Kathy Goldman, the founding director of Community Food Resource Center (now FoodChange)
Bill Ayres of World Hunger Year
Betsy Gotbaum NYC Public Advocate

At our 25th anniversary event in NYC on World Food Day, we are honoring three long-term anti-hunger leaders: Kathy Goldman, the founding director of Community Food Resource Center (now FoodChange); Bill Ayres of World Hunger Year, and NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.

Kathy Goldman is a long-time community activist who has helped initiate innovative food programs such as school breakfast and summer meals in NYC since the 1960s. In 1980, she founded the Community Food Resource Center (CFRC) to focus attention on the issue of hunger and expand access to nutritious, affordable food for all.

Under Kathy’s leadership, CFRC was an effective advocate, a source of reliable data and an incubator for important pilot programs. In 1983, it helped create Food for Survival, one of the largest food banks in the United States. The next year, it set up the Community Kitchen of West Harlem, which serves 500 dinners each weekday evening and, with the assistance of neighborhood teenagers, delivers meals to homebound elderly persons in the area.

CFRC has initiated other programs such as senior dinners at public schools and school nutrition committees, which work with parents and school personnel. CFRC also helped families retain their apartments and access food stamps and other supports.

Bill Ayres is Executive Director and co-founder of World Hunger Year (WHY). Ayres became a Catholic priest for the Archdiocese in New York in 1966, but always had a fondness for radio broadcasting. He began hosting and producing a weekly radio talk show on NY Radio WPLJ 95.5FM in 1973, on which has taken thousands of calls and offered advice about personal, relational, spiritual and social values.

In 1975, Ayres and his close friend, folksinger and songwriter Harry Chapin, saw a pressing need to aid the impoverished with basic needs such as food. They began World Hunger Year, an organization with a stated mission to defeat hunger through charity, using grassroots efforts and rallying celebrities and leaders to help promote the cause. Ayres has served as Executive Director since 1983. Ayres and Chapin believed that solutions to hunger and poverty are found through long-term solutions, like supporting community-based organizations that empower individuals and build self-reliance.Ayres has spun off other two national hunger coalitions, The Medford Group of national hunger organizations and the National Jobs for All Coalition. He is also a board member of Long Island Cares, Long Island’s food bank.

Over the past three decades, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum has led a distinguished career in the public and private sectors. Betsy has worked as advisor to three mayors; financial executive developing capital for start-up entrepreneurial firms; commissioner of the Department of Parks & Recreation; and president of the prestigious New-York Historical Society. In all her jobs, Betsy has been known for using nontraditional methods to turn troubled institutions into success stories.

Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum said, “I congratulate the Hunger Action Network on 25 years of outstanding service to New York and I am honored to be selected as an Anti-Hunger Leader. I share in the goal of ending hunger for New Yorkers and will continue my work towards this end with ongoing efforts to raise the Public Assistance grant and working to improve access to food stamps. Hunger affects too many individuals everyday, and with organizations like Hunger Action Network taking the lead, we will continue to work to improve the lives of New Yorkers in need.”

Since Betsy’s inauguration as Public Advocate in January 2002, her leadership has paved the way for municipal reform in education, school construction, prevention of crime against women, and the fight against hunger.

In her first term as Public Advocate, Ms. Gottbaum helped tens of thousands of families, seniors, and children solve their problems with City government. On taking office, she pledged to focus on five main policy areas - hunger, housing, child welfare, education, and women’s issues- and, over the course of her first four years in office, made important strides in each.

Betsy exposed major problems in the special education system, prompting the Dept. of Education to set aside more money for special needs students. She successfully lobbied to stop the administration from cutting preventive services that help families keep their children out of foster care.

Her recommendations led to reforms in the food stamp application process that have helped thousands of NYC families put food on their tables. She has launched studies that shed light on the City’s affordable housing crisis and the provision of government services to survivors of domestic violence.

Throughout her career, Betsy has shown commitment to community service. She has served on the boards of innumerable not-for-profit organizations, including the Community Service Society; The Valley Recreation and Youth Development Program in Harlem; Goodwill Industries; and the Municipal Arts Society.

She is married to labor leader Victor Gotbaum and has one daughter, three grandchildren, four stepchildren, and eight stepgrandchildren.