photo courtesy of Share Our Strength

By Ed Nicholson     

For the next few days, I'll be attending the annual Share Our Strength Conference of Leaders in Our Nation's Capital.  It's the ninth such conference I've attended since Tyson formally committed to the fight against hunger in 2000.

This year marks Share Our Strength's 25th anniversary, so the conference will be a celebration, looking back on remarkable accomplishments and forward to a strategy that's more finely tuned than at any time in the group's history.  Put simply, Share Our Strength has dedicated its focus to seeing an end to childhood hunger in the U.S. While several--including most notably President Obama--have signed on to the same goal (thank goodness!), Share Our Strength was among the first to recognize it as something that can and absolutely should be accomplished in our lifetime.

We love this organization.  They brought us to the table and have taught us so much about the issue of hunger.  They stood by us when, to be honest, it might not have been politically correct to do so. They continue to recognize us as partners, even though, because of the nature of our business, it'll be a while before we're part of any organization's "marketing club," those brands contributing millions in cash every year.  They truly live by their core principle that everyone has a strength to share.

We've developed some dear friends within Share Our Strength in the past decade: the dedicated, passionate people who work on the staff, and the tremendous folks who are the organization's supporters.

What a joy it is seeing them again!

Stay tuned here as we live blog some of the events of the conference, including the Service Day today.