Inspiring Empathy

Hunger in America is a serious problem. One that, unfortunately, many people don’t seem to care a lot about. Because of this, we created a new public service announcement (PSA) to show people what hunger looks like in America using familiar childhood stories to help foster a feeling of empathy for people in need.

We spent hours talking to people about their feelings toward the issue of hunger and were surprised by their apathy. However, rather than walk away, we dug deeper and found that often apathy is a defense-mechanism to avoid dealing with a harsh reality – in this case, the reality that 41 million people in the U.S. face hunger.

After uncovering these feelings, we researched how to challenge them and learned that one of the best ways to inspire people to care is to demonstrate the heartbreaking ways that hunger affects families. So, we decided to create a PSA that promotes empathy by depicting real stories of working families who struggle with hunger across the U.S. The stories shared in the PSAs are inspired by people served throughout the Feeding America network – people who are our neighbors, family and friends. People who live in every county of the U.S., including your own. Through these stories we hope to encourage people everywhere to turn apathy into action and help us end the story of hunger that is all too real. Take the first step by watching our brand-new PSAs.