The Giving Garden® Loyalty Program
The Giving Garden® Podcast Episode 4 with Erin McAleer
Click the image below to listen to Episode 4 with special guest, Erin McAleer, the President and CEO of Project Bread. For a full transcript, scroll further down.
Full transcript of Episode 4
Martina Halloran:
Welcome to the Giving Garden Podcast where we explore how small acts of giving can blossom into lasting change. I'm your host Martina Halloran, founder of The Giving Garden and CEO of Dr. Hauschka Skincare USA. In each episode, we highlight the power of giving, whether it's time, kindness, or resources, and how these acts can transform both lives and whole communities. Join me as we explore the ripple effect of giving and its lasting impact.
Today, I'm honored to sit down with a leader whose work has reshaped the fight against hunger in Massachusetts, Erin McAleer, the President and CEO of Project Bread. Erin's passion for social justice isn't just professional, it's deeply personal. Growing up with her own experience of food insecurity, Erin understands firsthand the urgency of ensuring everyone has reliable access to healthy food. Since joining Project Bread in 2017, she's leveraged her experience into action. Her collaborative approach, working with schools, health centers, and government agencies, reflects her belief that hunger is a solvable problem when we all take action together.
Erin's professional background is just as impressive, spanning strategic roles in state government to leading strategic initiatives for Be The Change Inc, to teaching at both Simmons and Boston University School of Social Work. Her expertise in policy, advocacy, and systems change has made her a formidable force for good. As she puts it, hunger in Massachusetts is simply unacceptable. This is a solvable problem, and all of us can do our part. When we all take action, we exercise our collective power.
Erin, welcome to The Giving Garden podcast.
Erin McAleer:
Thank you so much for having me on today.
Martina Halloran:
I'm kind of in awe. I have followed Project Bread for a while. Really is an honor and a privilege to be able to sit with you and have a conversation about food insecurity and bridging the food gap. So you've been leading Project Bread since 2017. You've been there a minute. I want to hear the story of how you became involved in this work and what has inspired you to take on the challenge of ending food hunger in Massachusetts?
Erin McAleer:
Yeah. Well, first, would say this is an issue that's always been deeply personal for me. When I was five years old, my mother left in an abusive marriage and quickly, you know, raising three kids on her own on her own income became very, very challenging. And we became food insecure almost overnight. And what I remember most about those years was just how stressed she was as a parent, not being able to meet that most basic of human needs for her kids.
So it's an issue that I have unfortunately experienced, and, I don't want any kid going through what I went through, and I definitely don't want any mom going through what my mom went through. The other thing that brought me to Project Bread is that I know that this problem of food insecurity is only going to be solved through policy and systemic solutions. And my background is in policy. That's where I'm a social worker, but I spent most of my career doing policy work. And what drew me to Project Bread was while the organization is focused on helping people today who are food insecure, we're directly serving over 30,000 households a year, we also always have our eye on the ball of how do we prevent this issue in the first place and how do we do that through large scale systemic change.
So the mission and the approach of Project Bread also really drew me to this organization.
Martina Halloran:
You've said a couple of really important things, that it's systemic change that's needed when you really look at the problem. I think oftentimes people oversimplify or they misunderstand food insecurity. And that is the intention of a lot of the work that I do, is to help people understand what food insecurity looks like from a variety of lenses. I, too, have come from a food insecure household where, you know, having access to free lunch programs was critical. And where I am at this place in my career, I'm a testament to if you can fix and if you can intercept that train that can go very fast from zero to ten, like you said in your household, how can you really impact that and then see systemic change?
And then you see people thriving and flying at a whole different pace and contributing in a societal way. From my perspective, I think that oversimplification is where people get the story wrong.
Erin McAleer:
Yes, I completely agree.
Martina Halloran:
And from your perspective, I know I have a lot of ideas of the misconceptions. I think when people hear stories like ours, they get really uncomfortable, and it starts to be uncomfortable. And trying to normalize these conversations and helping people understand what food insecurity really looks like, I think is part of that long term solution in helping that conversation help clarify what is really happening. And from your perspective, what are the biggest misconceptions people have about hunger, especially in a state like Massachusetts, which is relatively, when you look at the cost of housing, when you look at the cost of education and property value, it is a relatively wealthy state.
