Youth-Led Nonprofit Teams with Alpha Phi Alpha, Alpha Kappa Alpha for MLK Hunger Relief Project

BEL AIR SOUTH, Md. — A local youth-led nonprofit is honoring the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this year by tackling food insecurity through a strategic partnership with the nation’s oldest Black Greek-letter organizations.

The organization, We Cancerve Movement, Inc., participated in a joint service project with members of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.—of which Dr. King was a member—and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., the sorority of his late wife, Coretta Scott King. The initiative provides after-school snacks to 500 children from Harford and Cecil counties who currently rely on free and reduced-price school breakfast and lunch programs.

"Dr. King taught us the importance of empathy and love and the impact of service to others,” said Nael Lewis-Shakur, 14, a member of We Cancerve’s all-youth board of advisors and project leader. “By providing snacks to children who often times need a little extra help with getting food, we see ourselves as continuing the work Dr. King spent his life doing.”

The project highlights a historical continuum of advocacy. While President Harry Truman signed the National School Lunch Act into law in 1946, it was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s that transformed school breakfast and lunch programs into a national priority. Dr. King and his contemporaries successfully linked food security to the broader struggle for justice and equality, arguing that a hungry child cannot fully exercise their civil rights.

This advocacy was instrumental in the creation of the School Breakfast Program in the late 1960s, a vital extension of the 1946 Act that recognized the necessity of nutrition throughout the entire school day.

We Cancerve started its “Snack Attack” initiative in 2013 after learning that kids at some area residential homeless shelters were not receiving summer or after-school snacks.

"Partnering with the youth of today to solve the problems of tomorrow is the highest tribute we can pay to our Dr. King," said Roderick Trotter, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity who is helping to organize the event. "Food security is a matter of dignity, and together with the ladies of Alpha Kapp Alpha Sorority, Inc., we are proud to support this youth-led effort while honoring the legacy of our fraternity brother."

Volunteers gathered Saturday, Jan. 24 at 10 a.m. at the EpiCenter in Edgewood to assemble We Cancerve’s snack bags, which contain shelf-stable, delicious and often nutritious snacks. The groups aimed for baked chips, fruit cups in water instead of syrup, etc. The snack bags will be distributed to participating Title I schools, homeless shelters, domestic violence safe houses and other facilities when schools reopen. Schools are currently closed due to the winter storm.

ABOUT WE CANCERVE

We Cancerve Movement, Inc. was started in 2012 by Grace Callwood at age seven shortly her Stage IV cancer diagnosis. She decided to bring happiness to homeless, sick and foster children -- all youth in sad situations through no fault of their own. To date, the nonprofit has reached more than 38,000 youth from Maryland and six other states, and seven countries including Japan, Morocco, Ghana, Ethiopia and Kenya.