Member Profile

Terry Meehan: The Time is Right

"You could not have been raised by our parents and not cared about those who had less. As a young boy, I heard about the famine in Ireland and about our great-grandparents, who ran from Ireland to escape the poverty."

As part of The Gathering 2007, the New York native spoke at the Leadership Circles Dinner, talking about his own efforts to work against hunger. These efforts were reinvigorated after September 11, 2001. Below are excerpts from Meehan's remarks.

Thirty years ago, the Sahara desert was expanding. There were pictures of children's extended bellies from starvation appearing on magazine covers.  I wanted to try to do something.  I founded a loose coalition of organizations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation and some individuals.  Over three years we had events in New York, including a gathering of 200,000 in Central Park. It was called Food Day. We were trying to do for hunger and malnutrition what Earth Day had successfully done for the environment. Most of you probably have never heard of Food Day.  The time to focus on hunger and malnutrition had not come. The spaghetti would not stick on the wall.

Twenty-five years later, 9/11 happened.  I was lucky.  A month earlier, I had moved a 300-person meeting in Windows of the World to a different location. At a funeral of a friend of mine who died on 9/11, his wife said, "If you walk out of this church today and do not do something different, then something is wrong." It was like a guardian angel had taken a 12-by-10 and whacked me in the back of the head.

I decided to see if the time had come for the spaghetti to stick on the wall.  I discovered Bread for the World and worked with them to fund a national survey of voters' opinions on hunger, both nationally and internationally.  The polling was conducted by one pollster from the Democratic side and one from the Republican. They had literally never worked together. The pollsters were shocked at how high a priority hunger had become for the American public.  Voters wanted their elected officials to address this issue, but not in the old ways that had failed.

During the next several years, Bread for the World and its sister organization, The Alliance to End Hunger, researched new and more effective approaches to fighting hunger. We delivered these and the results of the polls to our elected officials and the press. How effective are we as an organization? Five years ago Hillary Clinton called up [BFW President] David Beckmann and said, “You are so effective in helping others overcome poverty. I want to raise money for you.” That is not a telephone call that a lot of politicians make.  This was one sign that the spaghetti was beginning to stick. We can and are making a difference. 

“Terry Meehan is making a huge impact on Bread for the World’s work for hungry people,” said Bread for the World president David Beckmann. “He is contributing financially and he is also mobilizing political leaders and his friends to help.  He is a valuable partner in the fight against hunger, and we thank him for his faithful efforts.”   

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