Erin McAleer:
Right. I think the biggest misconception is this false narrative, and we're hearing it right now, that people who are food insecure are out of work. They're lazy. They don't wanna, you know, they don't wanna be contributing members to society. It's a moral failing.
It's all their fault. The reality is in Massachusetts, people who are food insecure really are in a few categories. One, they're working, but they actually just don't make enough to get by. Right? They are working, I would say, more than forty hours a week.
They're working sixty hours a week, eighty hours a week, and their wages are just not enough for them to get by. So they are trying so hard. They don't want to be in this position. But the reality is between their wages and the high cost of living, they're there. The other big category is their kids.
These are children who are food insecure. They're living in these households with parents who are struggling to get by. And then there is a category of folks who are out of work, and those are senior citizens, people with severe disabilities. And and there's often, I would say, caregivers. Caregivers.
Right? And caregivers are often facing this challenge. And I really believe if people sat down one on one, they would sympathize and empathize and probably make the same decisions that a lot of caregivers are making. For example, I was talking to a woman recently who had a, you know, a thriving career, and her husband got cancer. And he needed a caretaker.
And so he lost his job, and she wanted to be his caretaker. She wanted to be there for him. And that's an example where people in Massachusetts that don't have a savings and are living on the edge, one catastrophe, like a cancer diagnosis, means they're out of work and now they're food insecure. So I think the misconception around work is probably the biggest one that we face out there.
Martina Halloran:
When people are engaged in this conversation, because it is uncomfortable, the assumptions just start falling into place and creating your own narrative so you're comfortable. That's been my experience in talking with people and engaging people. Your personal experience with food insecurity shaped your leadership approach. In an organization like Project Bread, I think it's not so linear to be a leader. How has this really shaped how you lead the organization every day?
Erin McAleer:
I think it first of all shapes that I don't think my mother is an example of an individual failing or moral failing. I actually think what she did to leave an unsafe situation, knowing the financial precariousness of it was actually heroic. What she actually did, I think most people would say, wow, that she made the right decision. And so systems were broken.
She should have been able to make that decision and known that my kids will be fed. I can get out. I can leave this unsafe situation, but I don't need to worry about this basic need of my kids being fed. And so, you know, in Massachusetts, the high cost of living state, twenty percent of families with kids are food insecure.
That's one in five families. This is a systemic issue. We just have to name it. And as a leader, that's what I'm consistently focused on is how do we put systems into place to make sure no one is put in the situation that my mother was put in.
If there's somebody out there today who is worried about leaving an abusive marriage because she's just not sure she'll be able to feed her kids, well, in Massachusetts, she knows, okay. They're gonna get breakfast and lunch. When they go to school today, they're gonna get two solid meals. That alone might be enough for somebody to leave a a dangerous situation. And so that's what fuels me is the reality that I know, my mom's story, but also the folks that we, you know, have the privilege of working with at Project Bread are not examples of moral or personal failings.
They're examples of they have been harmed by systemic failures that have been created around them.
Martina Halloran:
That's a very critical point from my perspective, the systemic aspect, because hunger is not just a lack of food. It's tied to systemic issues, economic inequality, systemic racism. When you think about Red District, you think about all of the things that have happened that lead people to this place. How does Project Bread approach these very complex and very interconnected challenges?
Erin McAleer:
I think that the number one way we approach it is first naming that it's a systemic issue and then leading on solutions itself. As you mentioned, there are so many contributing factors to food insecurity. And when you go back to the economics, it's wages. But when you talk about things like redlining, that comes down to who has housing in Massachusetts and, therefore, who's accumulated wealth in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, housing is the number one source of wealth.
Well, if you were a Black family that was restricted from buying a home in certain areas in our state, you did not accumulate wealth at the same rate as white households. And not having wealth, what that translates to is when a crisis happens, you don't have your own personal safety net to fall onto. So at Project Bread, it's just naming that and recognizing it and then also saying, well, now we need systemic solutions to respond to that. We cannot solve this through food drugs. We need to respond to a systemic crisis with systemic solutions.
