Food is like air and water -- everybody needs it and one gulp is not enough to sustain life. But food is more, Bill Bolling has figured out. Itâs also a tool for building community and, ultimately, democracy.

      In 1979, Bill Bolling founded the Atlanta Community Food Bank, which he has led ever since. While America is the worldâs breadbasket, 20% of its perfectly good food ends up in the dump. Meanwhile, 1 in 5 American children go hungry along with an ever-greater number of people caught without a safety net as a result of welfare reform. Where others shrugged, Bill Bolling saw a potential win-win situation: collect and distribute the perfectly good food thrown away by grocery stores, restaurants and caterers. Fill empty stomachs instead of landfills.

      Bill Bolling was at the vanguard of what is now a national network of almost 250 organizations which bring good-but-unsalable food to Americaâs hungry. A practical entrepreneur, Mr. Bollingâs approach was to ãcentralize the acquisition and decentralize the distribution.ä Thatâs key to providing nearly a million and a half meals a month in the Atlanta area alone. It takes every one of the 700 community-based organizations with whom the Atlanta Community Food Bank works to close the gap.

      Whether bringing hungry people and wasted food together or helping people in emerging democracies learn to be active citizens, Bill Bollingâs lifeâs work is about relationships. His mission is to engage, educate and empower everyone in communities. In that vein, Mr. Bolling believes Americans have become too hard on each other. Heâs convinced the reason is we donât know each other. Rich people trust poor people to work every day in their homes, Mr. Bolling points out, but not to make enough money to live. Why? Mr. Bollingâs convinced the prosperous simply donât value the poor enough because they donât know the folks who wash the cars, shine the shoes, clean the hotel rooms, work in the restaurants, and wait on tables. ÊSo most Food Banks, including the one in Atlanta, enlist prosperous volunteers so they can get acquainted with people Mr. Bolling calls the best folks in the world.

      Important as every meal is to a hungry person, the larger problem Mr. Bolling works to address is a basic conflict in the way he observes Americans have allowed society to be structured. Emergency programs have been created instead of taking care of unmet needs in a more systematic way. Democracy depends on community, says this former Kellogg Foundation Fellow who has worked in mediation and conflict resolution around the world. Bill Bolling is convinced that democracy is a verb, not a noun. It's messy, he says. And at its best, democracy slows down because we all get involved in it.

Conversation 1

Bill Bolling puts faces on Americaâs hungry, people who inspired him to found Atlantaâs Community Food Bank in 1979. He tells Paula Gordon and Bill Russell about the steadily increasing number of working-poor Americans who have no safety net in the wake of ãwelfare reform.ä

Conversation 2

Americaâs values are examined. ãWhat really holds us together?ä Mr. Bolling asks He suggests we measure the wrong things, concerned that 1 American child in 5 is hungry. ÊHe considers those kids in the context of their families, then frames issues of power and powerlessness. Focusing on education, he describes the Atlanta Food Bankâs program which makes discarded school supplies available to teachers, free of charge. Building relationships and engaging people, not simply distributing goods, is his real business, he says. Mr. Bolling proposes reasons Americans seem to have replaced outdated Cold War fears with fear of our own government. ÊHe proposes opportunities for greater collaboration across sectors.

Conversation 3

Describing himself as a practical entrepreneur, Mr. Bolling describes enlisting all kinds of community resources. He compares how one lives a good life with how he has created programs for the homeless and hungry. ÊHe expands on the variety of expertise needed, and the power of using volunteers in food banks and distribution programs. Engaging, educating and empowering the entire community and raising the communities' consciousness is the larger goal, he maintains. He outlines their ãHunger 101ä curriculum for all ages, distributed free throughout the country. He compares Food Banksâ long view to their short-term work as ãMoving beyond ÎAinât itÊAwful?âä.

Conversation 4

Mr. Bolling describes what he learned in his 3-year Kellogg Foundation Fellowship, focused on emerging democracies and mediation/conflict resolution. He recalls learning about emerging democracy in Russia while helping feed hungry people. ÊHe describes democracy as a verb, not a noun, and uses Russia, Africa and Latin America as examples. Things take time, he reminds us, then tells why he was fortunate to settle on food as his tool for community building.

Conversation 5

The mechanics of connecting food with hungry people are detailed. Mr. Bolling describes overcoming formidable logistical challenges of keeping good food from becoming solid waste.ÊÊHe describes ãcentralizing the acquisition and decentralizing the distributionä of food. ÊThe respective roles of government and the private sector are considered, as Mr. Bolling assures us the Food bank is not a ãfix-itä organization -- it is a community-building organization. He objects to the short-term thinking that has resulted in prisons being Americaâs fastest growing housing program.

Conversation 6

People all over the world now come to Mr. Bolling when starting similar work. ÊHe explains how that came to pass and reminds us of the risk-free, hundred-fold rewards of investing a bit of oneâs time or life in community-based endeavors.

Acknowledgements