Tony and Dolly Ellis

By Ed Nicholson

Please indulge me as I go off-topic today (the first time in almost two years).

My Dad is a personal hero. He's done some incredibly heroic things in his life, not the least of which was flying missions as a tail-gunner/radio operator in a Navy TBF torpedo bomber from carriers in the Pacific in 1944-45. He wrote a memoir about the experiences which I posted here. As I've matured, I've come to respect the sacrifices he and his generation have made.

So it was with both pride and  humility that I attended the announcement today of the inaugural Honor Flight from Northwest Arkansas, sponsored by local companies, Tyson Foods and Wal-Mart, which will take a planeload of vets to D.C. to visit the WWII Memorial.   Kudos to Tyson Director of Aviation, Bill McKenzie  for taking the lead on this project and putting the flight together.  We're hopeful they can occur on a regular basis.

John Little, a veteran of the Invasion of Normandy,  who now lives in Kingston, Arkansas, and will be a passenger on the first Northwest Arkansas Honor Flight, spoke at the announcement today.  His story, is moving, powerful, and inspiring.

This is a generation of men and women that has survived adversity most of us can only imagine.  They've done it with incredible courage, honor and dignity, and many of them have been all too quiet about their experiences.  They're leaving us very quickly.  Their stories deserve to be heard and preserved.

If you are close to someone from this generation--whether they served in the military or not--I urge you to sit them down and get them to talk about their life.  Put a video camera or tape recorder in front of them.  You'll be glad you did.

 

High School Students in Las Vegas Fighting Hunger for Three Square Food Bank

By Ed Nicholson

Take a look around food banks, food pantries and hunger relief organizations, and you'll see some phenomenal volunteers; engaged, dedicated, selfless, energetic, intelligent, passionate. 

Problem is, a whole lot of these volunteers are, shall we say, of "a certain age." (And I can use the categorization because I'm every bit of "a certain age" myself).  Not as many younger folks. 

So what's going to happen when those in our generation retire from volunteering? 

For the past three years, at Tyson Foods, we've been piloting The Student Food Drive with selected Feeding America food banks across the country.  This effort engages high school students in raising funds and food for their local food bank. It requires a coordinated effort among schools, food banks, and local sponsors, but done right, the results are phenomenal:  Students become aware of hunger in their own community, while developing leadership skills.  If the food bank makes the effective connections, they have stakeholders for life. 

In 2009, these food banks/ communities are joining others who have come on board to do Student Food Drives in the past three years:

Southeast Missouri Food Bank   Cape Girardeau, Missouri
Lowcountry Food Bank     Charleston, South Carolina
Mountaineer Food Bank    Gassaway, West Virginia
Channel One Food Bank    Rochester, Minnesota
Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana     Muncie, Indiana
Three Square Food Bank       Las Vegas, Nevada

So what are you doing in your community to "rejuvenate" the pool of enaged hunger fighters?

We need your help to discover and tell the stories of everyday heroes, Hunger All-Stars, in your community.

Great stories are unfolding all around us. Thoughtful, committed individuals across the country and in our backyards are giving of themselves and their time to keep our friends, family and neighbors from going hungry. Imagine the neighbor who has volunteered for 40 years to feed those in need without ever being noticed or recognized.  Or the child who raised money at the local mall after learning that some of his classmates were going hungry.

In association with Tongal.com we're seeking short videos that tell the stories of the dedicated men, women and children working to eliminate hunger in your community.

• The contest will consist of two phases. In Phase One, producers will create and submit their short films spotlighting a local food bank and the people in their communities who are fighting hunger. In Phase Two, members of the Tongal community will watch the videos to predict the winners.
• Winning video producers will receive up to $2500 and a truckload of Tyson food products (35,000 pounds) donated to their local community food bank.
• Films should run one to three minutes in length and should exemplify how people make a difference by dedicating time to hunger relief.
• Tyson Foods will use the winning videos on its web site, blog and other Internet properties to promote the work of Feeding America and Hunger Relief All-Stars across the country.

For complete contest details, visit http://tongal.com/foodbankspotlight.

Please help us spread the word about this contest by tweeting or retweeting any of the comments below to your friends and followers.

 Unleash Your Creativity. Feed Your Community. http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Award-winning videos never tasted so good. http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Make a Movie. Feed Your Community. http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Spotlight local dedicated men, women and children volunteering to end hunger. http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Win up to $2500 and a truckload of food for your local food bank! http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Be the Spielberg of hunger relief. http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Oscars shmoscars. Use your camera to feed the hungry in your community. http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Use that video camera for more than weekend soccer games.  http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Capture the efforts of local hunger heroes and feed your community. http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Uncover the powerful stories in your hunger-relief community.  http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Your creative vision can feed thousands.  http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Why limit yourself to lolcats? Get creative and alleviate hunger. http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Your citizen journalism can alleviate hunger in your community. http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Hunger volunteers have stories that beat any Oscar-winning movie.  http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo
 Cook up a compelling video and alleviate hunger in your community.  http://www.tongal.com/foodbankspotlight #hungervideo

 

The Tyson Truck arrives at the food bank

By Ed Nicholson

 On Monday, we announced a collaborative effort, including Tyson Foods and the Social Media Club for the San Francisco Food Bank's Hunger Challenge, part of their Hunger Action Month activities.
That support included Tyson donating 100 pounds of food to the food bank for every hunger fact in this post, up to a total donation of 100,000 pounds.
Though we've not added up all the tweets, it appears we--no, you--blew the roof off the 1000 tweets it would take to reach the 100,000 pound donation.  But you also did much more than that.
You leveraged your community to create desperately-needed awareness about the issue of hunger.  And awareness is something this issue needs as much as needs emergency food. 