And that's why, as an example, we let on campaigns like universal free school meals, making sure every kid in Massachusetts has free school meals. That means today, in Massachusetts, nine hundred thousand kids have free breakfast and free lunch. So responding to these systemic challenges with systemic solutions, our goal is we know we can't solve all the problems of the world, and there are so many, but we can solve this one. We can actually make sure people aren't worried about the most basic need of food. We can solve this one and take this one off the table and get to work on solving some of the other ones.
Martina Halloran:
From your perspective, if you can identify something in the state of Massachusetts that would need to shift to really eradicate food insecurity?
Erin McAleer:
Well, we are doing it right now. We are proving it right now. And it is making this issue part of health care. And now this isn't rocket science. The food you put into your body is part of your health.
And we all know that, and there's lots of research and lots of data, but it hasn't been part of the health care system. And so what we're doing in Massachusetts right now, and Project Bread is one of the leaders on this, is we're using medical dollars, which have traditionally only been used for doctors and prescriptions to treat food insecurity. So patients at Project Bread work with one of our counselors for six months. They are signed up for programs that they're already eligible for, like SNAP, formerly food stamps, or the WIC program for pregnant women and babies.
We give them grocery store gift cards, kitchen equipment, cooking classes, nutrition counseling, and it's really integrating this into the health care system so that their health improves. And that's an example of a systemic solution, just recognizing we cannot solve this issue through charity alone. We need to integrate it into the system that is about overall health and that recognizing the food you put to your body is part of your overall health.
Martina Halloran:
It's music to my ears because health and wellness and access, what comes to mind when we have this conversation is the idea of access. And often people who are food insecure, there's a limit to access, whether it's physical, whether it's geographical, whether it's financial, and getting connected to the resources that they need. When you look at underserved communities, whether they're people of color or people in an economic deficit, you understand that they over index in high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, all of those things that are usually generational when you look at a family's history that traditionally don't have access. With your organization, it seems like you have so many entry points in this idea of wellness. How are you creating access?
Or can you give us some of the programs that really help people access what you're actually talking about?
Erin McAleer:
Yeah. I mean, I think what we've recognized, the biggest barriers are there's two. One is economics. It's just not being able to afford food. And the second is stigma.
And we just have to name that this issue and that's what my mother went through. When she was food insecure, it was the eighties and all these false notions about single woman and and what it meant to be one, and and it kept her from, you know, accessing these programs. So what we really focus on is both of those things, making sure we're giving one people the economic need to be able to purchase not just food, but healthy food of their choosing, but then also making sure these programs are integrated into systems so the stigma is removed.
And so universal free school meals allows for that. Every kid gets it. It's normalizing it. And so I think that making sure we don't ignore the economics of it, address that head on, but then also recognizing that we have to acknowledge that just decades of false narrative and stigmatization around this issue have itself created a huge barrier to access.
Martina Halloran:
When we continue to talk about access, you've talked a few times about school lunches, which is such a powerful, powerful tool in taking the stigma away. Because we talk about the parent or the caregiver in the household. It's very traumatic for children to be stigmatized. You know, free lunch programs twenty, twenty five, thirty, forty years ago, I'm dating myself, came with a lot of stigma, and you had a different lunch ticket and you hoped that everybody didn't see. And then because you didn't wanna be embarrassed, sometimes you didn't get the free lunch because you just did not wanna expose yourself in that way.
When kids have access, you know, they're on equal footing. They have the opportunity that the child sitting to the right and to the left, but then comes summer. And that is such a challenge. And when you hear people on the news saying, well, kids should work in the summer.
Well, where does a five year old get a job? It's a little mind blowing. The Summer Eats program, I'd love for you to share a little bit about that because it seems like it's a continuation of free lunch programs that happened during the academic year.
