[Music]
so many of my favorite memories growing
up involved my family and food and
sitting around the table dining together
and just spending quality time together
we have an extended family here in
Winston and every year my mom makes sure
that everyone gets their special
birthday meal my favorites chicken pie
we like to sit around the table and
enjoy each other and spend time and we
use food as a celebration and something
that we can look forward to we use food
as in other ways in our life to
celebrate other occasions as well like
the time that we took three of my
daughters out to her favorite sushi
restaurant to let them know that there'd
be yet another sister on the way the
one-year-old Edie she didn't have a
whole lot to say about it
Maggie was six and she was excited about
having yet another sister to play with
Ella was seven and probably facing a
little bit of anxiety about the idea of
yet another sister she just looked at me
and said daddy when are you gonna stop
doing this
so for us food is something to be
celebrated it's something that brings
our families together and it's something
that makes everyone happy which is why
it's so difficult to imagine what it
must be like to be one it to be one of
the one in four children in our
community that doesn't know where his
next meal is coming from it's 40,000
kids tens of thousands of families they
don't know where they're going to be
able to get their next nutritious meal
so something has to change with the way
that we view hunger I'm going to tell
you about a couple of important aspects
of my life the first is I am the
president of an amazing organization
called hope of winston-salem stands for
help our people eat and it was created
by a pediatrician here in town who
recognized that when kids were coming in
on Monday complaining that they were
sick they weren't actually sick many of
them instead they were just really
hungry and if you know anything about
kids particularly hungry kids they can't
focus if they're hungry they become a
distraction they think about other
things they cannot learn and they fall
behind and statistically they're in a
much higher chance of falling behind a
grade level and so what she did is she
saw an opportunity to fill a gap and she
created Hope which is a program that
provides meals over the weekend to kids
who otherwise might not have access to
food and so hope winston-salem every
weekend every weekend delivers about a
thousand meals to kids who would
otherwise be hungry 1,500 pounds of
produce to their parents so that they
can make dinner for their kids and they
do this all by driving in to the areas
of need to these communities with the
kids who are suffering the most and they
do it in a big green truck
and the big green truck goes through the
neighborhood in making stops and it
plays a song dare I say a slightly
obnoxious song right that's that's what
it sounds like and the kids they hear it
and it's a lot like the ice cream truck
they know it's coming and they all come
running out and when they hear that
music they're so excited and they come
ready to get that meal and it's a great
feeling in a lot of ways because you see
how happy the kids are but it's also a
very sad feeling because you realize
that no child should ever have to be
that excited about getting one meal over
the weekend since it's been open hope
has given out about 300,000 meals in
500,000 pounds of produce to families
that otherwise might not know where
their food will come from and hopes an
amazing organization and it's filled
with staffs that are amazing volunteers
that are amazing but it cannot do
everything on its own so another part of
my life is the village juice company and
we open that restaurant here several
years ago because we wanted to provide
fresh nutritious whole real food to the
community but we realized then like we
realize now that everyone can't afford a
$9 salad no matter how big and beautiful
and delicious it is and so we thought
what can we do is a company that
produces food what can we do to help the
nonprofits to fill in some gaps so that
we can try and address some of the
hunger issues that exist in our
community in a quick word about
nonprofits and I have the utmost respect
for nonprofits and the hard work that
people put into them but we've got to
change the way that we view nonprofits
and we've got to change the way that we
ask nonprofits to do so much for our
communities when really nonprofits are
not designed to solve all of the world's
problems they're designed in my opinion
to fill a very narrow gap and help out
those of us there are those in the
community that are not as lucky as I am
that haven't had the privileges that
I've had but we're asking so much of
them at this point it's just not
sustainable in 1995 there were about
350,000 nonprofits in the u.s. now there
are close to 2 million charitable giving
has continued to rise but it has not
risen at the rate of the production of
new nonprofits so that's created is a
competition among nonprofits for the
charitable dollar and it's an honest and
it's a competition in which we hamstring
each of the nonprofit's making it
unrealistic for them to go out and
succeed and I'll tell you what I mean
with so much competition for each dollar
we asked them to go out and change the
world but we tell them not don't go and
get the best NBA graduate or the best
executive team you've got to operate on
a shoestring budget and you're not going
to be allowed to market or advertise the
same way a for-profit could because we
as a charitable giver want as much of
that dollar that we give to make it to
the recipient and that makes sense but
what it does is it creates a situation
where nonprofits aren't allowed to take
risks and they're judged in an extremely
unfair way that isn't meant or doesn't
lend itself to actually solving the
world's problems
so we thought
what needs to happen in my argument to
you is that we've got to change the way
that we view for-profit companies and
we've got to change the way that what we
ask of them it's my belief that
for-profit companies can collaborate
with non-governmental entities NGOs and
nonprofits and collaboratively work
together in a way that makes real change
and it's my belief that it the
antiquated idea that corporations are
only beholden to their shareholders is
outdated and has to change so my beliefs
that each company is stronger when it
has a social purpose and it is better as
a company and it's better as a community
contribute tor so what can you do well
we're all consumers so we can of course
choose how we spend our money by
aligning ourselves with companies that
share our mutual interests if you're a
business owner you can choose to align
your business with causes that mean
something to you if you work for a
business you can talk to the decision
makers and ask them what are they doing
as a company to make the world a better
place
Yvonne Jannard created Patagonia and
when he did it he and his climbing
buddies they recognized that we're
pulling more out of the earth than we're
putting back in and so they created one
percent for the planet and 1% for the
planet means you give one percent of
every dollar that comes in in this case
to environmental causes regardless of
whether you make a profit and by doing
that it sounds small but you could in
put billions of dollars into the economy
and really make a change so village
juice is committed to doing that within
the community and so the ways that we
work with our community in collaboration
in this community is filled with amazing
people that are dedicated to fighting
and there's so many great programs that
are out there then there's so many great
programs that are here dedicated to
fighting hunger
you know Second Harvest story the plate
so many different organizations that are
trying to bring the community together
in a way to make change I want to tell
you about one collaboration and we've
worked with several but I want to tell
you about one collaboration that we're
very proud of just to give you an idea
of some of the things that we're trying
out and there's a for-profit company we
may fail this idea that I'm about to
tell you is at its infancy and it may
not work but we have that right as a
for-profit company to make those risks
and see if it and see if it works and if
it doesn't well that's okay well we'll
figure something else out but what we're
doing we've aligned ourselves with
groups from faith-based organizations
the city and we're taking the plots of
land that are within the communities
that we serve
and what we're doing is we're connecting
them with urban farmers from the urban
farm school because it never made any
sense to me that we're talking about
food insecurity in these neighborhoods
that have plots of land that are
perfectly capable of growing food and so
what we're doing get together is we're
funding positions for an urban farmer
where they'll grow produce will buy the
produce and then the excess produce will
be distributed throughout the community
so that we're creating a job we're
creating food and we're trying to make a
very very very small dent in a very real
problem and so by doing that we hope to
create a replicable system that others
can look to where other people have Agri
resources that are available to them in
the same way and so that they can try
and extract some solution to the problem
so I asked you what can you do as a
member of our society to encourage a
change in the way that we view
nonprofits we can't ask so much from
them anymore and we've got to look for
other solutions thank you
you
[Applause]