter for the New Year January 2005
Welcome back and best wishes for the New Year. I hope your holiday was filled with many blessings. As we look ahead, one blessing for which we can all be grateful is membership in the first generation in history with...
Letter From the Front Page March 2002
Dear Friend, Newspapers are supposed to bring us information we did not know before. Sometimes they tell us things we could never have imagined. That was the case for me last Friday when a front page article in the New...
Letter About a Transplant Surgeon March 1999
Dear Friend, It's 41 degrees and there are scratchy silver patches of ice on the ground, but the Colorado sky is blue and the sun is so bright that shirtsleeves suffice. Chuck and I are at a breakfast at Strings...

Nothing is Small Tell me more...

Letter Regarding Norwegian Poets and Insecticide Treated Nets April 2004
Dear Friend, "Noble is man. Rich is the earth. Where there is hunger or need, there is betrayal." So said Nordahl Grieg, one of Norway's most prominent poets and dramatists who was born in 1902 and died in 1943 when...
Letter For a Season of Hope and Faith December 2003
Dear Friend, There have been so many times I've wanted to sit down and write this letter. Perhaps it is only the onset of this season of hope and faith that has finally allowed me to do so. If I...
Nothing Is Small: Share Our Strength’s Strategy for Investment in Ethiopia June 2001
Dear Friend, "Have you showered yet?" were Zach's first words when I raced into the Bob Evans restaurant where his hockey team was eating breakfast. I'd traveled 28 hours from Mekele in northern Ethiopia to watch him play in a...
Letter From a Landover Caravan May 2001
Dear Friend, Our doctor warned that the mefloquine prescribed to prevent malaria might be mood altering. I don't know if that explains my tears last night or if it was the 12 year old Ethiopian girl whose perfect English and...
Letter From the Ethiopian/Eritrean Border March 2001
Dear Friend, If Janis Joplin was right that "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" then the Ethiopians we met in the border town of Zelembassa have attained a freedom rare in this world. Our visit was rich...
Letter From Project Mercy, Yetabon, Ethiopia March 2001
Dear Friend, Our doctor warned that the mefloquine prescribed to prevent malaria might be mood altering. I don't know if that explains my tears last night or if it was the 12 year old Ethiopian girl whose perfect English and...
Return to Ethiopia February 2001
Dear Friend, "A cloud gathers, the rain falls, men live; the cloud disperses without rain, and men and animals die." -- Wilfred Thesiger, British Explorer British explorer Wilfred Thesiger wrote these simple words about the African desert almost 40 years...
Heroes and Cheap Hotels May 2000
Dear Friend, I returned from Ethiopia in time to take Zach to the Memorial Day opening of America's top box office hit: Mission Impossible. I don't think it will ruin the suspense to reveal that Tom Cruise prevails in the...
Letter For Africa May 2000
Dear Friend, Our Ethiopian Air flight departs this time tomorrow. We're as prepared as we'll ever be: Took the shots for yellow fever, meningitis, Hepatitis A, and tetanus/diphtheria (ouch!) as well as the pills for typhoid and malaria. Met with...
Letter From a Cab Ride in Denver May 2000
Dear Friend, Last Monday I flew to Colorado to keynote the annual dinner of The Investment Fund For Foundations (TIFF). It was an opportunity to learn from two accomplished men, Michael Porter from Harvard and Ed Jackson from Denver. TIFF...
Letter From the Cockpit en Route from Gode to Addis Abbaba May 2000
Dear Friend, I've never before flown with a pilot whose pre-flight checklist included conducting a group prayer, but that's what ours did before we took off in a six seat, single-engine Cessna across the vast desert to drought-devastated Gode in...
Letter From a Passover Sedar April 2000
Dear Friend, I can't imagine that many Passover sedars start with the reading of an e-mail, but ours did last Wednesday evening. It was something I had received from Jeff Swartz, CEO of Timberland and more important, a great friend...
Letter From Albuquerque February 2000
Dear Friend, New Mexico has the soft southwestern light and pastel colors that landscape painters love, but that light glares more harshly when focused on the poverty that ranks New Mexico as the state with the worst rates of hunger...