Erin McAleer:
Summer is a really concerning time for childhood hunger. Again, I said 900,000 kids today get access to free breakfast and free lunch. Well, then when summer comes and schools are closed, how are they gonna get those two thirds of their daily calories? So what Project Bread does, we run the Summer Eats program in partnership with our state department of education. And simplistically, our goal is to make sure food is where kids will be.
So we can name it. Kids this summer, they're gonna be at pools, camps, playgrounds, water parks. We work with partner libraries. We work with partners at all of these places to set up summer meal site, and they can offer breakfast, lunch, supper, you know, all three, one, really depending on when the kids are going to be there.
Last summer, we set up over 1,400 sites across Massachusetts. They're free meals for kids. And, again, from the stigmatization standpoint, they're open for everybody, and it's just part of you're at the playground, and someone's passing on healthy lunches. It's just it's just part of the experience.
So that's one example of how we work in the summer. We also support our state agencies in the summer EBT program, which is a little bit more targeted. But for families, they get an electronic card to be able to purchase food in the summer. And the reality is is that our summer eats program, those 1,400 sites are incredible, but some kids can't leave their home for safety reasons. They might not have a caregiver to walk them down to that playground or that park.
So we wanna make sure we're reaching those kids as well. So we support both of those programs to make sure that kids have access to meals during the summertime.
Martina Halloran:
It's amazing. And it takes a village. It sounds like it takes a village in a force. And that takes me to the community part of it. Your organization is community first approach.
Why is it so important to really create a space for the community to be involved, for people who aren't food insecure to get involved in what is happening and what the needs are?
Erin McAleer:
I don't think we can solve this without that. We've tried top down approaches to anti hunger solutions for decades and decades, and it just doesn't work that way. We really need to be listening and learning from people who are experiencing food insecurity. What are their needs?
What programs would work for their families? What kind of flexibility or dignity or decision making do they wanna have over the food that they're able to access? What access points do they trust? Who are the messengers in their community? Where where are they getting their information, and and where will they go to to seek support and resources?
So I I just believe or know we can't solve this problem top down. It's not gonna work having people who've never experienced food insecurity sitting in a room drafting policies or drafting programs that they think are necessary. And why that's a little bit radical, to be honest with you, is because that's how it's been done in our country. Most anti hunger solutions in The United States Of America started either with surplus food. Okay.
We've got extra food. What do we do with this extra food? Or started with a volunteer, you know, giver model. And, obviously, that's rooted in benevolence and and kindness, but it hasn't worked. It hasn't worked in in having this top down of here's what we think is best for you, and we're gonna devise this program around it.
We really need to shift the narrative and make sure people who are experiencing this issue are the ones driving the solutions.
Martina Halloran:
I think the dignity piece, when you talk about the people that are affected really driving the issue, dignity is a big part of that. And while you may have some needs or you may have financial gaps, you still want your dignity and you still want to be able to have some autonomy and decision making for your household or for yourself or for your children. And the top down approach, there's a limit. It's a very linear, you're in a lane, this is what you get and you don't get upset. What that takes people to often is, one, I'm not going to access it because it's not for them, or they're not hearing me.
Or it also takes you to this hard right turn into healthcare issues. Because now you're stepping outside of space where they're not engaging you in a way that is addressing you as a whole human and on equal footing. And in order for somebody to receive the information, it needs to resonate. And when it doesn't resonate, specifically on this issue, then they're making choices that are really unhealthy.
And I think it goes back to that health policy and integrating into healthcare. And how are we doing that? And how is that system affecting change? How do we then allow people who have been impacted to continue to impact change down the road?
Erin McAleer:
Right. Absolutely. And I think people have cultural preferences. People have picky kids. That's right.
I do. And it and and so, you know, giving families the choice to purchase and prepare food at home that they know their family will eat, that's wholesome, that's culturally appropriate, That's what we should all strive for. You know, I often say too that we all you and I are probably gonna go to the grocery store, like, over the next, you know, few days, and that's the system where we're getting food. Low income people should be part of that system too.
Right? It doesn't make sense that we have a separate system of emergency food and volunteering just for them, that they have to participate in a different system. So how do we come up with solutions where we leverage the existing grocery store market and make sure people are able to participate there? And then how do we make healthy food more affordable? And that you know, you hit on it.
