Jilly Stephens on inequality and food insecurity

Transcript

JILLY STEPHENS: Food is a basic necessity. Two out of five working households in New York City don’t have enough income to put food on the table.

[Inequality is logo. A graphic black equal sign with an orange slash through it. #InequalityIs. Jilly Stephens, executive director, City Harvest. A white woman with blonde hair.]

Inequality is the imbalance between the cost of living and the wages people can earn, which results in people not being able to afford food. We’re seeing 1.4 million New Yorkers struggling to feed themselves, and what we see here in New York City is really mirroring what we see nationally with close to 50 million Americans considered food insecure, and struggling to put food on the table. When we think about one in four of those being children, that’s really a very worrying statistic. The work of City Harvest is really to capture food that would otherwise go to waste and get it onto the table of those hungry New Yorkers. We do envision a hunger-free New York City, and we believe we can get there through collaboration with other nonprofits, with government, with corporations, and most importantly with the community that we’re here to serve. In a country like America, it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine a time when we can feed everybody living here a good-quality, healthy diet.

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