Before my brothers and I were old enough to make our own lunches, my mom started teaching us to help others put food on the table. We tagged along to the food pantry, stacking peanut butter jars onto creaking shelves and filling grocery bags with boxes of cereal while my mom asked the mothers on the other side of the counter how many children they had and if they had anywhere to boil water for pasta.

As I grew up, I learned to chase the feeling of reward that every volunteer loves. It was never hard to find places that needed extra hands. My high school even passed around a list of organizations that relied on a revolving door of student assistants: soup kitchens, homeless shelters, senior centers.

While I found joy in small moments of connection with people eating a much-needed warm meal or carrying a bag of groceries home to their kids, I often went home feeling unsettled. Where would that grandmother go for lunch the next day? What happened when those parents couldn’t make it to the food bank? How did the lines get so long in the first place?

With each new experience, I learned just how complicated the answers to these questions are – and how often the answers we have are not enough. Like many people, learning about our complex systems for assisting people during tough times and trying to figure out how I could help often left me frustrated rather than motivated.

Fortunately, we live among incredible people who are just crazy enough to look at seemingly impossible challenges and react by rolling up their sleeves. When I try to learn from these leaders, I go home inspired by the possibility of a better future.

Life at Mixte is an exercise in inspiration. Every day, I get to work with San Diegans tackling the tough questions and working to make life better for our whole community. This is why I love working with San Diego Hunger Coalition. Some days, it can be easy to think that things aren’t getting better, that we’re mired in a culture of apathy. Next time you get that defeated feeling, I challenge you to learn about people in San Diego like our friends at the Hunger Coalition, fighting to end the cycle of poverty with research, education and endless persistence.

Not only are they fighting – they’re winning. Need some good news?

Three San Diego Hunger Coalition victories I’m cheering about lately:

• Thanks to online application and customer service updates, people can now enroll in CalFresh (a monthly supplement to a household’s food budget) without stepping foot in a County office.
• A new same-day service program means that eligible homeless individuals can begin purchasing groceries on the same day they apply for CalFresh assistance instead of going through a complicated month-long process.
• For kids missing out on the free or reduced price school meals they need over summer break, over 200 sites in San Diego offer free meals – no paperwork required.

These successes go beyond questions like, “How can I help this mother put dinner on the table tonight?” They tackle even tougher issues, like “What barriers are keeping this mother from breaking out of the cycle of poverty and providing a better life for her kids?”

With the Hunger Coalition team in our corner, we’re all in good company. I get to learn from their strategy and passion. You can be proud to live in a city where these warriors are facing up to our community’s complex challenges. And most importantly, mothers balancing their food budgets at the end of the month have hope for a more stable future in San Diego.