The Only Thing That Goes a Long Way is a Lot Tell me more...

A Letter About Extreme Poverty and Childhood Hunger April 2007
Dear Friend, The loud beeping sound made by a truck or construction vehicle when it shifts into reverse warns of imminent danger. We stop and pay attention, and reach for the hand of our child. Shouldn’t there be a similar...
Letter About the Annual Poverty Statistics September 2004
Dear Friend, One week ago the Census Bureau released the annual poverty statistics. The percentage of those living in poverty increased for the third straight year, totaling 35.8 million Americans, of whom 12.9 million are children. The number of people...
Letter From the International Newsstand May 2004
Dear Friend, Last Thursday, April 29, after the bombing of a former UN building in Damascus, the Financial Times coverage was headlined "Syria Vows To Stamp Out Terrorism After Attack." I read the entire article, eager to find out how...
Letter From a New York Photo Gallery June 2002
Dear Friend, Last week I took the train to New York to look at 38 photographs. They are not famous or popular photographs. They probably never will be. In fact they are 38 photographs that no other person came to...
Letter From the Pentagon September 2001
Dear Friend, I'm writing you from the Pentagon's south parking lot. The smoke has cleared but not the acrid smell. From where I stand at the very base of the building, the men walking and working on its roof seem...
Letter From the Cathedral of Milan November 1998
Dear Friend, The Cathedral of Milan is the second largest gothic cathedral in the world. After more than 500 years of construction, from 1386 to 1887, the inside is as spare and simple as the facade is crowded and ornate....
Letter From a Baltimore Classroom March 1998
Dear Friend, I've always tried to spend time in Mollie's school. Her first elementary school, New Hampshire Estates, went from Kindergarten through second grade. Like most public schools it faced the challenge of educating a diverse group of students, in...

We Are Challenged Not to Look Away Tell me more...