Today, thanks to what you did, the first of three semi truckloads of Tyson products was delivered to the food bank.

On behalf of Tyson Foods, the Social Media Club and the San Francisco Food Bank, thank you for taking your time to contribute to this effort.
 

 

By Ed Nicholson                                                       

Let's say you're a journalist granted an exclusive interview with a hunger thought leader.  Say,  Share Our Strength founder and executive director, Billy Shore;  co-chair of the Senate Hunger Caucus, Blanche Lincoln;  Feeding America CEO, Vicki Escarra;  U.N.  F.A.O. Ambassador Tony Hall;  or Bread for the World president, David Beckmann.

You have five minutes tor your interview.  What questions would you ask?

   photo by Duchamp, Creative Commons

Last year, we had the opportunity to work with the San Francisco Food Bank and a great group of  bloggers to help raise awareness for hunger in the Bay Area during Hunger Action Month. It was a successful effort in which we asked for--and received--your assistance.   More than 2100 comments were submitted to this post, resulting in five truckoads of food being donated to Bay Area Food Banks.

We're going to try something similar this year, with the help of the Hunger Challenge bloggers and the Social Media Club of San Francisco.

The whole idea is to use social media tools to increase awareness of the issue of hunger.  We won't try to bribe you to become a Facebook fan. You don't have to buy any products.  Here's all you have to do:

There's a list of hunger facts below.  All Tweetable.  Tweet  or retweet any of them with the hashtag  #HChal and Tyson Foods will make a 100 pound donation (up to a total of 100,000 pounds) to the San Francisco Food Bank.  Blog about this effort and we'll donate 500 pounds.  Or comment to this post with your own verifiable fact (not opinion)  about hunger and we'll donate 100 pounds.   That's all you have to do. Let's see how far and fast we can spread these facts out there in Twittervillle. If you'd like to make reference to this post, here's a shortened URL:  http://bit.ly/sBE9x

Tweetable Facts About Hunger

More than 35 mil. people in the U.S. are on food stamps--up 3 million since Jan.  #HChal

App. 40% of families now on food stamps have "earned income"--up from just 25% 2 years ago.  #HChal #hungeraction

For every $1 donated @SFFoodBank can distribute $9 worth of groceries. #HChal #hungeraction

In San Francisco, 150K people are unsure where their next meal is coming from. #HChal #hungeraction

1 in 4 San Francisco children lack reg.access to food they need to learn, grow, & have a healthy start in life. #HChal

1 in 5 San Francisco adults can't count on daily meals they need to lead healthy, productive lives. #HChal

1 in 4 San Francisco seniors lack the nourishment need to control chronic health problems. #HChal

@SFFoodBank distributed over 33.5 million pounds of food in the past year--nearly 8% more than the year before. #HChal

60% of the clients @SFFoodBank served last year come from working families.  #HChal

In CA, the average food stamp recicipient gets $4 a day to spend on food.  #HChal #hungeraction

In CA, a single person can get food stamps only if their yearly gross income is $14,079 or less. #HChal

5.3 mil. Californians are living below the federal poverty line ($21,834 for a family of 4) #HChal

The number of households participating in @SFFoodbank's grocery pantry program is up 24% over last year. #HChal

You can help alleviate hunger with a single tweet this week:  http://bit.ly/sBE9x (no purchase or FB signup nec.) #HChal

 

Ed Nicholson
 
Why should anyone pay any attention to this photo? Isn't it just another "PR" event?
Community leaders, elected officials, corporate leaders, food bank leaders. 
Talking to media (and each other) about why the issue of hunger needs to be addressed.
 

I submit that the single biggest challenge those passionate about hunger face is getting other people engaged.

When you get important people out talking about hunger, other important people listen. And perhaps they get involved.

The backstory
At Tyson, a key component of our hunger strategy is to bring as many of our stakeholders as possible into the issue of hunger.  Each year, we sponsor Fall Football Classics with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU).  These are tremendous events, involving phenomenally influential people in the communities in which they occur (see below).  For the past five years, we've done food donation events in conjunction with this sponsorship, to which we've invited key Classic participants.  They've readily and eagerly participated.  This one's in Memphis--see details below.  If we can get these folks engaged in hunger in their communities, the impact will be so much more than the truckload of food we donate.

Do you have strategies to engage your stakeholders?  We'd love to hear about them.  Please comment.

The Photo
Tyson Foods donates 35K lbs of food to the Memphis Mid-South Food Bank in honor of the Southern Heritage Classic.
l. to r.
Susan Sanford, Executive Director, Mid-South Food Bank
(speaking) Fred Jones – Founder and Producer of the Southern Heritage Classic
Gwendolyn J. Tucker – Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors, Mid-South Food Bank
Libby Lawson – Vice-President of Media & Community Relations, Tyson Foods, Inc.
Chairman Harold B. Collins – Chairman and Councilman, District 3 on the Memphis City Council
Myron Lowery – Mayor Pro Tem for the City of Memphis