Free Press photo by John Cross
Robert Egger, founder of National Campus Kitchen and president of the DC Central Kitchen, spoke to the Feeding Our Communities Partnership Thursday at the Blue Earth County Library.
The man who founded the organization that spawned Minnesota State University's Campus Kitchen program came to Mankato and gave an ambitious group of locals some good news Thursday.
"You're ahead of most cities," said Robert Egger, founder of the DC Kitchen in Washington, D.C., and of the National Campus Kitchen program. "Most groups are still in the 'We should do something' phase."
He was speaking to a small gathering of people starting up a nonprofit group to combat hunger in Blue Earth County called the Feeding Our Communities Partnership. It formed after research showed a disproportionately high number of people in Blue Earth County were going without food.
Named an Oprah Angel, Egger is well known to people at MSU's Campus Kitchen program. He came to Mankato to visit with them and check out how the only Campus Kitchen in a rural setting goes about its business.
He had good things to say about what he saw.
The Mankato community, he said, appears to be a progressive one and ahead of the curve, even ahead of most urban communities.
What typically happens in a community is the business sector doesn't understand the motives and behavior of the nonprofits that are trying to provide services to the hungry and homeless. At the same time, the nonprofits tend to think the business sector is so profit-driven that eschews the work of the nonprofits.
In the Mankato community, those groups are working together. The Campus Kitchen program is an example of that, as are recent partnerships between the ECHO Food Shelf and a retail giant such as Sam's Club, or Cub Foods. Food rescue agreements are snatching edible food from both stores that would otherwise get thrown away and distributing it to the hungry at the food shelf.
At Egger's DC Central Kitchen unemployed men and women learn marketable culinary skills while foods donated by restaurants, hotels and caterers are converted into balanced meals. Those meals are then distributed to the hungry.
Since opening in 1989, the Kitchen has distributed more than 20 million meals and helped more than 700 men and women gain full-time employment.
Egger was named one of the 50 Most Powerful and Influential Nonprofit Leaders in 2006, 2007 and 2008, was the recipient of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington's 2007 Duke Ziebert Lifetime Achievement award and was the 2004 James Beard Foundation Humanitarian of the Year award.
He has also been named a Washingtonian of the Year, a Point of Light and one of the Ten Most Caring People in America.
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