And a lot of times and, you know, going back to what are some of the misconceptions, I talked about work, but I it's also obesity. A lot of people think, well, if people are overweight or obese, they can't be food insecure. And that's actually false. What ends up happening is folks don't have enough money, so they're stretching their dollars. And processed cheap food stretches your dollars a lot further than, you know, buying fruit and vegetables and and whole grains.
And so that's just another reality and a misconception about this issue.
Martina Halloran:
You were in my head there because I think that part of it is twofold. It's stretching the dollars and then access because a lot of low income families, households do not live in places where there's a full grocery store or they have access to transportation. So, it's the bodega or it's the convenience store. And what's available there is affordable to them and accessible from a geographic perspective. So that financial perspective is one perspective, and the geographic perspective is the other.
And one of the things that I love about Project Bread is because you are creating access, you have a food source hotline. And I would love for our listeners to hear a little bit more about that because that is about creating access.
Erin McAleer:
Right. So we have it's our oldest program at Project Bread. It's a toll free, confidential, aligned, multilingual coordinators and counselors can answer the phone. And it's really about helping people connect to all the different food resources that are available to them. So, again, it's confidential.
We're not a government agency, but we can help them identify if they might be eligible for federal programs like SNAP and and WIC. But we also might be able to tell them, like you were just naming, there might be a community farm in their community that having subsidized CSA shares, right, that we could say, did you know about this? Let's sign up for that and just helping them identify what are some of the programs that they might not be aware of that would help them put healthy food on the table. So it's comprehensive, it's confidential, which I think especially in this moment in time is really, really important for a lot of households, and it's compassionate.
Martina Halloran:
When we're discussing, you know, hotlines and access, one of the parts of the population that really comes to mind are elderly people. And I'm hearing more and more and more that there is a significant struggle within that population. And we're talking seventy, seventy five people who are really well retired.
And they have limited mobility at times. And a lot of times they can no longer drive. Do you have programs that really identify and specifically work with the elderly population?
Erin McAleer:
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you named it. Also a lot are living on a fixed income, right? They might be living on social security and a fixed income when inflation is happening, put people in a really precarious situation. And so certainly all of our programs, the Food Source hotline, our health care partnerships program, are targeted at all, you know, at that age group as well. I'll share one story.
I had a man who was part of our health care partnerships program, who I think was in his eighties. And an example of, like, a generation that didn't ever wanna ask for help. He just felt like there's gotta be people there that need this more than me. If I participate, am I taking it away from somebody?
And so he really tried to say, no. No. No. That's not the case. But he sent me an email overjoyed because for the first time in his life, he was in his eighties, he had a refrigerator because of Project Bread, and he couldn't believe the food he was able to eat in.
So here is a man who had been eating shelf stable food, probably had, like, gone through the Great Depression and, you know, survived on that food and had been continuously eating that for his whole life, got a refrigerator, and he was telling me all this new food that he was eating. And, obviously, his health outcomes were improving. And so I think that what we do often find with older Americans is this there's gotta be people who need it more than me, or I can you know, I don't deserve it, or they're getting by without support that's it's available, and it's going to help them. And it's going help the larger community.
Having him healthy is better for all of us. And just letting him know that is important as well.
Martina Halloran:
Healthy communities are thriving communities. And thriving communities make up a society. And if everyone is thriving and everyone is part of that, to include the elderly people who laid the foundation of so many things that have happened in our really rich culture and history, you can probably tell I'm a big proponent of access. And in a lot of my conversations, I try to help people understand what that means. And I think somebody from the outside looking in may not realize having a refrigerator is access because now you have a different entry point into preparing and eating and holding food in your household and things like that to the common society who aren't really thinking beyond, you know, I have a nine to five, I'm really busy at work, my life is so busy, and I'm trying to build generational wealth through I bought a new house, I bought a new this.
And I think when you take a step back, access hand in hand with policy change. Because policy change, a lot of people think, wow, that's so overwhelming. It's so big. It is so beyond my scope. And I That's what I often find when I'm having conversations with people, that they feel the issue is so big that what can I do?
