by Roxanne Henry

As the Community Outreach Manager for the Food Bank For New York City, I get to interact with our city’s unsung heroes.

Those heroes include people like José, a resident I met at a meeting of the Astoria Houses Residents’ Association at the beginning of the year. My team and I were there to talk about Universal School Meals —  specifically, the need to end the application process for school meals, thereby eliminating the stigma and red tape that now keep many eligible students from accessing needed meals.

Food Bank Community Outreach Intern Erica Santiago and Community Outreach Manager Roxanne Henry with more than 4,700 letters in support of Universal School Meals collected through the Food Bank's network of community organizers and food assistance programs

Earlier in the meeting, José said he wanted his community to be a better place for his three children. After the meeting, he and several other community members committed to getting signatures for petitions to send to legislators.

Their voices carried all the way to Washington, where our legislators will now have a chance to approve provisions for Universal School Meals as part of the plan for Child Nutrition Reauthorization recently approved by the Senate Agriculture Committee.

And Astoria isn’t the only place where impassioned New Yorkers urged legislators to support Universal School Meals. During the campaign, I met people passionate about this issue at the First Corinthian Baptist Church Food Pantry in West Harlem, with the Staten Island Hunger Task Force on the North Shore and at dozens of other community organizations across the city.

These are people motivated solely by a belief in the potential of their communities, and the desire to improve future generations’ access to needed resources. Their drive and commitment inspires me, and reminds me every day why I do the work that I do.

What inspires you?