Jill Dougherty | Bio
U.S. Affairs Correspondent

It’s 7 a.m. on a cold Thanksgiving morning and 500 volunteers at Food & Friends already are at work wrapping up turkey dinners – 3,000 of them. A whole roast turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans and three pies.

Another team of volunteers picks up the boxes and heads for their cars to deliver the dinners to Food and Friends’ clients: people with few financial resources and many health challenges, including HIV/Aids and cancer.

For twenty years, Food and Friends has been providing them with nutritionally balanced meals, three per day, delivered six days a week – for free. “People are making difficult choices in this community between paying for their medical care and eating,” says Craig Shniderman, executive director, “and the job of Food & Friends is to make sure that, for our clients at least, they don’t have to make that choice.”

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Editor’s Note: Actress Drew Barrymore is an Ambassador Against Hunger for the U.N.’ s World Food Program.

Drew Barrymore
Special to CNN

I made my first trip to Nairobi after reading an article in The New York Times about schools and how they can change a child’s life.

Dollars could do wonders for one child in a year in Africa, providing food and education, it said, while children in so many other parts of the world have the luxury to spend that money on miscellaneous fun.

The article made me feel one person could actively help another person; that I could tangibly help a child in need. A problem that had seemed so vast, so untouchable to me, suddenly felt smaller and more contained — at least for the moment.

I picked up the phone and called the United Nations and told them that I would love to further educate myself on what they do and would more than anything love to go with them on a trip to Africa to see things firsthand.

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Impact Your World: The global food market’s shelves are getting bare and hunger activists say it will get worse. As the nation marks World Hunger Relief Week, more people are asking: Why are so many people starving and what, if anything, can be done to eradicate hunger? Learn how you can help

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David Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

The young man, wearing a shirt and a tie, turned up just as the pantry operated by an Iowa food bank was closing for the night.

He knew it was after-hours. That’s why he was there.

He kept his gaze downward as he told the woman from the food bank that he had lost his job, had a wife and kids and was too embarrassed and ashamed to stand in line to receive a bag of groceries that hopefully would feed his family for a week.

I have a master’s degree. I shouldn’t have to do this, he said.

I heard this story last December, a few weeks before the Iowa presidential caucus.

Throughout this election season I talked with professionals and volunteers at food banks and pantries across the country.

The refrain was the same from Oregon to South Carolina, from Maine to Texas: Demand was rising, easily outstripping supply.

More and more new faces were standing in line; not looking anyone else in the eye, hoping not to be recognized by friends or neighbors.
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