• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Fight hunger with your superpower with the bigger picture in mind.

If we are going to fight hunger, we need to understand and recognize our power of influence, our super power. Everyone influences other people, whether you realize it or not.

A heartwarming smile can change the trajectory of someone’s day. While being cut off by someone in traffic is frustrating, annoying and insulting. In either instance, you influence minds, hearts, and actions- including your own. Why not try to change any situation for the better?

The world of food insecurity is like putting together a puzzle. You need to figure out how your power of influence and strengths fit into the larger picture. Once you see where your skills can be placed, you influence the pieces up, down and across the board. With the right fit, you end up leveraging your work and everyone surrounding you.

Together, your team can be efficient, effective, and have fun in the process.

I often urge organizations to move within their wheelhouse, strive to join forces, figure out how to support anti-hunger organizations across the community, and in-turn work together to lift the entire community up. That’s how miracles happen.

To bring this point home, let’s look at what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. The need for food surged dramatically. Many people and organizations wanted to help and rightly so. Here are some creative partnerships that our food pantry started during that time:

• A balloon artist volunteered her time to make a visit to our food pantry a rosy experience for kids and not an embarrassment to the parents.
• A healthcare system paid for a full time employee to implement COVID-19 prevention protocols.
• King’s College allowed their employees to volunteer during food packaging and distribution.
• We had an upswing of Latinx people who needed help, so Wyoming Seminary’s Spanish students translated materials for these guests.
• Misericordia University provided their box trucks and a driver to pick up more food because we went from serving 150 guests weekly to 2,000 families.

As you can see, everyone pitched in to serve their community by using their resources effectively and purposefully.

Many times, people feel they have to donate their time or money to food pantries to help solve the hunger crisis. Instead, I ask people to reflect on their power of influence:

What are you good at?
Where are you influential?
What are you passionate about?
What doesn’t feel like work to you but fun?
What can you do that you love and get paid?

and then…

What’s the larger picture, and how can you contribute best with your skillset to fight hunger that lifts everyone and builds a greater capacity for change?

Hunger lives in your zip code and impacts everyone- your place of employment, where you pray, your children’s school, where you study and even where you play…Hunger is EVERYWHERE! You don’t have to look outside your organization to fight hunger. Instead, find the crack and be the glue using your superpower.

What can you do to help fight hunger within your power of influence? Let us know in the comments.