Alinea at Home Extra: Share Our Strength

When I wrote French Laundry at Home, I did a fund-raising drive for Share Our Strength.  Last year, here on Alinea at Home, I did it again.  Now, here we are, a year later, and the childhood hunger landscape has changed yet again, and not for the better.

Two recent news articles -- one in The Washington Post, and one in The New York Times -- share the awful USDA statistics released this week: 49 million people in America are hungry, and of those 49 million, 17 million are kids.  That's 1 in 5 kids across America.  Last year, it was 1 in 6.  Share Our Strength's job just got harder.

I feel so incredibly lucky to have clients who keep me employed, but I know just like anyone else, nothing in life is a guarantee, and none of us ever truly knows when and if we might need help someday.  But today, I am writing this with a full belly, a warm house, and a roof over my head.  So, I want to help those who might not be as lucky as I feel.

We've created a dedicated Alinea at Home Share Our Strength campaign again this holiday season, and if you click on that page and make a donation in any amount, you'll be entered to win some of my favorite food books:

Alinea (Grant Achatz)

Ad Hoc at Home (Thomas Keller)

Momofuku (David Chang)

Live to Cook (Michael Symon)

The Sweet Life in Paris (David Lebovitz)

You could donate $5.  You could donate $500.  Doesn't matter.  Every little bit helps.  And, every donation gets an equal chance when we randomly select the winners.

Share Our Strength is out there every single day working with other nonprofits and community-based organizations not only to make sure food banks and soup kitchens have the tools they need on a local level, they also work on the national and state level to address the systemic infrastructure and policy issues that need to change to be able to have an impact on childhood hunger.  I know the folks at Share Our Strength very well, and I know they do great work because I've seen it first-hand.  So, I hope you'll do what you can to help them ensure that every single day, no child in America goes without food.

Last year, we raised $8,000 for Share Our Strength.  I know belts are tighter this year and personal household budgets are being watched more closely, so I know that number is going to be hard to beat.  I just hope we can come close.

I'll mention this again in future posts, but for now, more details can be found at Strength.org/carolblymire.  Pass it on.  And, THANK YOU in advance for anything you're able to give.

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Comments

[Tom]

Happily done! Now we need a national campaign to teach people how to cook inexpensive, healthy meals. A shame that Home Ec has gone away from schools. Thanks for your good work.

[Julia]

Share Our Strength is such a great organization!! I've supported them for years... mainly through the direct service organization -- Operation Frontline. Through this program they recruit chefs and nutritionists to teach about nutrition and cooking on a budget to families in danger of hunger and malnutrition.

Fighting childhood hunger is such a complicated puzzle and SOS is working hard to tackle it from so many different angles.

[Julia]

P.S. Do you know if it's possible to donate through PayPal?

[Carol Blymire]

Julia: We just added a PayPal option in the upper right-hand corner of strength.org/carolblymire. :)

[SallyBR]

Done...

Very nice cause, I am more than happy to contribute

Please keep us posted when you reach (and I hope surpass) last year's amount. Fingers crossed here!