But we get too many of those people that say, what can I do? And then walk away thinking There are so many things that people can do, whether it's small, medium, or big. It doesn't have to be momentous action to have impact. Yes. And I would love to hear a little bit about, and I think our audience would love to understand, one, what are some of the things people who would like to help or aren't sure how to help or where to go, what are some of those things you might be able to share?
Erin McAleer:
Yeah. I mean, a very simple one is to start to deconstruct these false narratives. So the next time you're at a dinner party and somebody says, you know, I'm glad they're gonna cut people off a snap. None of them are working.
Reference this conversation. Reference this reality and talk about the cost of living and people who are working in low wage jobs and not being able to get by. So that's a very simple one.
Start to stand up, and and that's hard. I know that these conversations, usually, when somebody's coming at it from that angle, they are like they believe what they're believing, and they are saying it in a very strong voice. But that is taking over.
And that's causing political challenges right now. The second thing I would say that's a simple thing to do is, you know, you can go to projectbread.org and sign up for our action team, and we will tell you when to reach out to legislators when it matters. What we often hear is that the legislator hears from nine people on an issue. That's a big deal.
And that's how we're able to get universal preschool meals passed here in Massachusetts. You can support our work through donating at projectbread.org. Or if you live in Massachusetts and you really wanna walk with us, we have our annual Walk for Hunger on Sunday, May 4 this year on Boston Common. And and that's a great community event that's about raising awareness and also raising funding to support these important initiatives.
Martina Halloran:
That is really the message that when we say solvable, that's because everybody is acting in a way that's moving forward to create the space to have the conversations. That is such a big part. There are societal systemic shifts, and it is in the way we talk about this, eliminating the stigma, being really honest about the narrative that is currently out there and the narrative that needs to shift to really give people the space to say, You know what? This is what food insecurity looks like.
I think it needs to be this reality of this is a very human problem. And it's a society, it's a community problem. And what often happens is it's, well, it's those people. And I think a lot of people don't really get the fact that they may work with somebody that they're friends with. They go, they have a coffee with them and social with them.
But that friend at work, that work friend maybe bring food insecurity and they're looking at them like, Oh my gosh, they're the hardest worker. They work the hardest. They come in early. They stay and I think really changing the narrative has been one of the biggest challenges on the day to day. The systemic shifts, the the legislation, all of those things that absolutely need to happen.
But if we don't have people literally at the street level voicing this issue and then take away adults out of it, bring it down to children. How do we expect as a society, a seven, eight, nine year old kid to access food if the parent in the house doesn't have access? That's where I think the trouble, the troubling conversations when people start saying, Oh, we're talking about kids. We're talking about people that can't work. We're talking about people that are doing the best they can given the situation they're in.
And I think it starts to become more and more human. Absolutely. That is the piece that I feel has been the biggest misconception and the bootstrap conversation.
Erin McAleer:
You don't want to hear bootstraps anymore. How can somebody pull themselves up from their bootstrap if they don't have boots? Exactly. Wouldn't speak from your experience, but in my experience, people point their finger at me and say, well, you did it.
Right. Had so many things happen in my life that were supportive and encouraging and and helped me pivot in a way that somebody else might not have that. And I got lucky a lot. I got lucky. Yeah. A lot of this is fun. I had a lot of privilege and a lot of luck.
Yeah. And and I know that. And not everybody has that same level of privilege and that same level of luck.
And we shouldn't have to wait for that. Kids don't have to be fortunate to get, you know, lucky or everyone should be have access the most basic of human needs.
Martina Halloran:
Access to fresh food sources, I truly believe, a fundamental human right. And if somebody cannot feed themselves, they cannot participate in society in a way that is really healthy and productive for everybody. Right. That is the one thing that I often leave people with when I'm having conversations is that we want a thriving society. We want a thriving community.
I often think about gardens and farms. And when farms are really thriving, when the ecosystem on a farm is really healthy, the yield from that year is incredible. And it's usually bigger than the year before. And that's how I look at our communities, like big thriving gardens. When I look at some of the things that you're working on, one of the things and one of the initiatives is is make hunger history.
