Mayor Sharon Weston Broome of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Mayor Mattie Parker of Fort Worth, Texas are Chair and Vice-Chair of the Mayors Alliance to End Childhood Hunger, a bipartisan alliance of almost 400 mayors from across the country.

“I think the first thing that the Alliance capitalizes on is a firm understanding that the most powerful thing Americans can use is their bully pulpit to any cause,” says Mayor Parker.

Mayor Broome agrees. “There are a lot of best practices that we can hone in on and we can work together to advocate for legislative measures at the federal, state, and local levels.”

Listen in to learn about some innovative ideas that have already been shared among the mayors in the Alliance and how these initiatives are reducing childhood hunger in their communities.

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India’s children are hungry. Gauri Devidayal, Co-Founder and Director of The Food Matters Group,

and Pankaj Jethwani, physician and Executive VP at W Health Ventures, are working to solve that problem. Devidayal is using her platform to draw attention and funding to the cause while Jethwani is helps run holistic nutrition programs.

“I think India's one of the greatest nations when it comes to hospitality. It's just something that comes innately to people,” says Devidayal. “That's ridiculous, as a child, to go through eight hours in the morning before a first meal and still expect to learn, still expect to thrive,” Jethwani believes. “We've served 400,000 children. It's a drop in the ocean. It's not even a drop in the ocean - it's a micro-drop in the ocean.”

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Charles Watson, CEO of Tropical Smoothie Café, talks about how the restaurant industry is uniquely positioned to make a difference on child hunger. “The American consumer is demanding and one of the things that they're demanding - which is good - is purpose,” says Watson. “[They’ll] give you their money… but [they] also want to see that you're giving back and that you're doing something positive.”

He proposed a "CEO Pledge to End Hunger" which aims to raise funds to support summer food programs, potentially preventing millions of children from going hungry. “We need sunshine, we need happiness, we need taking care of one another,” he concludes.

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