A Day with the Change Agents of Anne Arundel County, Maryland
Posted by Michael McKenna on Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Editor’s Note: All summer, Share Our Strength staff will be visiting summer meals sites across the country to show our work in action. This post is part of that series. To learn more about Summer Meals, visit strength.org/summer.
In a high school class on social justice, I was fascinated by the concept of the change agent, an individual whose words and actions become a catalyst for change to a social ill, policy or organizational problem. There are icons in American history like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez that fit the bill, but there are also everyday Americans catalyzing their peers, their co-workers, their neighbors to take action for the common good. A change agent is motivated by an idea that won’t let them go – a sense that there is some better future out there and they have the unique gift to take the long view while setting in motion the steps needed to implement the change piece by piece. In many ways, everyone who’s Sharing their Strength with us through No Kid Hungry is also a champion in this way.
Last week, my colleague Brian Alexander and I had the privilege of spending the day with Anne Arundel County Public School’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services, visiting summer meals sites. It felt like every member of their team from the charismatic Supervisor, Jodi Risse, to the school food service staff was a change agent in their respective networks. Jodi has had the vision to set ambitious goals for the number of summer meals served year after year and has recruited new sites and advertised extensively (with the help of partners like Share Our Strength) to reach those goals. Karen, who runs the kitchen at an elementary school during the academic year and at a summer meals site during the summer, decided to use Facebook to get the word out about summer meals to students she met in the hopes that they would in turn share information about where to get free meals with their friends.
And the last change agent I’d like to highlight can speak for herself. Louise DeJesu is the principal at Hilltop Elementary in Glen Burnie, MD and I encourage you to watch the video below. She was instrumental in getting an open site at a High School next to her school, and is making sure that kids and families in need are not going hungry, even if it means reaching into her own pockets.
RELATED LINKS:
— Learn more about Share Our Strength’s Summer Meals work
— Help Support Summer Meals Work
July 27, 2011 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: maryland, summer meals
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