Christine Browder, Texas Hunger Initiative
While her friends and family are focused on food during the holidays, Christine Browder can’t help but think of the many who go without. The 2006 Lake Highlands High School graduate works for the Texas Hunger Initiative, and I asked about her job and what she is able to accomplish.
Where does the funding for Texas Hunger Initiative (THI) come from?
We were started as an initiative in the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work at Baylor University, and now report to the University Provost as an independent project within the University. Our staff are full-time Baylor employees, but we are actually 100% grant funded. We have both public and private funding in various forms – grants, contracts and donations from individuals, foundations and corporations and from state and federal agencies. We have a revolving door of student workers and interns and love being able to engage students, alumni, faculty and staff across disciplines and departments within the university.
What is your role?
As Director of Strategic Partnerships and Government Relations, I serve as liaison to our state and federal agency partners as well as with elected officials from both state and federal leadership. I oversee all of our policy and advocacy work. A few of the projects that landed on my plate over the last year included (1) preparing our staff for 3 different congressional testimonies in Washington, (2) facilitating site visits for the National Commission on Hunger in Albuquerque and El Paso, (3) leading a week-long interdisciplinary student trip to Washington, D.C. to learn about what Hunger in America looks like and interventions to solve it and (4) organizing our annual Hunger & Poverty Summit, ‘Together at the Table’, which brings together hundreds of individuals from across the country.
What are the most rewarding (and frustrating) parts of your job?
It’s rewarding when we see how we are making a difference and impact in people’s lives and in communities. Being able to hear people’s personal stories is always a very humbling reminder of why I do the work that I do day in and day out. I also love seeing the personal, and often spiritual, transformation that takes place among the students and individuals we have the opportunity to teach and walk alongside as their knowledge and experience of huger deepens and they are moved to action. I am frustrated when the problem feels too big, when it seems like no matter what we do, it will never be enough to make sure that children and families in our communities aren’t struggling with hunger.
If you could ask your friends in LH to do ONE thing to help cure hunger, what would it be?
I would ask people to become aware, to educate themselves and to act.
One of my favorite quotes is by Brooke Frasier, “Now that I have seen, I am responsible.” I think as people of faith and as neighbors in our community we have a responsibility to act and engage in fighting for what’s right in our communities once we become aware that a problem or an injustice exists. Hunger in America looks different than it does in developing, third world nations and consequently often goes unnoticed. But there IS hunger in our community. More than 1 in 4 children in Dallas County struggle with hunger. In RISD there are 6 schools (Stults Road, Forest Lane Academy, Skyview, Northlake, Aikin and Thurgood Marshall) where more than 75% of students may be at risk of food insecurity and may struggle with hunger, and half of the students at Forest Meadow and LHJH are at risk.
Luckily there are some very tangible ways to get involved at home. The summer months are especially difficult for low-income families because children who have received meals at school must find an alternative. Summer Food Service Program provides nutritious meals to kids at no cost to them or their families. Last summer Wilshire Baptist Church partnered with some local schools and apartment complexes to help provide enrichment activities for these kids before and after meals while parents were at work.
Texas Hunger Initiative has a Dallas office that can help you get connected if you’d like to find a way to help hungry families, or THI can come speak to your group.
I know that you left Lake Highlands to go to Baylor, then you got a Master’s in Social Work there. You were working on a Master’s in Divinity at Truett Theological Seminary when you were recruited to THI. Is the Divinity degree on hold?
No, I started back this fall an am loving being back in the classroom part-time.
Did you plan to stay Waco this long?
I never expected to stay in Waco, but almost 10 years later I’m still here and have fallen in love with this place I call home now. It’s a fun time to be in Waco, but I do miss Lake Highlands. I miss having family and friends at my fingertips, Wilshire Baptist Church, White Rock Lake and TC’s Shaved Ice. When I come back for Christmas, my parent’s house will be my first stop [home of the very proud Bruce and Mary], but after that I’m headed to Matt’s Rancho Martinez for a “Bob Armstrong”, Wilshire Baptist Church and White Rock Coffee.
Some answers have been edited for brevity.
