Alliance to End Hunger Launches New Podcast

Few organizations are more central to the response to reductions by the Trump administration in food security aid, both domestically and abroad, than the Alliance to End Hunger. To increase its outreach, the Alliance has launched a new podcast, “Voices to End Hunger,” hosted by Minerva Delgado, the Alliance’s director of coalitions and advocacy. You can listen by searching Voices to End Hunger on your favorite podcast streaming platform or follow these links to Spotify; Apple Podcasts; Pandora; and Pocket Casts. Spotlight spoke recently with Delgado and Nathan Magrath, the Alliance’s director of communications and outreach. The transcript of that conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Before we get to the podcast, how are you folks doing in what I’m guessing is sadly an incredibly busy time for you.

Minerva Delgado: I’ve been sharing with folks that being in D.C. right now is a very tough environment. There’s this cloud of despair hanging over the city and I think every day there’s just more bad news around all of the programs and issues we care about. And so, it’s been tough. We also work on global food security, and that’s been a really, really hard road with this new administration and everything they’ve done to really dismantle our foreign assistance programs and especially on global food security, that was supposed to be spared but was not spared and kind of became collateral damage in a lot of ways. We’re definitely busy trying to figure out how to navigate in this new environment. It’s been a challenge.

On the podcast, where did that idea come from?

Nate, if you want to jump in here?

Nate Magrath: So, this has been an idea that’s been rolling in the back of our minds collectively for the last couple of years. I think it, for the most part, was a capacity issue, not having it happen sooner. I think it made a lot of sense for us, looking at the breadth of our membership, to see how many experts and advocates we could tap to get on a show, to talk about their experiences and their own expertise and insights into strategies to end hunger and how that connects with the advocacy work that we do. It just made a lot of sense to bring these voices together and podcasts are still on the up and up end. So, getting those voices on a podcast and getting that out to our network and beyond our network was a great way, we thought, to spur interest in the issues, but also our own organization.

And you’ve just begun in the past few weeks, correct?

We’re only released two episodes and the third one’s coming out the first Monday of May.

What’s the cadence? Is it weekly or monthly?

Monthly, but with exceptions. There will be times when we can have a special episode. We’re scheduled to have one a month, but there will be months where we have more than one.

And Minerva, from your perspective, what impact would you like for this to have? Is this to educate? To energize? All of the above?

Delgado: Absolutely, all of the above. I think Nate makes a good point in terms of wanting to get the message out to a broader audience. Of course, we have like our regular communications channels and social media and our newsletter, but we want to try to reach folks who wouldn’t necessarily go to our website and sign up for those things but may be interested in hearing about these topics in a different way. And so, we thought the podcast would be a great way to accomplish that.

We first and foremost want to educate people, to make sure that they understand what hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition look like in the U.S. and around the world and to help people understand that these are very solvable problems. We tend to think world hunger or hunger in the U.S. are such huge issues we couldn’t possibly solve them. However, we know that it’s really a matter of public and political will.

And so, what we want to do is feature people who are doing the good work, who are actually solving these problems and show that if we had enough intentionality and resources behind all of these strategies to solve this problem, we could do this. So, we’re trying to do a number of things. One is definitely educate. But we also want to inspire people to look a little deeper, to understand what’s going on around them, and to get them engaged at whatever level they feel comfortable engaging.

I believe Eric Mitchell was your first guest.

Yes, our first guest was Eric Mitchell, who’s the president of the Alliance To End Hunger. And that first episode is just really introducing the Alliance, the state of hunger and malnutrition in the world, and what’s happening in the environment right now that’s making our work a little bit more challenging, including the political environment.

The second episode, which recently aired, featured the Clean Slate Initiative, and talked about Second Chance Month. And this is where we’re talking about the nexus between criminal justice issues and food security, as so many times, folks leaving imprisonment are re-entering communities and food security is a big issue for them.

And what about the third episode?

