Today I’m embarking on an 8,000 mile journey across America and back to mobilize support to end domestic hunger. And I’m asking you to join me.

This journey marks my 20th year leading the fight against hunger at Hunger Free America, along with an amazingly dedicated volunteer board of directors and a world-class team of employees. With your support, we’ve made tremendous progress towards ensuring all Americans have access to affordable and healthy food – including connecting tens of thousands of families to critical government food programs during the pandemic.

But even as COVID recedes in the U.S., hunger still ravages virtually every rural and suburban town and urban neighborhood in the nation. In the first week of May, 18.2 million Americans didn’t have enough to eat that week. In the wealthiest country on the planet, even a single hungry person is unacceptable.

Now is the moment to accelerate our fight against hunger. Let’s build on the positive momentum created by the groundbreaking American Rescue Plan to end hunger in the U.S., once and for all. Take this journey with me by pledging to end hunger and ensuring that every family in our country can afford to put food on the table.

My journey begins today at Hunger Free America’s office in Bronx, NY, one of the lowest-income, hungriest urban counties in the United States. Here our Benefits Specialists help families struggling with hunger to apply for SNAP (formerly called food stamp) and WIC benefits (for pregnant women and children under 5). From here, I’ll be visiting food sites in 20 states, from Maine to California, including SNAP application sites, community farms, food banks, WIC clinics, and food pantries with which Hunger Free America partners.

Here’s some really good news: Ending hunger in America is actually more than achievable. Hunger Free America’s comprehensive public policy plan lays out an innovative roadmap of what it will take to reach this outcome, by making school meals universally free, raising the national minimum wage through a politically-achievable method, creating food-related jobs, and expanding federally-funded nutrition and economic opportunity programs. We’ll need broad public support to push government and business leaders to reach these milestones – and that’s where you come in. 

Sign the pledge and commit to joining us this summer on this important journey as we show elected officials that we're redoubling our commitment to ending hunger and have a powerful coalition of advocates, volunteers, and community members dedicated to this fight.

Thank you for your support, and for sharing our enduring belief that ending hunger lifts us all.

Joel Berg
CEO, Hunger Free America