Yeah, it's huge make hunger history. Yeah. And it's a little bit of a play on words too.
Erin McAleer:
Yeah. Yeah.
Martina Halloran:
I know it's ambitious and it's groundbreaking. Can you share a little bit more specifically what that is all about?
Erin McAleer:
Well, first of all, I would say, like you said, that thriving community, that thriving garden, it's a thriving nation. Again, when there's this many people in a country like The United States Of America who can't meet their most basic need, you are gonna have a disgruntled population, and and you're gonna have major repercussion from that. And so I think there's also this imperative, not just health and education, but from a democratic standpoint, we need to address this issue. Too many people in our country are not able to afford food, and and that's unacceptable. So what Make Hunger History is, it's the first of its kind effort here in Massachusetts.
We are bringing together we've been bringing together partners to really sit at the table and and devise, what do we need to do? How do we need to work together? What are some new innovations? What are some policy solutions that we need to be driving towards? How do we build that movement?
How do we change that narrative? So we have over 300 coalition members, and and those include, you know, the traditional anti hunger organizations. Those include research partners, hospitals, health centers, educational institutions, really making sure it's businesses that, you know, across sector collaborative. And then we have working groups focused on really specific pillars where we think there's promising solutions. So I spoke earlier about the health care sector.
And so there's one group that's coming together and meeting about what can we get done in the health care space to permanently integrate this solution into the health care system? Another group is really meeting around how do we change the message? How do we start to really get how do we correct this narrative? How do we make sure people with lived experience are leading?
They're the voices that people are listening to, and they're telling their own stories. And people are starting to relate to that and saying, oh, I get why she's in that situation. And I would have actually probably made that exact same decision given those circumstances too. So really coming together to work collaboratively, work collectively, and, you know, build this movement. And and hopefully, Massachusetts can be the first state or one of the first states to demonstrate that this is solvable.
And this is it has to be solvable, and we can solve solve hunger here in Massachusetts.
Martina Halloran:
Well, isn't that a great way to end? Solvable. It is solvable, not just in Massachusetts, but as a country. Erin, I can't thank you enough for the conversation. I appreciate your time.
But more importantly, when we think about, you know, hope for the future, I would love for you to just kind of leave us with a thought or two about where you're going, where your organization is going.
Erin McAleer:
Yeah. I think what I'm really hopeful right now, what I'm seeing is, you know, there's two groups that I have seen really coming forward and really fighting for this issue. And one is people with lived experience. You know, Project Bread, we have a council of experts with lived experience. We have ambassadors.
And they are brave because, again, that stigma that has been part of this for so long can make it really hard to get involved. And this group of individuals is saying, no. We are gonna share her story. We are going to make sure that we correct this narrative. So that group gives me hope.
But then also youth, we're working with eighth graders across Massachusetts who wanna take this on as their issue. I would love to be part of, you know, the generation that solves hunger. But if it's not me, I'm so excited for it to be this next generation who are just saying, like, enough. Like, we can solve this, but let's just get it done. And and that's eighth graders are already willing to take it on.
So the future is bright with those those two groups leading the charge, in my opinion.
Martina Halloran:
I love that. Thank you. With what appears to be an unsurmountable issue, the fact that you and other people think there's hope and it's bright and it's solvable and it's doable gives me hope. I hope our listeners leave feeling a little bit of that same sense of it is doable, it is solvable. Thank you, Erin.
And really thank you for the work. I think you've talked about a lot of people being brave. The work you're doing is brave, and it's not easy. And so I thank you.
Erin McAleer:
Oh, thank you so much.
Martina Halloran:
Thank you for listening to The Giving Garden Podcast. I hope you're leaving inspired, because even the smallest act can spark positive change. If you've enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. The Giving Garden Podcast is produced by Edwin Batista and edited by Steven West. A special thanks to Helen Pelosi for her guidance and generosity.
The Giving Garden Podcast is brought to you by Dr. Hauschka Skincare USA, pioneers in natural skincare for over fifty years in home to The Giving Garden Loyalty Program.
