Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion, talks about how his nonprofit is providing access to financial systems for people all over the world who currently do not have access to tools like bank accounts, loans, or digital financial transactions.

“Two billion people are left out of and poorly served by the global financial system. Their lives are so much harder than they have to be, and we're trying to change that,” he says. Advances in technology like satellite imaging have made it possible to reach many more business owners. “I think this is a ‘once in a lifetime’ moment, and we're trying to seize this moment to really change the world,” he believes.

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Mayor Sharon Weston Broome of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Mayor Mattie Parker of Fort Worth, Texas are Chair and Vice-Chair of the Mayors Alliance to End Childhood Hunger, a bipartisan alliance of almost 400 mayors from across the country.

“I think the first thing that the Alliance capitalizes on is a firm understanding that the most powerful thing Americans can use is their bully pulpit to any cause,” says Mayor Parker.

Mayor Broome agrees. “There are a lot of best practices that we can hone in on and we can work together to advocate for legislative measures at the federal, state, and local levels.”

Listen in to learn about some innovative ideas that have already been shared among the mayors in the Alliance and how these initiatives are reducing childhood hunger in their communities.

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India’s children are hungry. Gauri Devidayal, Co-Founder and Director of The Food Matters Group,

and Pankaj Jethwani, physician and Executive VP at W Health Ventures, are working to solve that problem. Devidayal is using her platform to draw attention and funding to the cause while Jethwani is helps run holistic nutrition programs.

“I think India's one of the greatest nations when it comes to hospitality. It's just something that comes innately to people,” says Devidayal. “That's ridiculous, as a child, to go through eight hours in the morning before a first meal and still expect to learn, still expect to thrive,” Jethwani believes. “We've served 400,000 children. It's a drop in the ocean. It's not even a drop in the ocean - it's a micro-drop in the ocean.”

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Charles Watson, CEO of Tropical Smoothie Café, talks about how the restaurant industry is uniquely positioned to make a difference on child hunger. “The American consumer is demanding and one of the things that they're demanding - which is good - is purpose,” says Watson. “[They’ll] give you their money… but [they] also want to see that you're giving back and that you're doing something positive.”

He proposed a "CEO Pledge to End Hunger" which aims to raise funds to support summer food programs, potentially preventing millions of children from going hungry. “We need sunshine, we need happiness, we need taking care of one another,” he concludes. 

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Jamila Robinson, the new Editor-in-Chief of Bon Appétit, discusses her vision for the magazine and more broadly how food can be a powerful force for good in the world.

“I'm very curious about how other people experience food and how food drives culture for other people, and that curiosity allows for other people to feel seen, and so it also changes the way that we approach stories,” she says.

She wants the magazine to cover food culture for everyone along with sustainable food practices. “I do think it's important that we think about where our food comes from, who's producing it, and the impact that it might have on our environment.”

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Well before the school year ends for American children , advocates like USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Stacy Dean and Hawaii-based consumer advocate and substance abuse counselor Zahava “Zee” Zaidoff are planning how to feed kids over the summer. “The experience of hunger, in and of itself, is a terrible thing. But hunger amongst children is so much more devastating... They don't need food just to maintain, but also to grow and thrive,” says Dean. Many layers of government, organizations, and individuals are ensuring that kids get access to meals during the summer months. “This is not just about the kids that we're trying to feed. This is about - fortunately and unfortunately - systemic change that has to happen around the entire system,” Zaidoff emphasizes.

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Food and culture writer Alicia Kennedy and chef advocacy trainer and Table81 founder Katherine Miller discuss food justice and how we can make important improvements in our food system. “We operate with this idea that we should be able to have any [food] we want whenever we want it, at whatever price that we wanna pay for it,” says Miller. “It's an artificially constructed system that keeps our food affordable in certain places and makes it unaffordable and unattainable in other places.” Kennedy writes about food justice, food sovereignty, and food apartheid. “Food justice is not merely the ability to access fresh food. It is the space, time, energy, and ability to cook it and serve it in a way that provides a nourishing, complete and aesthetically pleasing dish according to one's cultural standards,” she states.

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Daron Babcock, CEO of Bonton Farms located in a low-income neighborhood in South Dallas. Bonton Farms is one of the largest urban farms in the United States and its programs are addressing a variety of barriers residents face including housing, education, nutrition, and economic self-sufficiency.

“[Systemic inequity] is built on the faulty idea that there's this American dream that everybody can access and if you don't, then there's something wrong with you,” says Babcock. “My new neighbors just happened to be born into a place that had very little to offer them, and their human potential got squashed in the process… The bad news is yes, we designed that and we have to own up to it. But the good news is, we can redesign our future - it doesn't have to stay that way.”

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Jimmy Chen, founder/CEO of Propel and Ofek Lavian, founder/CEO of Forage, explain how they are harnessing the power of technology to ensure more people can easily access government food benefits. “We believe that well-fed people have many problems, but hungry people have only one,” saysk Lavian.

Both companies make it easier for people to access and maximize benefits online and through apps. “We build technology because we see it as the tool that is underappreciated and underutilized in this sector to create the outcomes of… safety net programs meeting their promise for Americans,” says Chen.  

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Bestselling author Thomas Kostigen talks about climate change and specifically how we can all decrease our carbon footprints by making different food choices. “If we were to embrace more types of food rather than what is just basically pushed upon us by the food system, then we might have a chance to change things in a bigger way,” he says. ““It isn't that easy to understand how much [each] food stores carbon.” Kostigen recently partnered with actor and philanthropist Robert Downey Jr. on Cool Food: Erasing Your Carbon Footprint One Bite at a Time, which serves as a guide to help us all make better food choices. 

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