For years, the food banking sector has talked about the need to address the root causes of hunger. Now there is a campaign and toolkit to help ignite those plans into action.

The Next Shift campaign, created by the organizations and individuals of Closing the Hunger Gap, puts forth a three-part plan to begin moving the food banking sector beyond traditional food distribution and into strategies that encompass social and economic justice.

The campaign is born out of the recognition that U.S. food insecurity rates have remained largely unchanged for decades, despite massive growth in the volume of food distributed by food banks and pantries over the years. This narrow focus has stunted the ability to eliminate hunger, which is connected to more deeply rooted problems.

Anti-hunger organizations need to first look within to begin addressing the root causes of hunger, said Jen O'Neal.

To jumpstart the type of structural change deemed necessary, Next Shift is advising food banks and pantries to first examine their own internal practices. "This first phase addresses the way our sector is perpetuating some of the inequities that perpetuate hunger," said Jen O'Neal, a community organizer formerly of Feeding Texas who has been contracted by Closing the Hunger Gap to publicly launch the Next Shift campaign.

Organizations should first ensure they are paying "thriving wages" and creating fair and safe working conditions for all staff and workers, Next Shift recommends. A thriving wage goes beyond a living wage, enabling workers to prosper and plan for the future, and could encompass related activities such as ensuring realistic workloads, equal pay and open communication without fear of retribution.

In fact, a movement toward better pay and worker's rights has already started to gain some momentum. In late 2019, San Francisco-Marin Food Bank became the first food bank in the country to recognize a union , resulting in the successful negotiation of a three-year labor contract about a year later. In late 2020, employees at Foodlink in upstate New York began organizing to form a union. More recently, Food Lifeline in Wash., has increased wages to $25 an hour, resulting in a substantial raise to more than 40% of its staff.

Historically, workers within the food system, including those who grow, harvest, package and sell food, have been among the nation's most food-insecure. "How can we demand better for our sector and then demand better for everyone in the food system?" O'Neal asked.

The campaign's second recommendation is about giving power to the people by shifting leadership and decision-making within anti-hunger organizations to those impacted by racism, hunger and economic exploitation. "Communities know what they need," O'Neal said. Anti-hunger organizations can tap into that knowledge by employing people from the community and/or creating a board of directors that reflects their community.

Next Shift's third recommendation is to think differently about the nature of hunger-relief work. Rather than maintain a narrow view of food charity as the solution to a lack of food, Next Shift advises "changing the narrative" to focus on hunger as a systemic problem with interconnected causes including racism and economic injustice.

By embracing a broader and more accurate view of the true causes of hunger, organizations can help to advance a more powerful collective response. "The stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves create the world we live in and impact the people we serve," O'Neal noted.

The launch of the Next Shift campaign comes with a number of resources, including an explanatory toolkit and a conversation guide . The guide acknowledges that conversations about current practices are "so complicated because there's so much love and affection" for the current food banking system, O'Neal said.

As a first step in broadening mindsets, Next Shift is encouraging people involved in hunger relief to sign the Next Shift Personal Pledge (as individuals, unaffiliated with their organizations) to show their personal support for the goals of the campaign.

The people behind Next Shift are well aware that a campaign aimed at changing hearts and minds about hunger-relief work, which is already so highly valued in our society, will be a long process. "We talk a lot about planting seeds," O'Neal said. – Chris Costanzo

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