Dion Dawson knows what it’s like to go hungry. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, he faced hunger, homelessness and poverty. Now, he leads a multi-million-dollar organization committed to providing fresh food to his community. Dion’s Chicago Dream delivers over 11,000 pounds of food per month to more than 1,300 Chicago residents each week, helping to alleviate the food insecurity that so many in his community face. Tune in to this powerful and inspiring episode where Dion and Ami discuss how the charitable food experience must be imbued with dignity, the ways that food insecurity is a social justice issue and so much more.

22% of LGBTQ+ adults live in poverty, which makes this community twice as likely as others to face hunger. In this podcast, Ami speaks with Senior Scholar of Public Policy Bianca Wilson, PhD, of UCLA’s Williams Institute about the unique challenges that LGBTQ folks face around food insecurity. What contributes to LGBTQ people coming up against barriers to accessing food? Dr. Wilson and Ami explore cultural, geographic, and other issues that play a factor.

Anna and Raj Asava knew what hunger looked like in their home country of India but were completely unaware of what was hidden in plain sight in their community in the U.S. In this podcast, Ami talks with the founders of HungerMitao, a volunteer-driven grassroots movement focused on raising awareness about hunger in this country, about what they are doing to raise awareness about food insecurity and how they are enrolling others in the movement to end hunger.