Letter from Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery January 2007
I arrived at Arlington National Cemetery this morning about 10 minutes before it opened at 8:00 a.m. I had left my house at 7:35. That’s how quick a trip it is through Rock Creek Park and across Memorial Bridge. I...
Postcard from an evening with Leah Chase December 2006
No one person is your hero. You take a little something from all of them.
Letter from a Bigger Battleground September 2006
Dear Friend, It's become conventional wisdom that after 9/11, the failure to challenge average Americans to sacrifice for their country was a missed opportunity to sustain national unity and promote the common good. But it's still not too late. And...
Letter from New Orleans About the Voices You Can't Forget March 2006
I've just returned from my fourth trip to New Orleans since the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina seven months ago. I usually take meticulous notes to write you a letter like this, but this time I didn't need to because...
A Letter from New Orleans December 2005
When I sat down in September to write to you upon returning from Louisiana three weeks after Hurricane Katrina, I got on the plane, opened the laptop and the words just poured out. You may recall, I landed back in...
My Dilemma with this letter October 2005
So here's my dilemma as I get off the plane after two long days of meetings about hurricane relief in Biloxi, Gulf Port and Baton Rouge: If I write to you as I have so many times in the past,...
Letter of Invitation to Bear Witness June 2005
Dear Friend, I wish you could have been with us toward the end of an extraordinary day last month, when Rick Russo, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool, and other wonderful novels, leaned across the table...
Museum News Contribution: The Power to Bear Witness April 2005
Originally published in the American Association of Museum's Museum News newsletter. For those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s in Pittsburgh, one-time home of philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, the city's most prominent museum was not just part...
Christian Science Monitor Op-Ed: The Hunger In Our Midst June 2004
National Hunger Awareness Day, being observed Thursday by a coalition of anti-hunger organizations, raises the issue of why more Americans are not aware that hunger is a serious problem facing children and families across the United States. While America doesn't...
Letter From the Back of the Newspaper November 2003
Dear Friend, This past week marked a sobering turning point in the war in Iraq. I don't mean the downing of the Chinook helicopter that killed 15 brave American soldiers, or the Black Hawk chopper lost just a few days...
Letter From City Year New Hampshire’s Graduation June 2003
Dear Friend, In June of 2003 I went to Exeter as the graduation speaker for City Year's New Hampshire Corps. It was a carbon copy of the nearly dozen City Year graduations I've attended: corps members charging down the center...
Letter From a Bookshelf February 2003
Dear Friend, When Share Our Strength's friend and supporter Jeff Swartz came to meet with me last week, he brought two gifts: a book and an idea. Jeff arrived from Los Angeles where he'd just visited the Getty Museum's exhibition...
Letter From the Border June 2002
Dear Friend, Bumper stickers usually make you smile. Some can make you cry. That's what I discovered after driving hundreds of miles last week through the poorest parts of the Mississippi Delta and the Rio Grande Valley. It wasn't the...
Letter From September 10th November 2001
Dear Friend, It's been said that the world changed on September 11. But for 229 kids who lived in the town where I work, the world didn't even last that long. Like a lot of people I know, I saved...
Letter From 16th Street January 2001
Dear Friend, 16th Street begins at the White House and ends near my house in Silver Spring, Maryland. I drive the length of it twice each day, to and from Share Our Strength. It runs straight as an arrow for...
Letter About a 911 Call May 2000
Dear Friend, Yesterday morning, the Washington Post devoted about one-eighth of the front page to a story about the World Wrestling Federation's new football league. The other headlines pertained to trade with China, and George W. Bush's position on social...
Letter From the Netherlands, 1940 October 1996
Dear Friend, I would like to tell you about the museum in New York where I spent the afternoon looking at some rare old pictures that are amazing not for what you see, but for what you don't see. They...
Letter From the Site of MLK’s Last Tears March 1994
Dear Friend, I recently came across an interview that Martin Luther King gave on March 25, 1968, just ten days before he was killed. He spoke about poverty in America: "I was in Marks, Mississippi the other day and I...

We Are Challenged to Create New Wealth Tell me more...

Letter From a Community Wealth Collaborative October 2003
Dear Friend, If we are to become as good as we need to be to succeed in bringing community wealth to scale, we'll always be learning as much from our client engagements as our clients do. The second session of...

You Are Part of Something Larger Than Yourself Tell me more...

Letter from between the lines November 2006
Dear Friend, You probably noticed the many news stories the day after Thanksgiving about the official start of the Christmas shopping season, now known as Black Friday (because it is traditionally when retailers begin turning a profit, or operating in...
Letter from an airplane bearing the remains of a young marine August 2006
The Flags of Our Sons NY TIMES EDITORIAL Published: August 4, 2006 Washington - WHEN you fly as often as I do you learn to mind your own business as soon as you take your seat. But that wasn't possible...
Letter After the Hurricane September 2005
The heart-wrenching scenes of human suffering witnessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are not only the result of the failure of Lake Pontchartrain's levees, but also the failure of our nation's anti-poverty efforts. The overwhelming majority of the victims...
Letter Looking Back on 20 Years of Sharing Strength June 2004
Dear Friend, The independent commission investigating the terrorist attacks on September 11, reported in harrowing detail about how senior government officials reacted to the horrific crisis. The minute-by-minute account of how key players responded -- from the Vice President to...
Letter From Baton Rouge: Old Speech, New Feeling April 2003
Dear Friend, Turning off of Interstate 10 and into the One Hundred Oaks neighborhood of Baton Rouge, is like turning into a place where time is measured not by familiar digital devices but by the graceful hundred-year-old oaks whose massive...
Letter About the Third Freedom December 2000
Dear Friend, Over the holidays I came across former Senator George McGovern's new book: The Third Freedom: Ending Hunger in Our Time. It is a slim volume of some 160 pages, written from dual perspectives: his current role as U.S....

About Bill Shore

Bill Shore is the founder and executive director of Share Our Strength. Learn more.