The third episode was just recorded and we’re getting ready to release that the first week of May. And that’s featuring a discussion on the state global malnutrition and featuring two of our Alliance to End Hunger partners who are working in that field, particularly in helping to bring Ready-to-Use Therapeutic foods, or RUTF, to severely malnourished and stunted children. It’s a life-saving product.

And the aim is to try to balance domestic and international topics as best you can?

That’s the plan for sure. Although right now we are planning a special episode, which will also come out in May, to talk a little bit about SNAP, given all the negative rhetoric we are hearing and the impending potential budget cuts. We want to bust some SNAP myths and talk to folks who’ve used SNAP about how this program has helped them through tough times and just have an honest conversation about who benefits from SNAP and why it’s important.

Any other potential guests down the road that you’re looking at, or program topics?

Magrath: We’re having conversations with groups that are focused on school meals, both in the U.S. and globally and we’re interested in looking at what are some of the similarities and differences between school meal programs in the United States and say Japan and Europe and some in the developing world as well. Where do these programs get their funding? Where do they start out and what impact are they having? We’re also having conversations around resilient agriculture and how to build resilient agricultural systems, globally as well as in the United States. There are a lot of cross-cutting issues that we’re going be able to touch upon with our membership on both the domestic and international side of things. It’s going to be an exciting few months for the podcast.

Delgado: And I think the other point I would make about future episodes is that we will be featuring the breadth of the Alliance to End Hunger collective. We are a collective, multi-sector coalition. And so, we have organizations that are national organizations, international NGOs, faith networks, corporations, foundations, universities. We’ll be talking from all those different perspectives and bringing in those different voices to the conversation. Because we know hunger is a solvable issue, but it will take more than just one sector of the government to solve it. We all need to work together.

And how has the audience been so far? Have you seen people signing up who are not coming from your sort of usual suspects?

Magrath: We’ve been hearing a lot of positive feedback from folks that aren’t necessarily our usual suspects. Minerva was at a conference a few weeks ago in Texas and she even heard feedback down there from folks that had been tuning in.

You’re a media star now Minerva in addition to everything else you do.

Delgado: Everybody has to get their 15 minutes.

Just to finish up where we started, there are so many things that the Alliance can be focusing on right now. What’s at the top of your list domestically? Would it be SNAP?

Delgado: I would definitely put SNAP at the top of that list. I mean, our Alliance members care about all of the federal nutrition programs. They care about all of the global food security programs. But definitely our biggest concerns right now are some of the potential funding cuts that we’re seeing on the domestic side, particularly around SNAP. It seems to be a big target.

On the domestic side, I would definitely say SNAP but also making sure that we’re continuing to improve WIC, which has traditionally had bipartisan support. We want to make sure that that program, which is incredibly important for the development of infants and children, continues to get the support that it needs, and that we continue to modernize the program. There are some initiatives that have modernized the program that are ready to expire, so we want to make sure that we don’t go backwards.

On the international side, of course, we’re incredibly concerned about the dismantling of USAID and the gutting of foreign assistance and the impact that has had on global food assistance. Even though those programs were supposed to be spared, we’re seeing in reality that there has been a tremendous impact. We’re very concerned about what this means and really want to have a conversation about what is the appropriate U.S. role in global food security.

Anything else either of you would like to add?

Delgado: I will just add one more thing, which is that in addition to the advocacy we’re doing at the federal level, we also partner with state and local organizations around the country. We call it the Hunger Free Communities Network. We’re really thrilled to work with these partners who are working hyper locally, sometimes at the state level, but many times at the city and county levels, to address hunger in their communities. And they’re trying to replicate what we do at the Alliance with these multi-sector collaboratives that are looking at their food systems, trying to make them more efficient, making sure that there aren’t barriers to service and that all the right policies are in place so that they can really do the best hunger relief work that they can. So, we are really excited in the future to feature some of those folks on the podcast.