Write a new simple attractive title based on the title from Everett delivers Call to Action at Hunger in the RGV forum and dont use quote marks

By Rio Grande Guardian Staff

WESLACO, Texas — Addressing a room of local leaders, community advocates, and elected officials gathered at South Texas College’s Mid-Valley Campus, Dr. Jeremy Everett delivered a stark warning alongside a message of hope: while hunger remains a downstream symptom of systemic injustice, it is an entirely solvable crisis if all sectors of society commit to working together.

Everett, the executive director of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, served as the keynote and final speaker at “Hunger in the RGV: A Call to Action.” The summit was co-hosted by Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez and national anti-hunger organization Bread for the World to confront food insecurity across the Rio Grande Valley.

“I don’t know about you all, but it feels to me like we are in a deserted place in America right now,” Everett said, opening his address with a reflection on the Biblical account of the feeding of the 5,000 from the Gospel of Luke.

Everett emphasized that economic hardships and systemic challenges across the country do not affect all populations equally.

“Our economic hardships are not evenly spread out among society. Rather, it’s the same family that is experiencing bouts of hunger and also doesn’t have affordable healthcare,” Everett noted. “It’s the same family sending their children to schools with graduation rates well below 50% and college readiness in the single digits. It’s the same family that lacks livable-wage jobs for generations.”

Hunger as a Litmus Test

Throughout his address, Everett framed hunger not as a standalone problem of food production, but as a direct indicator of broader social and economic inequities.

“Hunger did not cause poverty. It didn’t cause underemployment. It didn’t cause political division or war. Rather, it is a downstream issue that is the result of upstream injustice,” Everett explained. He pointed out that American farmers and ranchers produce more than enough food to nourish the population, meaning food insecurity stems from systemic failures in access and distribution.

“When you have structural racism, you will have hunger. When you have gender pay inequality, you will have hunger. When you have widespread underemployment, you will have hunger,” he said. “Since hunger is a downstream issue for all injustices, it becomes, for better or worse, a litmus test issue… a yardstick for our world, our nation, our communities, and even our souls.”

Scalable Solutions from the Pandemic

To demonstrate that wide-scale food insecurity can be overcome, Everett recounted how the Baylor Collaborative scaled its “Meals to You” program during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Initially piloted in 2019 to serve 4,000 children in remote rural school districts across East and West Texas who could not access traditional summer meal sites, the program delivered shelf-stable food boxes directly to families’ front porches via logistics partners.

When federal officials asked the collaborative to expand the program nationally during pandemic shutdowns, the initiative rapidly grew. By the end of that summer, the program had delivered 40 million meals to 270,000 children across 43 states and Puerto Rico, relying on an unprecedented coalition of federal agencies, school districts, rural postal workers, shipping companies, and local leaders.

“What was interesting about that experience is that it literally took all sectors working together to bring their best to bear to solve for the problem of hunger in one of the most vulnerable situations we have ever been in in modern American history,” Everett said.

A Call to Action in the Valley

Closing the forum, Everett challenged attendees to move beyond discussion and engage in direct policy advocacy, invoking historic movements for social change. He urged audience members to participate in an “Offering of Letters” organized during the event to lobby lawmakers for systemic policy reforms.

“Hunger is a solvable problem. It was created by people, so we can, as the people, solve the problem,” Everett said, referencing President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s assertion that national progress is measured by providing enough for those who have too little.

Everett laid out a three-part directive for the Rio Grande Valley:

• Strategize: Proactively design systems to eradicate hunger rather than expecting progress to happen by accident.
• Organize: Build multi-sector coalitions bringing together local government, churches, higher education, non-profits, and the private sector.
• Advocate: Engage directly with legislative leaders to secure structural resources for vulnerable families.

“When we see desert, Jesus sees opportunity. When we see scarcity, Jesus shows us the way of abundance,” Everett concluded. “Brothers and sisters, ‘you give them something to eat’ — and today we will do that together through advocacy.”